Gunga Gunga Galunga

lol. I remeber that one.

Comment by JPark — June 22, 2007 @ 1:36 am

Not at all, my friend. Like most people who post seriously here, I like having my opinions validated. But it does frighten me sometimes when I see who does agree with me. I start to wonder what else I have in common with them. (Such as the fact that both Karl Rove and I are intelligent, overweight and bespectacled just gives me the willies. But at least I am a human being. So I got that going for me. Which is nice.)

Everyone likes to say, “Hitler did this”, and, “Hitler did that”. But the truth is Hitler did very little. He was a world class tyrant, but the evil actually done by the Third Reich, from the death camps to WW2 was all done by German citizens who were afraid to question if what they were told by their government was the truth or not, and who because they did not want to admit to themselves that they were afraid to question the government, refused to see the truth behind the Reichstag Fire, refused to see the invasion by Poland was a staged fake, and followed Hitler into national disaster.

The reality was that the German people, as individuals, had lost their courage. The German government preferred it that way as a fearful people are easier to rule than a courageous one. But the German people didn’t wish to lose their self-image of courage. So, when confronted with a situation demanding individual courage, in the form of a government gone wrong, the German people simply pretended that the situation did not exist. And in that simple self-deception lay the ruin of an entire nation and the coming of the second World War.

But so trapped are Americans by their belief in their own bravery that they will themselves to be blind to the evidence before their eyes, so that they can nod in agreement with the government while still imagining themselves to have courage, even as they avoid the one situation which most requires real courage; to stand up to the government’s lies and deceptions. The vast majority of the American people, their own self-image dependant on continuing blindness to the government’s deceptions, never question why Afghanistan would have done something so stupid as to attack the United States, and as a result, Americans find themselves in a war.

Tyrants become obvious only when looking back, after what they have done becomes known. The German people did not stand up to Hitler because their media betrayed them, just as the American media is betraying the American people by willingly, voluntarily, even proudly, abandoning its traditional role as watchdog against government abuse.

It is the very nature of power that it attracts the sort of people who should not have it. The United States, as the world’s last superpower, is a prize that attracts men and women willing to do absolutely anything to win that power, and hence are also willing to do absolutely anything with that power once they have it. If one thinks about it long enough, one will realize that all tyrants, past and most especially present, MUST use deception on their population to initiate a war. No citizen of a modern industrialized nation will send their children off to die in a war to grab another nation’s resources and assets, yet resources and assets are what all wars are fought over. The nation that wishes to initiate a war of conquest must create the illusion of an attack or a threat to start a war, and must always give their population of cowards an excuse never to question that carefully crafted illusion.

It is naive, not to mention racist to assume that tyrants appear only in other nations and that somehow America is immune simply because we’re Americans. America has escaped the clutches of a dictatorship thus far only through the efforts of those citizens who, unlike the Germans of the 1930s, have the moral courage to stand up and point out where the government is lying to the people.
Unless more Americans are willing to have that kind of individual courage, then future generations may well look back on the American people with the same harshness of judgement with which we look back on the 1930s Germans.

They sure don’t smell like flowers.

Comment by JPark — June 22, 2007 @ 1:11 am

I did, and being the bigger man, I accepted it. :D

hehe

You forget, I know what you’re up to. ;)

You’re doing great! Keep on telling the world about the real “America’s Mayor”!

Objection your honor: Projecting :)

Well, why don’t we just agree that Mr. Kaplan should have chosen his words more carfully, and not stated an opinion as a fact (as many right-wing TV and radio personalities do to a much, much greater extent than the liberal ones.)

Perhaps Mr. Kaplan should have left that first sentence out and started with the next one. Then, I think it would have been okay.

BTW, many of us who live in New York believe that Giuliani doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but that comes from years of listening to him. He told Pres Bush that Bernie Kerik would make a good head of Homeland Security. A corrupt, immoral, insensitive one, maybe, but a “good” one? Personally I didn’t think he knew what he was talking about.

Born: 28-May-1944
Birthplace: New York City
Gender: Male
Religion: Roman Catholic
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Cross-dresser
Occupation: Politician
Party Affiliation: Republican/Neo-Conservative

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Mayor of New York City, 1994-2001

Rudy Giuliani’s father was a plumber and bartender who had been arrested for petty crimes before marriage straightened him out. His mother was a bookkeeper who had a keen interest in the news, reading up to half a dozen newspapers daily. As a boy, young Giuliani considered becoming a priest, but instead studied law. He first gained national prominence as a U.S. Attorney, prosecuting the insider trading trials of Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken and other high-profile cases. In one of his most infamous assignments, Giuliani argued in an immigration case — preposterously but successfully — that repression in Haiti “simply does not exist”, and that there had been “no political repression” in Haiti under President Jean-Claude Duvalier.

As U.S. Attorney, he oversaw more than 4,000 convictions, enabling him to run for mayor as the candidate who’d be “tough on crime”. He defeated David Dinkins in the elections of 1993, and as mayor immediately pursued aggressive policies against the kind of street crime New York had become famous for. Giuliani backed the police ferociously, and in what had been a crime-infested metropolis, it became reasonably safe to ride the subway or stroll city parks. Fewer tourists returned to their hometowns with tales of being mugged, and more left with pleasant memories.

Of course, police crackdowns have certain distasteful side effects, and blacks and other minorities often spoke of feeling harassed, “presumed guilty”. Many complained that Giuliani’s gung-ho support for the police department led to an atmosphere where troubled cops knew they could get away with almost anything. Under Giuliani’s administration, some of the city’s widely-reported cases of police brutality included the death of Amadou Diallo, a black, unarmed man walking near his apartment who was shot 19 times by four plainclothes cops, and the Duvalier-esque beating and plunger-rape of Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant. When a 16-year-old black teenager was shot and wounded by police as he was walking home from the city’s “midnight basketball” games (a program designed to keep kids out of trouble), Giuliani’s public response was that the boy “should have been home at that hour”.

Street artists and political protesters also complained of police harassment. Almost 70,000 people filed lawsuits against New York Police during Giuliani’s two terms as mayor, claiming they were strip-searched for minor offences like jaywalking and fare-dodging. Giuliani’s zero-tolerance for scum saw the traditional porn shops and lap dancers of Times Square redeveloped away, and replaced by family-friendly stores and theaters, including the MTV studios and an enormous Disney store and cinema. While championing a voucher system as an alternative to public education, Giuliani described New York’s schools as “dysfunctional”, “just plain terrible”, and said “the whole system should be blown up”.

When the World Trade Center was hit by hijacked jets on September 11, Giuliani rushed to Ground Zero — because, even after the World Trade Center was first struck by terrorists in 1993, he had placed the city’s terrorist response center inside the WTC. That decision undoubtedly cost lives on 9/11, but Giuliani’s take-charge and take-no-crap demeanor was exactly what most New Yorkers wanted in the aftermath of disaster, and across the nation, millions saw Giuliani’s stalwart response as genuine leadership. He was named Time’s Person of the Year for 2001, dubbed “America’s Mayor” by the media, and given an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II in 2002.

In October 2001, as anthrax-by-mail subjected New York to further drama, Giuliani publicly urged all New Yorkers to get flu shots. Flu symptoms are similar to early anthrax symptoms, so Giuliani’s reasoning was that minimizing the flu would lead to less confusion and less public panic. But he neglected to run the idea past health experts, who pointed out that there’s nowhere near enough flu vaccine for everyone in New York.

Giuliani’s first marriage was to his second cousin, Regina Peruggi. They were married for 14 years, before Giuliani had their marriage annulled by the Catholic church. His second marriage was to Donna Hanover, a reporter and sometimes soap-opera actress. Havover was the city’s First Lady while Giuliani was mayor, but she stayed farther and farther out of the public spotlight as Giuliani was widely whispered to be swiving his press secretary, Cristyne Lategano. After Lategano left City Hall, Giuliani took up with a divorced nurse, Judith Nathan, paying her $10,000 per month as his speechwriter. Never one for subtlety, Giuliani and Nathan marched side-by-side in the St. Patrick’s Day parade, where the city’s mayor traditionally walks with his wife.

Term limits prevented Giuliani from seeking a third term as mayor in 2001. He was expected to run for the Senate against Hillary Clinton, but he backed out of the race to undergo prostate surgery. And also, perhaps not coincidentally, because his marital infidelities were all over the newspapers around that time. Shortly after Giuliani left office, he filed for divorce, accusing Hanover of “cruel and inhuman treatment.” In her response, Hanover blamed the ex-mayor’s “open and notorious adultery.” When their divorce was finalized, she got a million dollars a year in alimony. In May of 2003, Giuliani returned to Gracie Mansion, the official residence of New York’s mayor, for a lavish ceremony to marry his former paramour, Judith Nathan. The city’s new mayor, Michael Bloomberg, officiated.