…the Holocaust. I was going to do some quick research on something I had read a while ago and wanted to include it in the previous post but felt a little lazy. There was a scene that a survivor wrote about during the Nuremburg trials. It was the moment when when one of the Nazi perpetrators was brought into the court room, someone who was fairly high up in the military with a fair amount responsibility for the concentration camps. The name escapes me now. The person writes that they screamed when they saw his face, not because he seemed like the embodiment of evil, but because he seemed so ordinary, so very human. That is the most terrifying thing after all.
I live at the edge of the suburbs of a smallish city. There is at least some gifting happening. A neighbor who passes on lots of sports equipment her kids have outgrown to us. My own travels through the neighborhood with a wheelbarrow load of ripe peaches or peppers on the night before the frost to distribute to neighbors, etc.
we have Dynamite David was his famous liberal jab and devastating hippie right cross.
And in the other corner the past.
' Back in 1981 David Stockman was the wonderkid of the Reagan administration–the director of the Office of Management and Budget who’d craft in actual budgets the trickle-down miracle Reagan had promised on the campaign trail: lower budgets, lower spending, higher tax revenue. But trickle-down economics was a wish, not a reality. It’s never worked. Lower taxes don’t generate more revenue. They generate deficits.
Reagan knew it. So did Stockman.
And in reference to Stockman, von Hayek said: “You see, one of Reagan’s advisers told me why the president has permitted that to happen, which makes the matter partly excusable: Reagan thinks it is impossible to persuade Congress that expenditures must be reduced unless one creates deficits so large that absolutely everyone becomes convinced that no more money can be spent."
The past knows ol' Dave's famous moves.
Nice post Hugh. With reference to this sentence:
We have to keep our eyes open to recognize it, realizing that it may be as present as water is around a fish.I have to say that the truly unfortunate thing is that the majority do not have their eyes open, for so many issues, in so many ways. This is the foundation of our our predicament: the lack of caring and the lack of will to care. Consider this in the context of the Net Neutrality thing. The passing of this bill is one of those defining moments, yet nary a hiccup has been registered from the masses. How sad is that?!? But it seems to be par for the course these days.
The holocaust happened because people were not paying attention, and those that were paying attention took no action to prevent it from happening or escalating. And so it goes. How many things are going on today that have humanity looking the other way, not rising up to stop it? Lots… and largely because of fear. We will pay a price for the on going apathy, all of us. Of that I am certain.
Jan
I my darker moods I often worry about the blowback that will come from decades of mistreatment of people over vast areas of the planet. The actions of the United States, and the corporations supported by our efforts, cannot have earned us good will or respect. Drone bombing of wedding parties, civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, economic sanctions in Iran and Russia, Gitmo, Abu gharib, support of non-democratic governments in places like Saudi Arabia, while undermining existing governments in Egypt, Syria and Libya resulting in political and economic instability, supposed “free trade” that results in the near enslavement of workers and China and Bangladesh so that we can have cheap electronics, plastic junk and clothing. There is a long list of grievances.
You are correct, Jan, there will be a price. Unfortunately, Hugh is also correct in that like fish in water we do not often see or think about what surrounds us and is being perpetrated in our name.
I fear there is a coming retribution. I hope I will not live long enough to witness it, but that does not free me from worry about my children and grandchildren.
JT
Telling it as one sees it - superb insight by David Stockman. Recent article in Zero Hedge: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-01/david-stockman-warns-its-one-scariest-moments-history. The benchmarks don't exist or exist but are geting sidelined. To think oil and wars are isolated from all of this is a mistake. I see Y2016 to be the calling card for an even bigger crash and bigger wars.