My neighbor has a concentration camp tatoo on her forearm and I asked her

[Cyrano]

over to look at some of the online comments regarding the election. She is in her 80s. I've occassionaly talked politics with her and she does her best to keep up on current events.

She can't see very well and I randomly read off some DU thread headlines to her regarding the election. She chose a few from which she wanted to hear samples and I read a bunch of postings to her.

Some made her smile, some made her stare blankly in confusion, and some made her hang her head in, what seemed to me, to be despair.

She spent perhaps an hour listening to some of the things I was reading and she then said, "This (sic) people do not see. This (sic)people do not understand."

I asked what she meant and she shook her head and didn't answer. But there's one thing of which I'm absolutely certain. When she said, "This people do not understand," I saw her glance down at the tatoo on her arm.

Make what you will of this. I have.

PS: Should have included this on the original post. She is a wonderful, intelligent lady who has seen humanity at its worst.

PPS: Okay, so I shed a tear or two, (or a hundred) after she left. And if that makes me a left wing wimp, so be it.

[ReadTomPaine]

1. It will all become clear before very long. And then it may be too late.

[Edmond Dantes]

11. Sadly, I think you are correct.

I've already had a nightmare where people were being rounded up and herded to trains "for their own protection". A few of us didn't buy it and slipped out of town in the opposite direction.

In another nightmare, I was the leader of a small cell (6) of resistance fighters. A truck bomb went off near me. I was able to dive for cover in time and sustained only a minor flesh wound. As I turned my head, I saw people pulling a blanket up over the face of someone who had been walking 20 feet behind me.

[Cyrano]

12. Edmond Dantes. I've read your previous posts. You are either a survivor,

or, the child of a survivor of the Holocaust. I beg you, tell your story on this site. Their are just too many people who are too young to know what happened. And they have no concept of the unimaginable nightmare that can actually happen here.

And to those of you who think this is extreme, insanity, fascism and zealotry know no geographic boundaries.

[Edmond Dantes]

25. I don't know how to respond to your request.

I am neither a survivor nor the child of a survivor. However, I lived for some years in a small rural community of survivors and their families. One of my close friends is the daughter of two Holocaust survivors.

Nevertheless, my understanding of the horror that is about to befall us arises primarily from my own personal experience in Washington, DC.

Some years after this personal experience, I visited the Holocaust Memorial in DC. I was shocked as I read the details of the rise of the 3rd Reich. I knew from first-hand experience that it had already started in America. And I knew some of the people behind it. My blood ran cold.

It was hard to believe, even then, for me. But I have watched events evolve, just as I would have expected. And then the nightmares started.

I have also dreamed of my own death: incinerated by some type of nuclear device dropped from the sky on a city from which I was trying to escape. I felt the incredible heat burn the hair off my scalp and the clothes off my back. And then my skin burned off in layers like sheets of paper. My flesh burned down to the bone.

The pain did not last long. When it passed, I tried to call out to a friend who had been fleeing with me. I realized that I no longer had any control over my body. My body was incinerated; my consciousness had survived.

The nightmare is already here.

[UL_Approved]

2. We know it, but who else does

There are a lot of people in the United States who are just plain ignorant. They don't understand warfare, they don't understand oppression, and they don't understand dictators. They are just suckers to a loud, intimidating message. There are no weak minds, just uneducated ones.

[molly]

3. I really believe that most of those voting for w are not

evil - they just do not understand. History repeating and it is sad.

[burrowowl]

22. Read Hannah Arendt

The Banality of Evil.
If we have libre arbitre, ignorance is no excuse.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

24. Yes, the ful title is Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of

evil. Excellent book

[Carni]

30. I really believe that most of them DID NOT VOTE FOR HIM

I have to rant...in 2000 no one I knew was on board, most of the people I knew were either Republicans, or disillusioned Clinton detractors.

Gore still carried the vote.

I am not sure why I couldn't stand Bush on sight, maybe it was the fact that I couldn't stand his father...maybe it was the fact that looking at him on television made my skin crawl, but I knew that he had to be defeated.

I knew George W Bush was the worst thing that would ever happen to this country.

This election cycle? It was a whole other story...I deal with a wide variety of people and some of them are what Bush would tout as his followers (rural people that aren't always the most tolerant on certain issues) You know what I discovered this summer? None of them liked Bush--they didn't trust him, couldn't stand him and a large amount of them came right out and said "I think he let 911 happen"

So there I was, this sort of news junkie snob picking my jaw up off of the floor--these people weren't stupid, they could see through his bullshit and they didn't need to become a 24/7 blogger junkie to do it.

I knew throngs of people that came out against bush in this election and no one is going to convince me that the majority of the population voted for this guy last week.

We need to secure our elections...bottom line.

No re-tooling the party, plotting a bunch of strategy that won't mean a damned thing... just fix the corruption so we can have an actual election by the people again.

[alevensalor]

4. Powerful

~A!

[Tace]

5. It's Only Because Most Of Her Generation Has Passed...

That Bushco is able to play Nazi.

[leftchick]

thank you Cyrano...

Most of us here have understood for a very long time what is happening...

my computer wallpaper for the last three years....




The rest of the world gets it, the AmeriKans will be the last to know.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. She is right

my father was on Hitler's travel plan, and he just cannot wrap his head around the concept that Fascism is now rising in the United States....

Fortunately he will nto be on Bush's travel plan, me I know I will nto go quietly into the night.

[BlueEyedSon]

7. Thank you for the story.

:(

[fshrink]

8. It won't be the same thing

But it sure is the same people. She recognized them.

[Blue Gardener]

9. Had a neighbor growing up who was in the camps

She was amazing. She had been thrown on a pile of bodies because the guards thought she was dead. She wasn't, and this is how she escaped the camp. These people have seen true evil and recognize it very well. Too bad half of America can't see it.

[cyn2]

10. Please send this story into a few papers

Please send it in. It deserves greater circulation.

Thank you.

[Cyrano]

13. cyn2. Welcome to Du. I've spoken with her about interviews, but

she has always declined. She has (gently) berated me for my faith in "freedom of the press."

I argued with her on this topic over a couple of years, but as of now, I think this wonderful, insightful lady knows more about the press, the media, and human nature than I do.

[apple_ridge]

14. One of the most powerful messages that i have read

on DU. I have tried to educate people for years that this is happening but nobody can conceive of the idea here and refuse to consider the thought. I am only now beginning to understand how it happened in Germany.

[Cyrano]

18. apple_ridge, welcome to DU. For years, I didn't "get it."

I never understood how an advanced country like Germany could have bought into this crap.

But Jeeeez, now I get it in spades. Who would have believed there was that much ignorance in this country? And now that they've got another four years, it's only going to get worse.

We have two choices. Stay and fight it, or move to a civilized country. I'm not yet sure how to fight it, but I'm not quite ready to move.

If you were going to invent a planet, would it have been this one? I for one can't answer that question as I am a devout agnostic. Nonetheless, whoever or whatever thought up this particular reality lacks (what rational humans call) common sense, (not to mention common humanity).

[apple_ridge]

26. About 7 years ago I read "The Rise and Fall of

the Third Reich" along with a few supporting books on fascism in Germany. I remember having a conversation with my RW mother and explaining to her that it appears as though the Repugs have been following the Nazi handbook, particularly with their demonizing of the liberals. When you hear a repug say the word "liberal", you can hear the hate dripping off the tongue like when a nazi would say "Jew". She thought I was losing touch with reality.

Unfortunately, she still doesn't believe a word of it. There's just no educating some people.

[ithacan]

15. for hitler the enemy was: Jews and Liberals

Let me repeat that.

Among the enemies that Hitler targeted were liberals.

When I read the words of some of the "Christian" right leaders, and right wing radio/tv people, and even right wing republican politicians talk about liberals, I'm amazed at how they are repeating almost word for word the denunciations of liberals that were made by the Nazis in Germany...

Coincidence? I think not.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

23. And there were ONLY 4 million Nazis, much the same way that there

really are very few neo-cons but they were able to cement their power. If you didn't say you were part of the Nazi party, you couldn't get work and your family was targetted. I imagine it's a lot like that in many of these fundi communities down in Miss, Alabama and GA

[Maccagirl]

16. Please give her a hug for all of us

No human should go through what she endured, only to feel like humanity hasn't learned a thing.

:cry:

[sbj405]

17. Thank you for sharing this story.

This election and the direction of this country must be completely heartbreaking for your neighbor and the other survivors.

[Lisa]

19. one of my colleagues is a German immigrant

A few days after she started work at our building (in early 2001), she beckoned me into her office, carefully looked around outside, then closed the door and quickly told me that she was very frightened about the Bush administration. She said that his disregard for the welfare of ordinary people (unless he could use them in a press photograph or something), plus what she had seen so far of his contempt for diplomacy, led her to believe that he could be quite dangerous. Her family talked a lot about the things that had happened in Germany leading up to WWII, and she was always on the lookout for warning signs.

She wasn't talking about this with everyone in case they thought she was a crackpot -- but a couple of her friends had told her that I was okay and wouldn't dismiss her fears.

Needless to say, many of her concerns were confirmed over the next few years.

[Cyrano]

20. Lisa: What's truly frightening about your experience is that your friend

was frightened about speaking her mind. This is no longer the country in which we were born and grew up.

What do we do to change it? Beats the hell out of me, but one thing I know for certain. I will never accept the fascist slime that now control all the levers of power.

If we give up, we might as well be "Soylent Green." (Either Google that movie or ask me.)

[Lisa]

27. she's not the only one ...

Actually, we're in Canada, and even here she was worried about word of her political leanings getting out. I have lots of colleagues and friends who are at US universities, and they tell me that there's a palpable "chill" about discussing these matters, even in the Democratic areas.

(Soylent Green is people ... actually, I seem to recall that the substance itself wasn't as sinister in the book!)

[burrowowl]

21. I have known French Resistance Fighters

Jews, Catholics, a Belgian priest who was in a German camp, etc.
Many are dead now, but they would be furious at what is going on now.
For something bitter-sweet: a woman was at a Volkswagon dealer looking at some used cars, she was Jewish with a bit of an accent, the man wanted to sell her a Ford Taurus since they didn't have a larger VW to sell. She said: NO. The man asked why. She said because Germany and VW have apologized, Ford hasn't.

[Cat Atomic]

28. I'm curious- which subjects was she interested in?

[m berst]

29. it should be simple and clear to all

"The price of Liberty is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson

Shockingly, the stance that a majority of people here are taking at DU is in direct opposition to the warnings of the founders of our country.

We are called upon to err on the side of vigilance, not complacency.

Yet people are saying essentially that "until you can prove to me that this is a coup d'etat I am not buying it."

This turns the meaning of freedom - the essence of what it is to be an American - upside down.

[davekriss]

31. That is heartbreaking

"This people do not see. This people do not understand."

Welcome to the New Imperium of the Fourth Reich! We are the Wiemar Republic circa 1934 while the Bush Regime waits for the death of our President Paul von Hindenburg, free and fairly counted elections. Where will we be in 4 years?

The illusion of freedom in America will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre.
--Frank Zappa, 1977

Hmmm. U.S. oil production is at its lowest level since 1950. See here. Could things be growing "too expensive to maintain"? Our Oligarchs having trouble sleeping at night? Thus 8 years of "vast rightwing conspiracy" against Clinton, December 12 2000, 9-11, Afghanistan in 2001, Georgia and Wellstone in 2002, Iraq in 2003, Opti-Scans in 2004? Chilling.

Wake up, America!!

:(