Friday Morning

♠
One would think Monk should spare his computer and leave it off, since his bridge to the Internet is collapsed. But no. So long as his computer is not melted down, he still must boot her up, even if only for this twittery - such pretty word processing, and easy to copy & paste, too.

************

I give a perfunctory look for the cats. It is not raining at the moment but it looks and feels foul, so I expect them to be hidden away and locked down. But I see Socks by the shed. They did not have anything yesterday, and Monk hurries to get some cat chow down for them.

Then the rain starts coming down, again. Priceless! I continue to prepare the food, just in case.

Socks is hungry enough that he is still game, and he eats in his quick and wary fashion. I'm disappointed to see Calico is not there. I suppose he is still hunkered down under the shed.

************

I am making a full three-day weekend of "What Is the What", after all. Last night, I finished a chapter of "Caesar" and Monk could not resist beginning the novel.

It helped that he is a hundred-and-fifty pages into "Caesar" and feels like he has a fair chance of finishing it before the library season, and "What" is a good five-hundred pages, too, so that he needs to make some headway in it to have any hope of also finishing this one before the library season.

This is more the kind of problem I like.

xXx

Friday Morning

♠
One would think Monk should spare his computer and leave it off, since his bridge to the Internet is collapsed. But no. So long as his computer is not melted down, he still must boot her up, even if only for this twittery - such pretty word processing, and easy to copy & paste, too.

************

I give a perfunctory look for the cats. It is not raining at the moment but it looks and feels foul, so I expect them to be hidden away and locked down. But I see Socks by the shed. They did not have anything yesterday, and Monk hurries to get some cat chow down for them.

Then the rain starts coming down, again. Priceless! I continue to prepare the food, just in case.

Socks is hungry enough that he is still game, and he eats in his quick and wary fashion. I'm disappointed to see Calico is not there. I suppose he is still hunkered down under the shed.

************

I am making a full three-day weekend of "What Is the What", after all. Last night, I finished a chapter of "Caesar" and Monk could not resist beginning the novel.

It helped that he is a hundred-and-fifty pages into "Caesar" and feels like he has a fair chance of finishing it before the library season, and "What" is a good five-hundred pages, too, so that he needs to make some headway in it to have any hope of also finishing this one before the library season.

This is more the kind of problem I like.

xXx

The Power of Fascist Ideology

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Andrew Sullivan has pointed out an intriguing quote from Jon Wiener's interview with historian Saul Friedländer regarding Nazi Germany:

JW: You do think we need to understand the German people and why they continued to follow Hitler to the bitter end.

SF: Yes, a great majority of Germans remained faithful to their fuehrer, many of them to the end, and, it has to be admitted, quite a few even after the end. That, for a historian, is a puzzling situation. Stalin was feared by the Russians—admired by only a section of the population. Roosevelt was hated by many people in America. Churchill was hated by many people in England. But in Germany, you find adoration of Hitler—even after Stalingrad, even towards the end when everything was in ruins. The psychology of this I do not understand very well.

Sullivan offers, "It is the psychology of political theology, fused with unrestrained nationalism and hero-worship."

I think one really has to look to the appeal of white/racial supremacy to explain the powerful support that Hitler commanded. It is a primal call to family. Although it seems unlikely that such a call can be so effective in the West today, I suspect that there remains a latent source of spiritual power in such a perspective.

As a non-Western example, I think it is this kind of call that helps to explain the draw of Islamism for many Muslims. Considering Nazi Germany and contemporary Islamism, it can look like being down and out as a people and a culture is an enabler of these more primal instincts.

xXx

The Power of Fascist Ideology

♠
Andrew Sullivan has pointed out an intriguing quote from Jon Wiener's interview with historian Saul Friedländer regarding Nazi Germany:

JW: You do think we need to understand the German people and why they continued to follow Hitler to the bitter end.

SF: Yes, a great majority of Germans remained faithful to their fuehrer, many of them to the end, and, it has to be admitted, quite a few even after the end. That, for a historian, is a puzzling situation. Stalin was feared by the Russians—admired by only a section of the population. Roosevelt was hated by many people in America. Churchill was hated by many people in England. But in Germany, you find adoration of Hitler—even after Stalingrad, even towards the end when everything was in ruins. The psychology of this I do not understand very well.

Sullivan offers, "It is the psychology of political theology, fused with unrestrained nationalism and hero-worship."

I think one really has to look to the appeal of white/racial supremacy to explain the powerful support that Hitler commanded. It is a primal call to family. Although it seems unlikely that such a call can be so effective in the West today, I suspect that there remains a latent source of spiritual power in such a perspective.

As a non-Western example, I think it is this kind of call that helps to explain the draw of Islamism for many Muslims. Considering Nazi Germany and contemporary Islamism, it can look like being down and out as a people and a culture is an enabler of these more primal instincts.

xXx