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horrendous evil is possible from advanced, industrialized Western society
Saturday, June 22 2002Gretchen really outdid herself cleaning the house (and even the backyard) before the arrival of her friends from Connecticut, Ingrid and Gabe. I don't even know how she knows these people, since she'd never mentioned them to me up until now. I have a feeling she has thousands of friends that she somehow manages to maintain and eventually I'll meet them all, though it might take several lifetimes. We went out for lunch at the Second Street Café and then strolled through Prospect Park, talking about the virtues of Park Slope the whole way. As usual, Gretchen was trying to convince Ingrid and Gabe that they should move here.
Later, back at the house, I had an interesting conversation with Gabe about how limitations on creative options actually help the creative process. In an age where there are at last no technical limitations, perhaps the sudden emergence of political (in other words, Ashcroftian) limitations will be the thing that ultimately saved the arts. After all, repression was probably the single greatest artistic motivator in Eastern Europe prior to the collapse of the Berlin Wall.the lesson of Nazi Germany is not about HitlerI have to tell you, the more I learn about the state of post-September-eleventh American society, the more I fear for ordinary civil freedom. Today especially I found myself wondering about parallels between conditions in Weimar Germany and those in contemporary America. I know it's widely considered alarmist and Holocaust-belittling to compare any police state to Nazi Germany. Nonetheless, the chief lesson of Nazi Germany is that the most horrendous evil is possible from advanced, industrialized Western society. What it takes to make a Nazi Germany out of a society isn't Hitler, it is instead a sufficient amount of stress. Who exactly serve as "the Jews" and who exactly serve as "the Gestapo" depends on the peculiarities of the stressed society.
To my way of thinking, we have the perfect makings for a sustained plunge into the sort of totalitarianism where any sort of horror is possible. A shocking terrorist attack has left the American populace in a state resembling that of a terrified child. For white bread Americans, Government is Mommy and, at least until the terrorist monster is vanquished (never), can do no wrong. This is reflected in the polls, unfortunately the only source of conventional directional guidance in America today. Seeing these polls, our "free press," particularly as exemplified by media conglomerates, is rendered unquestioning, as is the opposition party and non-executive branches of government. We're left governed unchecked by an increasingly arrogant (yet insecure) executive branch whose peculiar fundamentalist religious inclinations and pathological pro-corporate ideology render it particularly ill-suited for dealing with the complexities of the modern world. Unchecked, we can only expect their arrogance to feed back on itself in a positive-feedback loop. Meanwhile, television talks a lot more about the need to have a brand new SUV and a moisturized line-free complexion than it does about the importance of maintaining healthy skepticism and a multi-branched form of government.
I have a fear that by the time the current administration unravels, its power, the sort only granted by the freak circumstances of the September 11th attacks, will have allowed it to commit unspeakable acts on the par with the worst crimes of humanity. We can only hope that you and I don't number among its victims.
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