wildyams

I just got back from seeing "The Pianist", and I'll just say that movie is a warning. Its a warning that we can not think of the Holocaust as an aberration, and that we need to be ever vigilant that something like that NEVER happens again. If you think about the Holocaust, really think about it, don't you have to wonder how things got to that point? Its dismissive to simply blame Hitler, because for something that enormous and that horrifying to happen, it required an entire generation or more to agree to it, to participate in it, or to ignore it. It didn't start with concentration camps, it started small. It started with people being afraid of another group of people because they were different. It got to the concentration camps not in watershed implementations of oppression and tyranny, but through small incremental measures. They simultaneously made those doing the opressing more and more sadistic by having them achieve one level of sadism before asking them to do the next most sadistic thing; and they lulled the oppressed into accepting their fate by not making it so bad all at once, but making them think that "things can't get any worse, this will all be over shortly"; and they divided them against each other by thinking "if I do nothing maybe they won't single me out."

We as Americans are in a very dangerous spot right now. We our government and we the public are thinking and acting based on fear right now. We seem to be willing to accept small deductions from our freedoms, and seem to be willing to overlook some evil things we may say or do, because we think sometimes you have to bend the rules to get things done. Even if these freedom-infringements aren't directly affecting me or you or the person next to you, the fact that they're affecting somebody should be cause enough to worry, and we should not just accept that or ignore it. We need to watch out for our fellow man, not just our fellow Americans; and we need to think and act based on what is right, not based on what our fears tell us to do. We're living in dangerous times right now, but its when things are at their worst that we need to be at our best.