Apology and point concerning previous post in "How do the Germans feel about W2, now?

[Fionn]

Rich12545,

You said

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> poor palestinian people

I would assume you heard wrong. I can't believe any Israeli would refer to murderers as those "poor people." <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Dude, in the middle of a discussion in which people have manifestly stated that anti-semitism is bad I find it quite amazing that you'd come in here and start banging on about your racism vs Palestinians. (I know such a sentiment hasn't been clearly expressed but the tone makes it obvious it is an expressly held belief.)

Oh, and for the record, I roomed with a guy from the West Bank for close to a year and know a lot of Muslims from the area and I can tell you you really don't know what you're talking about. I also know some people who were in the Israeli army and so have heard about the "techniques" utilised to gain intel from both sides and both sides accounts of torture and murder while in custody agree.

[This message has been edited by Fionn (edited 06-23-2000).]

[Spook]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Fionn:

Genocide is NOT an aberration. It is quite common and only our fear of admitting that we could ALL participate in genocide if the proper "buttons" were pushed keeps most forum members from admitting this.

(snip)

It is COMMON and understandable human behaviour and NOT an abberation. It is purely because we view it as an abberation that such mass genocides are still occuring freely throughout the world. People need to open their eyes and see the world and its people as they really are if they want to prevent the causes of genocide.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

BINGO.

I was going to post a comment with a similar view, Fionn, but your train of thought left the station much quicker than mine.

Ed

[Guest Big Time Software]

This has gone on long enough. It has no relevance to Combat Mission.

Thomasj - your apology and explanation is appreciated. I'm not sure, howver, that you fully understand the slant your original post had. You say now that you meant merely to illustrate the Nazis' reasoning and show why it gained support from the German people. However at the same time you seem to believe the Nazi propaganda and present it as fact. And that's where you go badly off the logical track.

Please, no followups. This thread is irrelevant and it is closed.

Charles

[ironcross]

Ordinary germans knew of the camps but not that they where death camps until too late.However how did you complain?.A Lot brave germans went into those camps through complaining,the knock on the door fear was real and if as i said you lived in that time you where powerless to do anything.

Germany has nothing now to keep asking for forgivness,do we weep for the 10 million russians that stalin killed,the irish my country starved and persecuted,the indians the americans wiped out or back to the mongol hordes wiping out entire populations.

Ive visited and served in most countrys around the globe,ive never been treated badly or looked down on because i was english,however if i acted out of that countrys rules and etiquette i would expect to be punished or treated badly

We read of torture and mayhem every day and go tut-tut not nice,then turn to the sports pages or the comics and forget about it,probably the same thing most europeans did pre 39 .We all have the head in the sand mentality if it aint happening to me then its cool,now please close this thread before it degenerates

[Bobbaro]

I live in an area of Texas which has changed from being a largely agriculturally based economy to tourism. A second element of change is retirement. I belong to the latter. My parents retired here in the 60's paying a reasonable price for 137 acres and a house on a ranch that had been broken up.

The original settler population was German. The is still spoken here if you listen for it. It was a special environment and still retains a lot of that character, though rapidly being diluted out. I moved here to enjoy that agricultural and cultural life established back more than 150 years ago.

Now, when I go to town, I pass a rapidly changing landscape that is filling with the effects of tastlessly spent American money, as wealthy people escape the big cities to enjoy the beauties of the hill country and the "cute", "quaint" and "peaceful country life" they see here. But, so many seem to be unable to leave their Dallas, Houston, etc behing but bring it along. Their huge houses do not nestle among the hills like those beautiful old stone German houses, they go up on top of a hill, breaking the skyline to anounce to all would see, that they have MADE IT BIG and you better know it.

At the road side entrances you no longer find the modest and functional gate, but a monument in concrete, stone, to these people's success. It is bad enough that the nation's economy is so unfavorable to family farm and ranch life, that people like my family find a piece of a ranch to buy and live on, but so much worse is that these pieces are being further broken down into smaller bits as developers bring in more and more people. For these new people it is a paradise to them, but to those who developed deep affection to the original agricultural character of the area, it is a disgusting state of affairs. Such irony, the simple rual live that draws them, is destroyed as they flock in. Much of this is capable of being minimised as development could be done with far greater respect for the area's orignal character. It is sort of an insight into how the Amerindians must have felt.

As one arrives in town, main street very little serves the local needs. It is devoted mostly to selling trinkets to the tourists that flock in especially on weekends. Not only American tourists, but folks from all over the world show up. There is a substantial reason to visit here with out wiping out mainstreet business to shops selling all manner of items attractive mainly to tourists. But that has generated a secondary attaraction for people to come here to find shopping that they don't find at home.

As a resident this popular area of Texas and of the U.S. South, I have had an opportunity to obtain a little insight into the feelings of other peoples as they become recipiants of Yanke invasion. (I avoided saying the American South because that assumptive use of America for just that single country, the U.S.A. rings so unpleasantly arrogrant considering it is just one of three North American countries and just one of many of all of the American nations.)

The southern states here still retain here and there definite elements of the cultural differences that separated them from their northern brethern over one hundred and fifty years ago. It seems to me that the largely agriculturally based Southern life and culture versus the manufacuuring and trade culture of the North is very much analogus to differences we find in much of U.S. relations with a lot of other nations. It seems that "those people", who so lustly sang Onward Christian Soldiers and the Battle Hymn of the Republic to prevail in that little difficulty settled in favor of the North, and who began a flow of immagration into the South at the end of the conflict with opportunity beckoning, are unable to halt their movement at the national borders. Nor halt their self rightous convictions concerning their relitave merits compared to the indigionus populations. Does a conquering visitor acquire a habit of attitude? Additonally, as southerners go along to get along with the dominant northern race, they become more like them as of a economical necessity. So, when southerners are called "yankee" by other nationals, they now flinch less.

I would propose that the relationship of the invaders from the North to the people of the South 140 years ago, had a lot of characteristics simular to "Americans" and third world countries on through years since.

And one of those characteristics was a strong element of hyprocracy. My local Fredericksburg was not a typical Southern community. It was Union in sympathy. The folks felt a loyalty to the national government that prevailed when they arrived here and they had no sympathy those who associated with slavery. Many of them having escaped European lives imbued with the class structures there, did not like to see them reflected in the slavery seen here.

Yet, they neither had much interest in the plight of the Negro after the war. I spoke with a decendent, who said they had a relative in police work here some years ago. It seems that Fredericksburg was one those towns whose policy towards blacks following the war was one of "Nigger, don't let the sun set on you in town!" As far as I know there are essentially only two black families here to this date.

The Army, whose songs I referenced a few lines back, had units which even shot blacks as opportunity arose to do it without reprocussions. These people credited and resented that the presence of the blacks in the country had been totally responsible for the war. It was also an army in being due somewhat to the political reprecussions of northern people who conducted the anti-slavery movement and the Underground Railroad. It contained those elements as well. So not only was the nation divided north and south; it was also divided within those designations.

Beyond a national tendency to hypocracy, the relative wealth of the people of the U.S. enables a lot of tourism by individuals who are not well prepared to interact with other cultures. And a lot of them are conditioned in their ignorance by their glitzy insular lives to look down on others, who have learned to do very well and gracefully with less. I think to the people of my mother's generation a number of whom did live with a great deal less and in rather more primative circumstances without electricity, indoor plumbing, common transportation not much different from Romans 2000 years ago. The change from the lives they lived just that short time ago to now is unprecedented. It has placed in foregn travel numerous folks, who are such a mixture of provencialisms and sophistications, that it is guarenteed that bazarre demonstrations of behavior will occur. Add to that an unprecedented success and influence in world politics, economics, culture, language, communications etc, of which they are aware along with a very large number of failures and competitive shortfalls as well, and there is all it takes for someone to become an obnoxous visitor.

It is incredible to my own eyes to have experenced the conversion of my own Texas into a cosmopolitan population. In the 40's and 50's when I was growing up and reaching adulthood folks largely stayed put. War opened up eyes to the rest of the world to a small extent, but folks here remained largely made up of older Texan stock. And those who moved in, assumed Texanhood as rapidly as possible for the most part.

The population was Black, Euro-Texan and Euro-newcomer. The Euros were of the dominant English speaking nationalites, a strong representation of other northern Europeans minorities with some southern and eastern countries represented. Then a final large block of Spanish speaking Amerindians and mixed breeds of indigenous and Mexican decent.

Grossly it broke down into Whites, Mexicans, and Niggers according to the vernacular of the dominant Euros often refered to as Anglos, since a large chunk of people of European decent were English and Scotch-Irish who were appropriated as Anglish. The other folks of European decent, now English speaking, mainly took up simular views along with the language. Skin color helped in the separation.

Beginning before the 60's and particularly during that time a rapid expansion of the population bagan. Racial and national representation that had been in the past isolated curiosities began to become commonplace. Asian peoples began to be seen as war, economics and immagration started to expand the population rather faster than natural increase. The face of Texas is very much different from what it was 50 years ago and continues to change at a rapid pace. I am sure to various degrees it represents the rest of the country and to an extent, some of the rest of the world.

The times they are a changing.

Anyway, I offer these observations in reflection of peoples and places seen as locals and visitors. The guys who live on the other side of the river just aren't like us, ever. Sometimes to their credit and sometimes not. And sometimes the wart on their face may be a speck of sand in our eye.

Given the volumunous human capacity for misunderstanding and umbrage, it is amaising that they get along as well as they do. Could it be that they have other capacities as well, that it is just more intertaining to look at the more spectacular dark side? It helps pass the time until the great leveler of death comes.

Every neighborhood, however, small, seems to have its shining stars, its every day folks, and the trailing anuses of bunch; and, sometimes it seems they trade roles for a minute or two. Characteristic national traits may be as often proven by their exceptions.

"Americans" so much becoming more a people of the world than of just some parts of it, may be more a mirror of that world than anything else available. If the world looks in and does not like what it sees, then it should consider, why it is that that mirror has grown with such force. Perhaps those forces are indigenous to humanity and are not so particularly "American." If we, here and there, are more civilized and better behaved than others somewhere else, perhaps it is encumbant upon us to gently lead the rest to do better by doing better ourselves, lighting a candle to that purpose rather than cursing the darkness.

As anyone slogging through this diatribe can observe, I have overly endevored to contribute to the net sum of mass misunderstanding and ignorance via a personal point of view. Perhaps if we encompass a large enough mass of such views and misunderstandings, the average of it all will amount to something useful. I know I do enjoy reading and appreciating the various views expressed in these threads off topic as well as on. If I am so shortsighted as to fail to see any wisdom, where it is amply plain to others, at least it needles me into attempting a statement of my own views to stand in better clearity and more readily available to be knocked and chipped at into something better. At least I hope.