pink noise

From the clouds of ideas I've been brainstorming, I'm mobilizing the forces in a blitzkrieg of productivity. That is, I put notes into the computer.

And then I watched Downfall, the story of the final days of the Third Reich in the midst of the Russian onslaught. You may recognize the actors from a ubiquitous internet meme:

And after that, I read some about the main characters. Before the movie, I didn't know a Goebbels from a Himmler, so it served primarily as a history lesson, a perspective from inside the bunker, told by his secretary whose memoir informed the screenplay. And then I watched the last half of a South Park episode in which Cartman pretends to have Tourette's so he can go on national tv and swear--and say bad things about Jews. I've never really liked Cartman's gratuitous anti-Semitism; it grew old long ago. But after watching the movie, it seemed even less funny and more dangerous.

Apparently Goebbels was the propaganda chief, rising through the ranks of the Nazis in the 1920s and ascending to power with Hitler. He and his wife loved their country--even more than Sarah Palin and Glen Beck love the US--professing typical all-or-nothing, with-us-or-against-us statements like:

"Our glorious idea is ruined and with it everything beautiful and marvelous that I have known in my life. The world that comes after the Führer and national socialism is not any longer worth living in and therefore I took the children with me, for they are too good for the life that would follow, and a merciful God will understand me when I will give them the salvation"

She really came off as the crazy one. And, yes, she killed her 6 children; after drugging them to make them sleep, she put poison capsules in their mouths. The whole of them seemed so utterly in denial that they were losing. And that is something I think we can all relate to. The trick is knowing when to surrender to prevent civilian deaths. That's the other thing that the movie impressed upon me: at this point in the war, Hitler didn't even care about the German people. All or nothing. Total war. Keep fighting until the last bullet.

And now we have wackos flying kamikaze planes into IRS buildings and a resurgence of the mid-90s militias. And this violence against the government is condoned by Tea Baggers and wing nut Republicans. We all have a need to feel a part of something greater, but for some that need becomes and addiction to God and country. Generally, I find comparisons to Nazi Germany to be too sweeping to be helpful, but in this case I think there are specific similarities: zealous patriotism and acceptance of violence as a means.

And then, randomly, my German friend, Tina, texted me to discuss a piano lesson this weekend. And then, also randomly, I read an article in the NYtimes about a commercial movie made in Nazi Germany called "Jew Süss". Not even a propaganda film, it would be like if Avatar had a specifically racist or political message. And it mentioned Frau Goebbels and her murders-suicide. But, to quote one of my favorite lines from Lost: "Don't mistake coïncidence for fate."