Sig Heil is Just Around the Corner

Dispatches from Phil Farruggio
Sig Heil is Just Around the Corner

An exact replay of history is not likely, but while specific "failed" actors leave the stage, class forces survive to enact the same drama another day.

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n Joachim Fest's fine biography of Adolf Hitler, aptly titled Hitler, we learn many things never before taught in our World History classes here. To delve into it now with the needed detail from this 700+ page masterpiece would be futile for me the columnist. There is just so much to digest and comprehend about this Austrian of little education and no professional calling who became the Fuhrer. Yet, throughout the book one cannot help but realize just how much the movers and shakers of our Amerikan empire copied tactics and outright propaganda from the Hitler gang. [In fact, the Nazis also copied the Anglo-American racists a great deal, particularly their eugenicist figures, including Sir Francis Galton and Ivy League-educated "gentlemen" anglo supremacists like Madison Grant.) ⁽¹⁾

The use of the term Fatherland to describe Germany rings so close to post 9/11 Amerika's choice of Homeland as in Homeland Security. Ever since 9/11 and our subsequent invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, each time there is a major sporting event they spread out the giant American flag and trot out the honor guard to sing our national anthem. The real connivance is how they always show us American GIs dressed in camouflage,  as if they just came from the battlefield. Check out the Nuremberg rallies and see the torchlight parades and honor guards with their brown or black shirts and swastikas throughout. This mania to salute soldiers who had no business being sent to the Middle East to invade, kill, be killed and occupy foreign lands is sadly congruent to what transpired with Germany's attacks and occupations of most of Europe. Yet, throughout history this is exactly what empires have done. Why should ours be any different?

Hitler was a masterful genius, who had the good fortune, after much manipulation and scheming, to become Chancellor at perhaps the eleventh hour . Fest explains in his book how the nationalist coalition (which the Nazis were part of) could have formed a legal blockade to thwart Hitler's plans. Yet, the fear of many from Germany's  right wing and centrist political parties , and even  some left of center ones like the Social Democrats ( forerunner of today's US Democratic party ) believed, as Hitler himself stated: " One year of Bolshevism would destroy her ( Germany)."  The interesting thing is how Hitler used phrases and ideals that many of our current right wing have ( copied ? ) been using: " Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of racial and political life." He promised to eliminate class struggle and to restore ' traditions of honor'. Sound familiar? Newly appointed Chancellor Adolf Hitler, soon after his ascension, travelled around Germany giving hundreds of " Let's get to work " speeches to German labor.  Sadly, as with the Nazi party in the early 1930s, working stiffs here in Florida, many with not a ' pot to piss in' , voted for former Governor Rick Scott ( now, sadly, Senator Rick Scott) when he ran for re-election a few years ago with his slogan " Let's Get to Work".

Why are we, as a nation, in such a sinking ship? Well, the propaganda has been nearly as masterful as that of Goebbels and his crew. We are a nation , as the late Gore Vidal aptly labeled us, at Perpetual War. We spend over 50% of our federal tax revenues on the military. We invaded Iraq in 2003 so as to ' fight them there so they don't come here'. Remember that? Now it is ISIL or ISIS, who , like the original mujahedeen that became Bin Laden's Al Qaeda, Amerika financed and nurtured so as to fight one of our enemies. This writer has many acquaintances who consider themselves 'right wing'. They sing that same song : "We're Fighting them there so they don't come here". Will it ever end? We have states so broke and overloaded with needs that they now want to become legal bookmakers on sports betting. Why do you think Colorado and Washington originally allowed recreational marijuana, because they are so progressive minded? Come on, it is to raise tax revenues, and look how many other states are following suit.  Of course, this writer, who believes in the use of marijuana, would rather see that then legal bookmaking or the stupid lotteries, which attract mostly low income folks who could use that money for more important needs.

So, we have a nation filled with our citizens working dead end jobs for lousy pay, living in corporate owned and operated rental housing . Of course if they are lucky, they could find a home to rent from some independent predator landlord who bought it on the cheap when it was foreclosed or sold under financial desperation. Finally, here is how the movers and shakers of this Military Industrial Empire are even shrewder than the Nazi gang. What they did, successfully too, was create and maintain a 'Two Party, One Party ' system. They made sure that the two parties , as is the case in the UK, seem to be at each other's throats... and they are on some issues. We know the Democrats will trumpet a woman's right to choose, and gay rights, and even a more liberal immigration policy. Yet, when it comes to the meat and potato issues that the empire feeds off of, like heavy military spending, bases worldwide, WMDs to the hilt, free reign for big banks, big oil, big Pharma and all BIG BUSINESS, there is little or no difference between the two parties. Look how  the Neocon led Democratic Party minions agreed with President Trump over his  Cruise Missile attack deep within Syria. Look how they all ' drank the Kool- Aid on blaming Assad and the Russians for that ( so called ? ) chemical attack. Herr Goebbels would be so proud of that sort of propaganda as this empire eats away at our nation's soul. If all those working stiffs out there do not finally ' Get it ' and see through the illusions and propaganda... " Sig Heil!!!"

PA Farruggio

Notes
anti-miscegenation laws; and supported the forcible sterilization of the poor, disabled and "immoral".^[12]Eugenics was also supported by African American intellectuals such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Thomas Wyatt Turner, and many academics at Tuskegee University, Howard University, and Hampton University; however, they believed the best blacks were as good as the best whites and "The Talented Tenth" of all races should mix.^[13] W. E. B. Du Bois believed "only fit blacks should procreate to eradicate the race's heritage of moral iniquity."^{[13][14] (Source: Eugenics in the United States—Wikipedia)}

In this crowd, Madison Grant deserves special attention, as he illustrates the contradictions we often find in distinguished thinkers. Madison Grant (November 19, 1865 – May 30, 1937) was an American lawyer, writer, and zoologist known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist. As a eugenicist, Grant was responsible for one of the most notorious works of scientific racism, and played an active role in crafting strong immigration restriction and anti-miscegenation laws in the United States.  As a conservationist, Grant is credited with the saving of many different species of animals, founding many different environmental and philanthropicorganizations and developing much of the discipline of wildlife management.
(Source: Madison Grant, Wikipedia)

II

     Dust in the Wind 

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he fine 1960 film Inherit the Wind was more than just about the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee. Yes, it had as its focal point the law forbidding the teaching of evolution in schools. However, when one views this film, or reads the play it was developed from, one sees a doorway to totalitarianism. Added to that warning is the observation that many of us humans seem to need to be led. In the fictitious town of Hillsdale, Tennessee, the common folk were led by their religious leaders, who determined how they should not only act… but think. When the great statesman and Christian scholar, Mathew Harrison Brady, comes to town to lead the prosecution of the case, he surpasses even their pastor in influencing  minds. During the trial, Brady’s counterpart, attorney Henry Drummond for the defense, decides to put the right to think for oneself on the witness stand. The right to question authority, and yes, to dissent from it, is what was really on trial in that case.

Spencer Tracy (Drummond) questioning Brady (F. March), in the film version of the play Inherit the Wind. Henry Morgan—as judge—observes the proceedings.

Sadly, very few of our contemporaries, our neighbors and our political and media celebrities can see that America has become nothing more than a cartoon!  Politics, advertising and consumerism, blended in with so called news and information from our mainstream media, has led the majority of us by the nose. Look at the boob tube and instead of muting the volume when commercials come on, watch and listen to them. Do the same when the politicians stand before the microphone, or when the pundits and phony journalists speak. What you will observe is how they all treat you as if you were either an adolescent, perhaps 12 years old, or a senile elderly person. There is no real intellectual flow from these people at all. The commercials for products and services always allude to how everyone selling something to us really cares for us. Ditto for the politicians and the pundits: They all care about us and our families. They all care for our troops and the peoples of the countries that we are destroying with our superior military force. They tell you to place yellow ribbons and flags all over the ying yang and simply ignore the fact that this military empire is bankrupting us all!

So, we have two evils, masquerading as political parties, controlling our nation’s political system. Well, not really controlling; shall we say they are navigating it for the super rich? Who are these super rich? Well, all one needs to do is see who is benefiting despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of us are not. Follow the age old adage and ‘follow the money ‘. As many small businesses either fold up or cut labor and services, see which companies and individuals are doing well during these' tough times for the many for the benefit of the few'. As the singer from the rock group Kansas declared, we working stiffs are becoming ' Dust in the wind'.

January 2019