"What no one seemed to notice was the ever widening gap between the government and the people. And it became always wider... the whole process of its coming into being was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think....for people who did not want to think anyway gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about.... and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated..... by the machinations of the 'national enemies,' without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us.....
"Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted’, that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures'.....must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing.....Each act is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next.
"You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone.....you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes.
"That's the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed.
"You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father.....could never have imagined."
- MILTON MAYER, They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955)
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"Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted’, that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures'.....must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing.....Each act is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next.
"You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone.....you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes.
"That's the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed.
"You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father.....could never have imagined."
- MILTON MAYER, They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955)
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18 comments:
Indeed Anticant.
Your reference could also have been from Albert Camus and from his book La Peste ( The Plague).
Indeed history may teach a few lessons to a few here and there.
Well, Zola, we ain't history yet.
My thought is that the Gov has moved too soon.
We will see.
"We aint history yet".
Damn right.
Let us continue.
Even if it revolts us.
"We are the people of England, and we have not spoken yet."
Aunty! Yer back in the saddle again!
It's a dreadful struggle over here, too, to keep "the bastards" at bay -- and, away from ones children:
http://bodwyn.wordpress.com/2009/03/15/no-doubt-the-dirty-bastards/
Well Anticant I will not fall for that one.
Nice try.
Actually, Zola, the present-day people of England are clueless, gutless and witless.
GKC was a bombastic prat but he wrote some rollicking good verses.
Was it not your GKC ( the one who always wrote too many pages) who said that you could never control an adventure becuase whenever you think you "have it in your hand" it has already flown away out of the nearest window?
Sori : back to Mass Society issues.
That's exactly my experience of life. Just as you think it really is in the bag, the tightrope breaks or the carpet is whisked from underneath your feet.
It was GKC, too, who once when en route for a meeting sent a telegram to his wife: "Am at Chipping Sodbury. Where should I be?"
That, too, is a familiar feeling....
I'm in bloody Easton...ah-choo! (Too, too much pepper in these parts!)
Again, Anticant, whenever you decide to say something, our little world formed by some gets excited and puts its brain to work.
I'm sorry I had to go for a short hop to the island of La Palma and couldn't see your post before.
That post is so much to the present point that really confirms the rest of the world hasn't changed.
Actually, Jose, it was just a scissors-and-paste item culled from Information Clearing House, which is always worth visiting.
What doesn't seem to have changed much in the USA since Obama was inaugurated is the policy and conduct of those who hold power in Washington.
He writes and speaks eloquently, but to be effective you have to do more than make speeches.
Well, Anticant, yes I had realised it was a transcription, but a worth-reading transcription chosen by you.
At least Obama has been able to erase that I know one of Bush's negative bans : that of the stem cells, something that apparently has incensed the red-hats in the Catholic Church, although I wager those infantry faithful will be too contented to second their bosses.
The DC scene is a vast imponderability lurching on momentum and, alas, "President" Obama no more than you or I decisively can yank the the helm about. The only actual orders of any salience any sitting duck, er, President can give, now, are instructions to go go bomb or invade soemthing and run up some "collateral damage." Needless to say in their rage, when these boys find out what gaudy castrati they indeed are, more than a few do!
Sorry for the mistake: I should have said "although I wager those infantry faithful will NOT be too contented to second their bosses."
Blush!
The other thing that seems to be afoot is that loads of these CIA types -- you know, those wonderful own-goal 9-11 lads! -- are said to be floundering around there in England, er, 'the UK', sorting out those 800,000 Pakistanis, vetting 'em for prospective bomb outrages. It is said that England is regarded as THE hotbed, I believe I dredged that last night at the Anna Raccoon web log....
In any case, what I said before is that Obama IS a continentalist a la Old Eisenhowser, and probably he is sort of grouchy about the Winston 'I don't like blackamoors!' Churchill bust which he'd shipped out -- only to be lumbered I hear by Gordo, with a multi-volume biography of the same subject!
This is all just the sort of thing that just works up Old Jung's shadow no end, you know, and next thing there will be an "accidental" intelligence (har!) failure and loads of people in London will go flying sky high, in pieces no bigger than your hat. After all, what good is a "special relationship" if you can't ding your cousins a little?
Another cweery little rashy bag of "insight:"
http://bodwyn.wordpress.com/2009/03/24/ilm-al-wuzhud-al-kutub-in-the-painted-desert-of-democracy/
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