Ah sure, these things will never happen again! We know so much better, we are so nice, civilised etc… Dear Oleg/ Cassandra, the things you say are so, so true, and your warnings so timely, but who wants to hear them? You spoilsport, you! You know the story of the poor frog in boiling water. By the time we finally wake up to the facts, the “facts” will already be in our house and it will be too late.
Sometimes in the queue at the supermarket or elsewhere, I look at the people around me and I wonder who, when the sh*t hits the proverbial fan, will be a hero or a villain. Will the grumpy-looking guy at the till turn out to save people from destruction, and the nice lady behind me prove to be an informer of the vilest kind? Who, among these ordinary-looking citizens, will discover a true taste for hurting others in the most horrendous ways? I know, a weird thought to be having in Lidl… We seem to think that the worst pages of history are ‘out there’, far away, either in time or in distance, when they are being written, stealthily at first, but then more and more evidently, here and now. We forget that the reality will always be so much worse than what we imagine.
The thing is, what can we do about it? Not a rhetorical question. Can we prevent the steamroller of evil from rolling over everything we think is here to stay forever? The politically incorrect people in history have fared very badly, it seems. The most famous one has to be Jesus, whose mission was so politically incorrect that it got him crucified (Thankfully that wasn’t the end of the story, but rather the beginning). The trouble with regimes bent on political correctness, is that there is no way of predicting where they will draw the line, and how often they will rewrite the definition of what constitutes political correctness or lack thereof, and what could suddenly put you at odds with their dogmas. Although in many cases, two things are sure to make you unpopular: a taste for truth and a disposition for common sense.
I applaud you for your efforts at shaking us out of our complacency and Netflix-induced daze.
I picked up a book (not yet read) from my bookshelf this morning, called “The black orchestra” about the Germans who resisted Hitler (guess what, not a happy ending for most of them…), and here is the quote on the opening page :”Nobody made a greater mistake then he who did nothing because he could only do a little”(Edmund Burke) and I thought, well, at least Oleg is not making that mistake…
Ah sure, these things will never happen again! We know so much better, we are so nice, civilised etc… Dear Oleg/ Cassandra, the things you say are so, so true, and your warnings so timely, but who wants to hear them? You spoilsport, you! You know the story of the poor frog in boiling water. By the time we finally wake up to the facts, the “facts” will already be in our house and it will be too late.
Sometimes in the queue at the supermarket or elsewhere, I look at the people around me and I wonder who, when the sh*t hits the proverbial fan, will be a hero or a villain. Will the grumpy-looking guy at the till turn out to save people from destruction, and the nice lady behind me prove to be an informer of the vilest kind? Who, among these ordinary-looking citizens, will discover a true taste for hurting others in the most horrendous ways? I know, a weird thought to be having in Lidl… We seem to think that the worst pages of history are ‘out there’, far away, either in time or in distance, when they are being written, stealthily at first, but then more and more evidently, here and now. We forget that the reality will always be so much worse than what we imagine.
The thing is, what can we do about it? Not a rhetorical question. Can we prevent the steamroller of evil from rolling over everything we think is here to stay forever? The politically incorrect people in history have fared very badly, it seems. The most famous one has to be Jesus, whose mission was so politically incorrect that it got him crucified (Thankfully that wasn’t the end of the story, but rather the beginning). The trouble with regimes bent on political correctness, is that there is no way of predicting where they will draw the line, and how often they will rewrite the definition of what constitutes political correctness or lack thereof, and what could suddenly put you at odds with their dogmas. Although in many cases, two things are sure to make you unpopular: a taste for truth and a disposition for common sense.
I applaud you for your efforts at shaking us out of our complacency and Netflix-induced daze.
I picked up a book (not yet read) from my bookshelf this morning, called “The black orchestra” about the Germans who resisted Hitler (guess what, not a happy ending for most of them…), and here is the quote on the opening page :”Nobody made a greater mistake then he who did nothing because he could only do a little”(Edmund Burke) and I thought, well, at least Oleg is not making that mistake…