Been Down this Road Before

Don't Jump to Conclusions: Shut Up and Die.

If you've ever wondered why people put up with the governments they have, look around you and see normal people, acceptable people, socially successful people, and see them extolling the current government we have. Then you'll see why there are Communist or Nazi or apartheid or Muslim governments. Most people cannot see themselves, let alone see themselves as evil. and mostly they are not evil: they are banal. They are acritical, social, and law-abiding conformists, which explains, to my mind, how Nazis can enjoy vast support of Germans, Communism among Russians, Velvet Fascism among ordinary Americans. Nobody rushes to think they might be wrong. If we ever speak to Iranians protesting their lunatic government today, what will they say to us about us? Or Hondureans? Or whomever comes next under the boot-heels of Obama? It's our government today that is evil, and yet most people among us think we are good, just as we've always been. that's why people get evil governments: they don't see themselves. They will not look.

This is where we are now. We still have a chance to turn it around if people would just look, really look, and be honest about what they see. But we are so far from where we started, so far from the truth. We're going down the same, well-worn road many before us in history did but we will not see. It will end the same way it always does. The road still leads to the same place.

I think often of Primo Levi, "The Drowned and the Saved," in which essay he writes that most concentration camp inmates assumed that if they played by the rules they'd get by. They didn't realise that the rules were set up to ensure that the rule-followers would die in three weeks. following the rules meant death by design. And the majority followed the rules to death. Levi saw them as the drowned, not even worth asking the names of, the already dead as soon as they disembarked from the trains. They had no chance. They'd follow the rules and die. Levi committed suicide in later years. Will we do the same? Will we wtch the Conformity Hippies look at their feet and hope that if they don't say anything, then maybe no one will torment them? You know it's not going to work. It doesn't even matter if you love the fascists, you're just more shit to the elite. don't go jumping to conclusions. Let the government tell you what to think. Just follow the rules. Just shut up and die.