Being a part of the neo swing (dancing) movement it is almost pre-requisite to see the movie "Swing Kids." Other than wondabar dancing there is a message to the movie, it is stated midway through when an SS man says, "sometimes it is better to know what we are getting into before we get into it." In the movie the SS man is talking about the bookseller that Peter(the protagonist) works for, but in the overall scheme of the move isn’t that what we ask of anyone in Germany of the time? Couldn’t you see the atrocity didn’t you think it odd that an entire people group was made scapegoat (Jews). So how did it happen?
In this movie the Hitler Youth (HJ) were taught that Jews were evil, they were strangling the world economically and morally corrupt. There was a warning on a building to beware of nigger/kike music. I don’t suppose I have to define those words. Thomas, Peter’s best friend at first opposed the Nazi’s but then found that he was wonderfully accepted by the Nazi party, what could be so wrong with a place that made him feel so good. At home he was a troublemaker, with his other friends he was stupid (or so he thought), it was only in the Hitler Jungen that he could feel accepted. Why do we think it odd that a teenager runs to a group of people that encourage him and accept him? How did the Nazi’s win him? They said, "Good job," when he did well, and let him know that even he had something to offer to the Nazi party. There was a place he could fit in… not until the end when his hands were wrapped around his best friends neck did he realize what he was "getting into."
The Nazi’s did something genius, they tied politics and morality together. To be a good Nazi you didn’t drink or smoke, you didn’t take foreign foods into the system you were pure. Being a part of that party meant being pure, being German only, almost like being holy. There was rebellion against them; in the move it is the "Swing Kids" that rebel. Their lifestyle is understood as immoral and unhealthy. All they did was waist their time on music and dancing that clouded their judgment.
Morality was a tool used by the Nazi’s to get their way, my question, do we use morality to get our way politically?
In the last four years the United States has taken over two countries, one most people wouldn’t argue against, the other was taken over for weapons we never found. We are now stuck in a part of the world that is volatile. Why? Well, what is going on back home? What are the issues people vote on? I know people who will vote for a candidate purely for his stance on abortion. Why, because maybe abortion is murder (understand this is not necessarily my opinion) however, when that president allows physiological torcher against POW’s and orders the death of thousands of Muslims because they have a different set of politics no one bats an eyelash. I wonder why? I wonder if our current regime wins because it aligns itself with the moral right. Abortion, gay marriage… these are the things we care about, but what about our international ethics? I wonder.
I might be far fetched here… but a world leader has to start slow… I wonder if Hitler had worked slower, would he have gotten further? Hitler married politics and morality. Real German’s don’t drink, real German’s don’t dance, real German’s don’t like Jews. What do real Americans do? If you live in the Bible belt there is a good chance we don’t drink or dance, and who are we taught to hate? Who doesn’t fit into our social scheme, who is our scapegoat? Let me ask it a different way, what social issue keeps us from voting on a President in relation to the war? In Tennessee I think it is the 1st issue on the ballot, the marriage amendment. We will vote for any individual, even a megalomaniac (not to say Bush is) as long as they don’t let gay people marry. Because no matter how many Muslims we kill, at least Gay people can’t be married.
Shock and awe, that is what he called our tactics in Iraq. It means we come in fast and win, sort of like lightning. We scare them into letting us win, lightning is scary, why not just call it a lightning war instead, well… that name was already taken… Blitzkreig
A homeless schizophrenic came up to me in Wendi’s today and asked me if I felt safe… when people ask me that regardless of whether they are on their meds or not I am not sure what to say.
