Extermination? Ethnic Cleansing?
Of late, some of us have focused upon word usage; e.g., https://caucus99percent.com/content/liberals-must-not-say-liberal-left-p... (me) and https://caucus99percent.com/content/language-progressive-movement (gjohnsit). This essay veers a bit from that to two of the terms that make me recoil: "extermination," to mean genocide, and "ethnic cleansing," also to mean genocide or to mean mass, forced expulsion of a people from their home nation or region because of their ethnicity or region.
Monsters like Adolph Hitler and Viktor Gutić used the euphemisms of extermination and cleansing to make their horrendous deeds seem positive and/or necessary. Yet, even our dictionaries and other respected sources adopted the words used by the monsters without seeming to focus much upon their literal meaning.
When confronted with an infestation of pests, such as bedbugs or rats, we want to be rid of them. Consequently, we welcome their extermination as a good thing. And every rational adult understands how necessary cleansing is. However, humans should not be spoken of as though they were unwanted insects or rodents or dirt or filth, nor should their murders be associated with anything beneficial, even subliminally and/or linguistically.
Killing or expelling a people because of religion or ethnicity is not pest control or good hygiene. It is slaughter or mass murder, or genocide, or a war crime, or a crime against humanity, or an atrocity, but it is not "extermination" nor "cleansing."
Comments
I think this misses the point . . .
. . . that people are trying to make when they describe mass killings in death camps as "extermination" -- they're not trying to impugn the reputation of professional exterminators. They're trying to highlight the inhumanity required to kill large numbers of people as if they were vermin or insects.
That's why Nazis promised to exterminate the Jews?
To highlight their own inhumanity?
Frankly, I think most people use the word mindlessly, with no intent to make any point at all by using it. They've simply accepted it as a harmless synonym for genocide. It isn't.
BTW, my essay had nothing to do with professional exterminators of actual pests, like bedbugs.
Or maybe
people tend to use the word like it's defined in dictionaries of the English language.
That's from the Oxford dictionary. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/exterminate
Most dictionaries define it this way, with slight variations. I found one (out of 6 I just checked) that included the connotation (esp. of a pest) as part of the primary definition. Many include human population extermination as one of the examples given for word usage.
It's a good thing to consider connotations in word choice, and important to question euphemisms. I like that, and that's why your essay sent me to the dictionaries. Have I misunderstood the word, used it incorrectly or mindlessly? I wanted to know.
I'm an advocate of clear, accessible writing, which includes writing tailored to the intended audience and purpose, and often means choosing simpler words that are known by most people, over highbrow vocabulary. I have my doubts that 'genocide' packs a more powerful punch than 'extermination' when referring to mass murder of a population. Everyone knows exterminate means wipe out. Genocide is too academic for some audiences, and would not hold the power of the more familiar word.
My essay mentioned dictionaries and other respected sources.
We must remember that their function of dictionaries (outside France) is to reflect what people say, not to dictate what people say. So, yes, if many people use "extermination" and "cleansing" as terms for atrocities, dictionaries will reflect that. So inclusion in dictionaries is not surprising, but does not address the point of the essay.
I don't agree
The essay mentioned dictionary definitions only to dismiss them:
There's no basis for the idea that dictionaries "adopted" this definition from the Nazis, nor that the usage you prefer is in fact the "literal" meaning of the word. In fact, this word has been in dictionaries since long before the Nazis, and has meant what it means now for centuries.
Dictionaries do of course change and reflect current usage, but the good ones do not do so "mindlessly" and they also track the evolution of words over time:
There's no evidence that there was ever a "literal" meaning that was restricted to nonhuman pests or that extermination was necessarily considered beneficial or positive. Your argument seems to be that because nazis used it that way, no one else should, and dictionaries should change and language should change to make this usage verboten. I'm not convinced.
Words exist for the purpose of communication. Using them in ways that are understood by the reader/listener is necessary for successful communication. Dictionaries help us with that. "Words mean what I say they mean" isn't a useful philosophy for communication, and for me that's the bottom line.
Another aspect is noun versus verb. Genocide is a noun, a thing. You can't say "the soldiers genocided the people and burned the buildings." So you need a verb. Which sentence packs more punch:
They killed all the people. Or, They exterminated the people. I think the answer is clear, that when you need a verb, and you are wanting to convey cruelty, brutality, mass murder, and horror - exterminate is the verb you want here.
My opinion only of course; words are my tools of my trade. I once worked with another writer/editor who was known for arguing with old-school grammarians: Do you want to be right? Or do you want to be clear and get the message across? Sometimes these are compatible, sometimes the rules get in the way. The purpose is always to say something, so do what works. This is the approach I agreed with.
Obviously, you and I disagree and we both feel strongly.
While I think some of your characterizations of my posts are unfair and/or inaccurate, I'll just leave it here.
That wasn't my intent
but if you're not interested in discussion to understand each other we will have to leave it. As you wish. I don't really feel strongly about it, actually. It's my job and my vocation to think about this kind of "word controversy" and I'm not emotional about it but it does interest me and captured my attention, because I think your characterization of people as "mindless" for using a word in a way that you, ah... disapprove of, is unfair and inaccurate. I think your characterization of dictionaries was unfair and inaccurate. I felt compelled to defend those charges, so I did, and considered it a friendly discussion as I might have with a colleague. I'm sorry I didn't pick up on you having strong emotions about it.
Anyway, I'm entirely open to being persuaded, but without any reason to reconsider, I'm happy to move on to other things now. Enjoy your weekend HW.
@CS in AZ CS: The point (for
CS: The point (for me, anyway) is, when people in power and those who work for them (like the corporate media) start talking about vermin or contagion in relation to a group of people, whether literally, or as a metaphor for those people, it usually means they're preparing the way for some very ugly action. It happens repeatedly (as I said in another comment, they shifted their discussions of Occupy to focus on vermin right before they broke the encampments down by force).
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
I agree with this 100%
This point is completely noncontroversial and it's so clearly true it pretty much goes without saying. Although it's fine to say it anyway. I seriously don't think anyone would or could disagree.
I could easily be sidetracked here into a longer discussion about "dehumanizing" and the various ways that concept is used in language, often unconsciously. One that grates on me constantly is the phrase "like a dog" -- as is, shot him down in the street like a dog ... the child was chained up in a cage like a dog. The examples are endless and every time I hear or read it, I want to scream it's not ok to do that to a dog, you fucking moron!
But obviously I understand that kind of language is used because it's a baseline assumption that humans are superior to all other animals, and so treating them as in any way less than human makes the description of whatever happened that much worse. Thus animal-treatment ananogies abound in our discourse. The farther down the respect chain you go, the worse the behavior is seen to be. Insects being universally loathed and feared, and "vermin" being a close second (followed, sadly, by dogs and pigs), I'm constantly alerted to this kind of subliminal messaging.
So really the comment above, about how the word extermination can, and often is, used to emphasize the horrors of it, rather than minimizing them or erasing them, was exactly correct. It can be used to mean "let's get rid of the vermin" and in propaganda it is. The word can also be used in the other sense, to maximize the revulsion of the crime being described.
And it does have other valid usages that are not even related to this topic. My objections were specifically about this aspect of the essay, as I mentioned in my other comments. The essay began with sentences about word usage, and then made some off-base disparaging comments about dictionaries, and my editor hat somehow jumped onto my head and took over my keyboard. It was really a dive into word usage technicalities, in this very specific context.
Which the author made clear were unwelcome; and thus exterminating my interest in continuing down that vein.
Happy Sunday CStMS. Thanks for the reply.
@CS in AZ Sure thing, CS!
Sure thing, CS!
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Propaganda
Interesting also is how the word extermination is used in exactly the opposite way in propaganda. For example:
Amnesty International Identifies Assad's 'Policy Of Extermination'
In this article, are they using this word extermination to make the reader think, "oh, good. Assad is like the terminex man, doing a service. We should thank him." Or to make us think the victims were vermin who deserve this treatment? Um, no. This is an example of how the dehumanizing aspect of the term is used specifically to emphasize the monstrosity of the perpetrator. It is clearly not to make his actions sound positive or beneficial. Context is key.
@PhilK I thought that was what
I thought that was what Henry was saying.
Confused.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
You thought my essay was an effort to protect the
reputation of professional exterminators who do things like spray for ants? Nothing against professional exterminators, or any job, career or profession, but that never entered my mind.
@HenryAWallace Nope. But your
Nope. But your response has convinced me I don't understand this argument at all. Bowing out on that account.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
It's, at worst, a misunderstanding, not an argument.
Jim's post had contained the language below:
However, worrying about the reputation of professional exterminators had never entered my mind. Anyway, you understood the essay, which is all that matters.
BTW, IMO, dehumanizing the perps is wonderful, but not if that requires dehumanizing the individuals. And if "genocide" doesn't say enough about the lack of humanity, then I don't understand the word genocide. Ditto atrocity and the other terms in my essay.
As an aside, I am pleasantly surprised at the way this thread turned out. I had expected people to agree or disagree in a sentence or three, but there are so many wonderful posts and insights.
@HenryAWallace Well, you brought
Well, you brought up a really important topic. One thing people around here understand pretty well is the importance of words--though there isn't a consensus about what that means or even how it works!
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
In job training terminology,
we don't "close your file" when you are done. We "terminate" you.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Thanks, dkmich. Good point.
There has to be an awful Trump joke in there somewhere, but I won't try to find it.
I've always liked the
expression, "targeted for temination," to indicate one was on a PTB's short list for being fired. From an Ahnold movie I believe.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Good point. Thanks.
As an aside, the only 'Ahnuld" film I've watched for more than 30 seconds was the one in which he and Danny De Vito were twins. I pretty much grab the remote as soon as I see his face.
with extreme prejudice?
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Thank you
for this essay.
Thank you. It feels a little soap box-y, but those terms have
been bothering me for a long time.
HItler and Goebbels and their Nazi associates were the vermin
The ruling Nazis who initiated the horrors were the sub-humans.
Beware the bullshit factories.
untermensch?
sadly, i think they (edit: ARE) exquisitely, almost archetypally human.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
They were certainly archetypes of evil / evil humans.
Not to be a Pollyanna, but humans are diverse and I've known too many incredibly good ones to think Hitler is an archetype of all humans.
A very small subset of humans
We have a fatal flaw of being susceptible to brainwashing and peer pressure. We desperately need a better understanding of ourselves as humans if we're going to survive.
Beware the bullshit factories.
Nobody really wants to know what Daddy did during the war.
Even if they think they do.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
I meant in more general terms
Why are we so susceptible to memes? We need to be able to tell when we're being f**cked with. Everybody needs to be aware of the human instincts that we are cursed with, that cause us to be lead over cliffs without thinking twice.
Beware the bullshit factories.
Daddy, who was around 19 then, likely thought he
was doing those things for a noble purpose because he'd been brainwashed all his young life to believe that his country did wonderful things and not because Daddy wanted to rid the world of an "infestation" of Germans. And most 19 year old Daddies did not like doing what they thought they needed to do. Doing them affected them in terrible ways-drugs, alcohol, "shell shock," PTSD, etc. So few Daddies talked about it to the family after they got home because it had been horrific for them. Rather, they spoke only to their fellow vets or to doctors.
There was a whole generation of US Marines
deeply affected by WW2, and many couldn't cope or adapt. The media at the time said that Japanese troops just refused to surrender, yet those Marines knew what really happened.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
I worked with a guy whose father was a WW II Marine and
had a collection of mummified Japanese ears. We were all horrified (including guys who were Vietnam vets).
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
An older neighbor told me, about ten years ago, that
the Japanese during World War II "ate our boys." I have no clue if it was true or not. However, with stories like that floating around, cutting ears off dead Japanese troops may have seemed proportional to whoever cut them.
Hard talking about ancestral legacy
my dad was in the navy toward the end of WW2, he had nightmares, PTSD, from being ordered to shoot enemy soldiers in the water, instead of rescuing them. That's what I was told, I never talked to him about it. He was a war criminal, but yeah no one could speak of it. How could we? I also inherited stolen artifacts, one of them we always called "the Korean man" it is a beautiful two foot high wood carving of a smiling Buddha-like figure, sits on a desk near the floor where I meditate.
On there is a leather box my dad took around the pacific with him, it has a bunch of weird money, japanese aluminum coins, paper 1/2 shillings stamped OC Japanese Government, other bits and pieces. On the inside cover is a half-peeled photo of a woman who is not my mom.
My dad's mom spoke German and was a total racist in her words. She always abused the servants with ethnic slurs like it was perfectly normal. Her grand piano in the San Francisco Casebolt House, which they owned for fifty years or so, was where the wood statue sat. I broke the handle when I was five, immediately after being told not to touch it. Oops. I lived in that mansion a couple of times, had an appendicitis there. It's where my aunt died of breast cancer and years later in the same room, my mom started growing her tumor but wouldn't tell anybody until it was too late. No health insurance, my dad was unemployed at the time if I remember right.
Maybe there is some healing in remembering and forgiving. I had a lot of problems in relationship to my dad, and then he died. Plenty left unresolved. That felt good to get the words out, sort of like confession or free therapy session. Thanks.
@HenryAWallace Actually, I'm
Actually, I'm basically fine with what Daddy did during the war. Hitler did, indeed, have to be stopped, though the situation was more complex than people understood (that's where the propaganda came in). The problem is that not everybody Hitler opposed was a wonderful good guy--and I'm not just talking about Stalin. Stopping Hitler and his abominable war machine and death factories was an absolute necessity. But Hitler was so horrible that everybody opposing him was assumed to be good, and that meant that the people who created the conditions that gave Hitler his power got off scott-free and with whitewashed reputations. The bankers and other bastards who invented or profited from the Versailles agreement sailed on, their new moral reputations all sparkly clean, and began the project of destroying the English-speaking world and its primary allies from within.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Nobody wants to know what Daddy did during the war?
@ Untimely Ripped @Henry Wallace @ Timmethy2.0
Well I think that's not the case. We (Germans) all wanted to know. Badly.
We all wanted to know if our Dads and aunts and uncles and mothers and grandparents were "the true believeing kind of Nazis". And I can tell you that many, many of my classmates struggled very much with knowing their fathers were or with the fact that most of their parents were silent "Mitlaeufer". If you love your parents and family and friends, it's hard to imagine for the next generation that they were not among the very few, who actually resisted and risked their lives doing so. Everyone wants to have "a good daddy". It's similar to the search of some white Americans who dig up their family history to know if they "were slave owners or made their fortune on the backs of serfs, which were mainly non whites". I have forgotten the name of the guy who had a series in US TV about that. I remember how anxious (or scared) for example Anderson Cooper was to find out about his family history.
It was especially hard for those German children, whose fathers were academics in the Third Reich, or lawyers, i.e. very educated people. How could their sons deal with the fact that their oh-so well educated and loving family man of a father at the same time was "supportive Nazi"? Or that grandma was waving enthusiastically her sympathy for the "Fuehrer" on rallies. I know two persons who couldn't deal with it, one even killed himself over it.
I just want to say that things are not that easy as vernim, rats, monsters et al. Well, what about the wording "Endloesung - Final Solution"? Nice try to make the murder in the gas chambers of the KZ sound a little less unacceptable, or what?
Basically there isn't a word that fits the truth, because the truth is unbearable and therefore people, who need to talk about it, use words that don't tell the truth directly and people, who don't need to talk about it, stay silent and say nothing.
So, now that's a dilemma, no? Is that silence really that incomprehensible or is it humane or is ita matter to feel guilty about it, because you didn't "teach" the truths to the next generation or your fellow neighbor?
I don't know, but I do know that most people didn't learn the truth through words and explanations by their teachers or family members, but by the tears, the furious melt-down into anger that revealed all the pain those "evil Nazis" or "those poor refugees" went through. You forget that people were "evil true Nazi believers" and "refugees at the same time". Once you got that, you started to edcuate yourself with books from the library. You can read it, if you want it.
I never heard the word "genocide" in my highschool years. First time I ran into that expression was in the US. In highschool, our history teacher never taught us anything about the Third Reich and Hitler. I was amazed how many Americans, responded immediately, when I was mentioning it online, that it was typcial German and of course on purpose. No, not that easy...
She just got so into the depth of each time period so much, enganged in very long-ish and over the clouds kind of monologues, that she simply didn't make it to the Third Reich in our last grade, we were taught history before graduating. She was a great human being but boring as hell to listen to.
I had another teacher, who lost his temper seriously so much, he had spat in his anger his saliva into the pupils sitting in the front row of the class. We didn't know much about him, just that he was from the Sudetenland. He clearly had painful memories and was homesick and a refugee in his new home of Northern Germany. One girl brought a little umbrella to class and opened it when he had one of his melt-downs. Yep, kids can be very cruel. That's human too, no? Or isn't it?
All I know that most of us still want to know what our parents and grandparents did in the Third Reich. Sometimes we find little clues, even seventy years later. And it makes you wonder ... what fear does to a human being and how much you can err yourself in your own judgements about your current political surroundings.
Peace.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Indeed, the experience of having been on the
side almost universally understood to have been not just wrong, but wrong "beyond the pale", makes my remark inapplicable to Germans in WWII.
The problem for everybody else, though, is exactly that they want to discover that their fathers were great heroes in the fight against Fascism, when the reality of war is that it brings out the absolute worst in humanity. I won't even say that it reduces the combatants to beasts, because beasts are not mostly known to pursue sadistic vengeance, or to gang-rape females, or to slaughter entire "communities" of their own species. War doesn't reduce people to beasts, it transforms them into something monstrous and unrecognizable. Being on the "good side" does not exempt soldiers from this transformation.
Beyond that, nobody wants to know just how horrific modern combat really is. The knowledge would be traumatizing. Cinema-goers were reportedly shocked by the opening battle sequence of Saving Private Ryan, claiming to have understood for the first time what their husbands or fathers went through. Well, no, they did not understand -- they had only a glimpse into the reality of it. Only someone with the most extraordinary power of imagination and empathy could come close to such an understanding, merely by watching a movie. If we could ever somehow get the average mother to comprehend the astonishing magnitude of evil that constitutes war -- of the evil not only done to their children, but done by their children -- it might well bring an end to the institution.
or maybe not.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
The father of a close friend of mine
was a well-to-do German man who lived in Switzerland during the war. He was an instrumental go-between in the efforts of an underground network that smuggled Jews out of Nazi Germany. When the German authorities arrested his brother in Berlin, they offered him a deal: Give us the network and we will release your brother -- otherwise, he will be executed.
My friend's father caved. The network collapsed, and its members either fled or were killed. Of course he never got over it. He was plagued by a horrible guilt for the rest of his life. When I met him he was an old man living in Liechtenstein, still wealthy, but a psychological wreck. Yet another casualty of that war.
native
Sophie's Choice eom
@UntimelyRippd @HaW @native @Timmethy2.0 @CS in AZ and others
(oh, this will be long ... sorry)
thanks, your comment reminds me of something I did not understand in the behavior of what my son told me in 2002 about him and his other fellow US airmen in the US Air Force.
Well, today, I don't get over the fact that I have not prevented my son from joining the US Air Force in Jan. 2001. Nothing had prepared me for this, because it was actually for the first time he made the research and decision to "do something with his life" completely alone and was hiding it from me. We both were without a job at that time, pretty much were torn apart between trying to stay in the US and not making it in Germany. Too difficult to explain to outsiders. We both were German born permanent legal immigrants to the US. My son is of African descent to a father with whom he was in conflict and I was divorced from for many years in 2001. Our lives were deeply ingrained with his "African" life experiences. Though in conflict and divorced. we somehow "loved" the significant man in both our lives. How much, we learned just through his death two years ago.
GWBush just was inaugurated, when my son told me he would join the US Air Force. A recruiter from the near-by National Guard post must have picked him up in one of his more desperate moments and convinced him he could be "a very good soldier in the US Army". Apparently he then researched and understood he could get a "tuition free education" through the US Air Force. So apparently those "benefits" of getting an education inside the Air Force on a technical level (not the RTOC programs for students to become officers later on - my son couldn't make it in college) made him believe that it would be solution for him to enlist.
I was amazed to hear his decision, but admit I didn't argue strongly against it, because I knew he wouldnt have known how to go on in the US and make a living and I saw he was searching for one on his own (and I respected him for that).
Apparently in addition to that, his father also must have told him that if he doesn't make it in college, he should search for a career in the military. For his father that wasn't something to "worry" about (having his own brother being a life-long General in a country with extraordinarily long-term dictators emerging after his own country's independence wars. My former husband was a teenager when his country became independent) To my son's father a military carreer was apparently something acceptable.
I can't get into that, but Idi Amin, Mobutu, Lumumba, Ruanda and other conflicts I got to experience through they eyes and view points of my former husband. That is not an experience many folks have and as such I was isolated in talking about them. My son was still a small kid or not yet born back then when I made those experiences.
Later on, years after my son's contract with the US AF had ended, he complained about both his parents wanting him to join the military. Not easy to swallow, that, for me, probably the only person he talked about it in his life.
Anyway, I hadn't understood, who GWBush was and nobody of us did grasp what happened at 9/11/2001. My son got his training and was stationed in Montana. After 9/11 I never knew where my son was sent to for training elsewhere (he was in Panama apparently too). And he hinted in the telephone calls out of nowhere from the undisclosed locations he was not allowed to disclose, that they knew they had to go to Iraq. Then he told me that he and his soldiers in their free time on the base "filled themselves up with war movies" like the one you mentioned "Saving Private Ryan" and others.
I was wondering why. Was it like to "prepare themselves" for the highs in overcoming their fears? I am not a movie buff. I have a lot of difficulties to understand on blogs - like this one - the many references to movies. Movies are movies and do not reflect reality as experienced by individual persons. I haven't seen many of the movies and if I did it was a long time ago and I don't remember them well. I always am confused why so many people can't seperate movies' messages via pictures that video editors and their producers create artificially and with a purpose, from the images that entered and remain in the personal people's minds as they entered in their real lives. They differ and differ to each person differently.
Later on my son was sent to Iraq and in a supportive role in a construction squad at the Kuweit US Jaber AF base. He was involved in combat situations while supporting the supplies of the convoy trucks, when they moved into Iraq during the US invasion. He never talked to me about it later, but from the few things I could gather in later years, he was in Nasiriyah, helped repair the "captured AFB" near Baghdad, and was in some northern cities of Iraq during his six month tour.
He then managed to get out of future deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan (which would have occurred for sure) by enlisting for a one and a half year stay at the Korean AFB in Seoul. He showed first signs of what is called post traumatic stress syndoms only after he realized he lost his supposedly future wife during that time. (She did a masters degree while he was too uninteresting as a construction guy somewhere around the world). Later on I always watched out on blogs why and when people got symptoms of PTSD and I often asked myself in how far their personal experiences in their personal life's relationship failures due to their their deployments were a more important than the actual war experiences. I still am wondering about it often.
My son again found an "honorable" way to leave the US AF five months before is official contract of six years was over. He tricked out Mr. Rumsfeld, the nice guy with the German roots, who was so kind to call old Europe as being "over with" (aah, yep, sure, of course Mr. Rumsfeld). I am proud of how my son managed to leave the US Air Force. He was uneducated book-wise (actually with too many books in too many languages as a kid - but that is another story), but smart enough to see an "honorable" opportunity.
What the heck, this comment feels like a session of "Gespraechstherpie ('talk'-therapy session'). But that's nonsense too. It's amazing that the conversation in this thread and the diary that caused it, took place at all.
To take sides is a futile effort. It just means that you couldn't have had personal experiences from all sides involved to learn that each side and opinion has its reasons and may be as fair as the other one.
I remember Bill Clinton saying he regretted to not have intervened in the Ruanda conflict earlier and more decively. (what a hoax of a comment)
I remember my sister (married to a man from India - part of formerly Portuguese colony of the British Empire) being upset of Idi Amins discrimination and abuse of Indians in his country and watching my former husband having some feelings in support of Idi Amin.
I remember being torn apart between those conflicting feelings expressed on both sides. And later in life in the US I saw the conflicting role of people from Imdia's former colony of Goa, oscillating between arrogant attitudes towards Afro-Americans and kiss-ass attitudes to right-wing conservative white PTB in the US. (Sorry, had to say that, can't get over certain people in the US media experts)
I remember images of Bokassa and some of the military folks easily resorting to abusive behavior on their own soldiers and civilians.
I remember Equatorial Guinea and Nguema Eq. Guinea, Gabon, Congo to 'jointly' fight 'ill-gotten assets' saga - Obiang Nguema.
I remember having seen the son of Lumumba on the streets of my former husband's home country, obviously severely destroyed mental health wise. Too much to learn.
I remember my African sister-in-law explaining to me some thirty years ago, that "down there, ie. Equatorial Guinea, it's Sodom and Gomorrha, because the inheritance goes according to the maternal line and not the paternal one" like in her own country.
I remember Allassane Quattara, who was a colleague of my former husband in the IMF and met him and his - I think second wife, the one before the third one, the blonde one talked about later, a french-jewish later catholic converted one).
I remember the conflict with conflict with Laurent Gbagbo. I remember the many nilly willy accusations against people who work in organizations like the IMF or World Bank. I remember an African at the World Bank being fired for one word he said too openly about a "street going to nowhere" on the island of Haiti, a project of the WB.
I remember a higher-up German employee at the IMF not wanting to shake hands with me on an IMF Christmas party some 35 years ago, obviously displeased with my too black, too capable french-speaking husband with access to African political figures he and his colleagues didn't have.
I remember having seen lately a documentary on TV Despot Wives that featured the wives of the "evil men". They caught my interest, Madame Bokassa too had the nerves to talk in there.
I also remember Obama talking like a real "smart guy" about "stupid" wars and "having tortured some folks" and wiping off accusations against him like dust from his shoulders.
And I remember Obama didn't close Guantanamo Bay and didn't stop the "stupid" wars and still doesn't seem to "get wars". My son learned that too even without reading blogs, just by experiencing wars and having real life experiences in Africa, which Obama didn't have as a child or student. Sorry, Mr. Obama, you had no clue in my eyes, but then that was not your fault either.
I remember once 'a gilas girl' from TOP saying apparently the most important thing is that communication is happening at all. I think that's true. In that sense I appreciate all comments here and am glad this converstation took place.
So all in all I learned that everything is complex and difficult to make fair judgements about. So, mostly I don't talk about what I think at any given comment or moment. This comment is as far as I can go.
Peace. I am tired now. I have had enough. Enjoy your Sunday. It could easily be your last one. Who knows.
https://www.euronews.com/live
If the only thing I ever accomplished on this blog was
writing the comment that led you to compose that memoir for us, it would be enough.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Wonderful post, mimi. Thank you from writing from
your heart to us about all that.
Your expressions
of personal truth are just priceless, mimi. There are so many subjects of importance in what you have presented here, subjects that have so much to do with what we struggle with in trying to end war. Thank you. I will read it again and again for insight. Peace and Love.
Good point about "final solution" mimi.
Calling genocide a "solution" is in line with "extermination" and "cleansing."
FWIW, I do not believe that offspring should be held responsible for what wrongs their ancestors may or may not have done. All they can do is all any of us can do--do our best to keep anything similar from happening again. IMO, I have every bit as much obligation to do that as you do. And, look at all the wrongs the US has committed. If I knew how to stop it, I would.
I once believed that voting Democratic would ensure only good things. Now, I know how clueless that belief was. Still, though, I have no idea how to stop evil by government.
I watched a fascinating movie recently,
Meine Ehre Heisst Treue. The point of it seemed to be that there was plenty of atrocity to go around, and that much of it was simply meaningless, pointless brutality.
The enduring lesson of Nuremberg seems to be "don't lose a war unconditionally".
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
@dervish Sorry to be
Sorry to be so conventional, but I think the Nuremberg principles are just fine, with the exception of a certain vagueness in Principle IV:
The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him".
How can you tell if a moral choice was possible to him? I've always assumed most soldiers and other rank-and-file Nazis would be shot by the others if they didn't murder and abuse people. What does "possible to him" mean in this context?
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
" What does "possible to him" mean in this context?"
Whatever the US government says it means (even if the US was not party to the underlying war).
If we didn't know what the Nazis were like, we sure as hell found out once we liberated the concentration camps (another euphemism?), Yet, people were convicted at Nuremberg. So, knowing you will be killed, perhaps tortured, perhaps with others you love, apparently does not excuse you.
(Spoiler alert)
The single best part of the film Judgment at Nuremberg, was, for me, Marlene Dietrich's face at the very end, as she sat beside the phone, letting it ring off the hook, without answering it.
Very true.
@Timmethy2.0 This is a very
This is a very popular viewpoint, on C99 and elsewhere, but whatever its attractions, it's an idea that works for the elites and not for anybody else.
The idea of intrinsically shitty human nature is, like the idea of the "world as we find it," kind of a dynamic duo of excuses made by the establishment when they're doing horrible things. When people believe in either or both of these, then the response to horrible things happening is much more likely to be a shrug and "Whattaya gonna do?" instead of horror, outrage, and possibly action.
You haven't done this, but I've noticed that a lot of people who partake of these ideas also regularly bitch the American people out for their passivity and couch-potato-ness, which seems contradictory. If one really believes that human nature is intrinsically shit, why would that person spend time berating human beings for, well, being shitty? I think, ultimately, such people are just looking everywhere for evidence of their belief and, for some reason, the evil of Americans not stopping the evil fascist project here grabs more of their energy and attention than the much more obvious evil of CIA-paid torturers in Uzbekistan, or whatever.
Of course, you're right that human beings have the capacity to be propagandized, just like they have the capacity to be monsters who commit mass murder. They have the capacity to do a lot of things. It would be wonderful if we were intrinsically immune to propaganda, just like it would be wonderful if we were intrinsically immune to torture, or morally incapable of murdering people.
However, as an educator, let me assure you that people are not intrinsically one way. If anything, they are intrinsically capable of both horrific cruelty and amazing self-sacrifice and ordinary kindness.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Individual humans are only rarely able
to behave as atrociously as they can, and often do behave, when they are part of a group. Large and powerful collectives are able to normalize and legitimate sociopathy in ways that make it seem acceptable and necessary. The ethical behavior of individual humans often diverges greatly from the behavior of the collective to which they belong.
native
Milgram makes just this point.
Obedience to Authority
(as you may know)
If part of a group committing atrocities, yes, especially if
convinced by trusted people or a trusted government that commission is necessary to accomplish a greater good. If part of a group doing humanitarian work, no. So, which is more typical of humans?
As I posted elsewhere on this thread, humans are complex. In any event, Nazis are not archetypal of most people I know. Or of my mom. If they were, I'd look for another group of friends and disown an incredible woman. On the other hand, all my friends are not angels, either. Maybe the archetype is neither a Nazi nor an angel, but a mixed bag.
The difficulty, HAW, is that if you had described to the
average 1923 German a phenomenon comparable to Naziism circa 1941, that German would have said, "that doesn't sound like an archetype of the people I know."
Almost nobody is like a Nazi -- until they are.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Just as no one is the epitome of pure goodness, until they are.
Or of extreme bravery or kindness or self-sacrifice.
Someone giving a kidney or even bone marrow to a total stranger or risking his or her life to aid a total stranger who is being attacked may not have known ten or twenty years earlier that he or she was capable of such deeds, either. Same for devoting one's life to the poor, or to treating or comforting those with highly communicable diseases, etc. I hesitate to give examples on a message board because that often leads to picking apart the examples, while the actual point falls by the wayside.) So, I do not see the inability of people to predict how much evil or goodness they may be capable of years hence (or tomorrow) as disproving my position, or as proving yours.
I don't believe that all humans are capable of extreme evil. All Germans during World War II were not--and that was the worst one of the worst calculated, sustained (i.e., with time to repent, reconsider, etc.) events in all of human history.
Obviously, some humans are capable of extreme evil; however, extreme evil is not the only extreme of which humans are capable, nor are all humans capable of extreme evil. Some are some capable of extreme goodness or selflessness, but not of extreme evil. Some are capable of both. Some are capable of neither. And a majority may be capable of being brainwashed that an evil deed is necessary for the greater good, to combine points made elsewhere on this thread by Timmethy2.0 and me. One of native's points on this thread is in a similar vein: "Large and powerful collectives are able to normalize and legitimate sociopathy in ways that make it seem acceptable and necessary." (italics mine)
In any event, I'm sticking with humans are complex and no single extreme aspect of humanity, good or evil, is THE archetype. If a single archetype exists at all, perhaps it is, as my prior post stated, a person who is a mixed bag, perhaps a very mixed bag.
Duplicate content deleted by HAW
@HenryAWallace The capacity for
The capacity for a great variety of things. That's the characteristic that is most characteristic (heh) of humans.
However, I'm not trying to deny that a fairly strong capacity for aggression is part of the mix.
Someone brought up Milgram's study, though, and it's relevant here: more problematic, maybe, than the capacity for aggression is the tendency toward obedience.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Even among those who do great evil are many who
believe they are doing something for the greater good. And they themselves do some good things along with the horrific acts. We agree: humans (and, often, their circumstances) are complex. For example, I might not retaliate or seek revenge if you hurt me physically, but I might if you hurt my child. And, humans are also not all identical.
@UntimelyRippd I think it's a mistake
I think it's a mistake to let the powers that do shit like this (the Holocaust, other forms of tyranny and abuse) hide behind the idea of human nature, or any idea with the aura of inevitability.
The "rotten human nature" idea is a close cousin to "the world as we find it." Those two ideas are like a heel tag team trying to make establishment power look something other than psychopathic. Either human beings or the world are inevitably bad, or excuse me, "less than perfect," and that's just the way it is. Thus the powerful can't be held accountable for the horrible things they do. They're just human, you know? The world is an imperfect place. Everyone except children, deluded idiots and madmen know that. So it's really you critics that have the problem.
"Sure, we tortured some folks. But don't get too sanctimonious about it."
--Barack Obama
The establishment is always trying to hide behind some form of inevitability or another, because their actions won't bear scrutiny, and they know it.
Just my .02.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
i don't disagree.
However, i think there is a significant epistemological risk in denying what i consider to be a basic truth -- that under the "right" conditions, the average person will behave with extraordinary (and unnecessary) evil. The risk is that we then end up denying that "we" (i.e., our family, our tribe, our army, our nation) are capable of doing such evil, and therefore are not doing such evil, have never done such evil, will never do such evil, could never do such evil etc.. A circular argument emerges, in which the characterization of what "we" are not constrains our characterization of "our" actions, past, present and future; which then constrains our characterization of what "we" are and are not.
Thus we end up with people who cannot abide the idea that the US ever has anything for which to apologize, nor anyone to whom to apologize, because we are not the bad guys, and only the bad guys do bad things.
HAW quite firmly believes that certain persons of his acquaintance could never be capable of atrocities, and he might well be correct. The problem is that 90-some-odd % of mothers believe the same thing of their own sons. Perhaps they believe so with less reason than HAW -- in particular, with less thoughtfulness, less awareness, less honesty: Simply put, less epistemological rigor. Regardless of the particular, most of them are wrong.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Not so
A number of people on this thread expressed views different from yours, including me. Yet, I can, and do "abide" the idea that the US is capable of great evil. Indeed, one of my posts on this thread clearly says that the US has done great evil (but I don't know how to stop governments from doing evil). I think everyone else on this thread also knows that the US is capable of great evil. So, it's patently not necessary to believe that Nazis are archetypally human (or vice versa) in order to know that the US is capable of great evil.
Also not so:
My post said something quite different, as follows:
hey , i didn't say we end up with an entire nation in which
not one person can abide the idea that the US can do bad things. i just said that we end up with people -- the "some" is implied -- who cannot abide that idea. we do not all react to the propaganda in the same way. some of us are more thoughtful. some of us are less so. some of us are easily manipulated. some of us are not. some of us are easily manipulated in particular directions. others of us are easily manipulated in other other particular directions. etc.
i expect that the average SS officer loved his children, very much indeed. hell, goebbels loved his children so much he murdered them rather than have them experience a post-Nazi Germany.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
I didn't claim you said an entire nation.
However, I do try not to impute words to other posters because I don't especially appreciate it when someone "interprets" my posts. So, if you want me to see the word "some" in your post, I fear you will have to type it. (You have been generalizing about all of humanity on this thread, so "some" was not as self-evident to a reader as you may have assumed.)
FWIW, I think the notion that some people may not get x right if we do y is one of the poorest reasons not to do y, especially in this instance.
IMO, the "I never said...I never said you said" type exchange is a sign that a message board discussion may have run run its course without our agreeing on anything other than what was self evident before the discussion began. I think, at this point, we can only agree to disagree. Alternatively,.....
sorry, but no.
I didn't imply the "some", English implies the "some". It is simply understood, just as "Come here!" is understood to have an implied second person subject.
English is, of course, a subtle master. If I say, "People are idiots", there is no implied indefinite article, and I have clearly overgeneralized. If I say, "They're putting bad ideas (or free donuts, or mercury-free fillings) into people's heads," it is presumed that I do not mean that every single person in the room/building/town/county/state/nation is going to receive the bounty.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Actually, English doesn't imply "some" into sentences.
English implies only things like subjects into sentences that are commands, like "Shut the door." And, even then, exactly who is meant to shut the door is not specified, but is determined by externals. But English does not imply into sentences random words that can alter number, meaning, connotation, nuance, etc.
Rather than repeat it here, I'll refer you to m prior post, which gave at least two reasons why I did not imply "some" into your sentence nor think it appropriate so to do. And, as also stated in my prior post, I never said anything about an "entire nation," in the first instance. And all of this is now several steps removed from both the thread topic and the OT discussion about human nature that you and I were having. I'm out.
@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal
Thanks for so often saying what I think much better than I could!
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
@Ellen North You're welcome,
You're welcome, Ellen. I've been thinking about this inevitability meme a lot. It's one of the cornerstones of the establishment's, well, I can't dignify it as a philosophy, so I don't know what to call it...their Handbook of Things To Be Said When People Try To Point Out You're A Psychopath?
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Indeed.
Thank you, Henry; this is actually very important
I always keep my eyes out for the establishment moving to use metaphors of vermin and contamination/disease. When they do, watch out.
You're right; like the "criminal thug" metaphor, metaphors of vermin or disease are meant to prepare the ground for the establishment doing physical harm to a (usually fairly large, and usually unarmed) group of people. They made that metaphorical shift right before they took down the Occupy encampments, for instance. One of the much milder instances of what they do when they use that metaphor.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Thanks. I agree about the red flag aspect. However, my
thoughts are usually more from the POV of the victims and their survivors, past, present and future. As my essay states, my position is that mass murder or genocide or expulsion or crimes against humanity or atrocities--whatever term you prefer-should not be referred to in terms with positive connotations, especially the positive terms chosen by the perps. If members of my family had been involved, I would never say my mom or my child had been "exterminated" or "cleansed," nor would I want to hear anyone else say that about them.
It's interesting that the two posters who defended using "extermination" instead of genocide or something similar had nothing at all to say about "ethnic cleansing," one way or the other. Also, I never heard anyone say that Ben Laden was responsible for planning extermination of the occupants of the World Trade Center and I never expect to hear that. Then again, I've never discussed that attack with members of Al Qaeda, so who knows how some people who could not care less about the deaths of the 911 victims describe that heinous idea of his?
@HenryAWallace
I must say that 'ethnic cleansing' used in reporting/discussion of such targeted mass murders strikes me as horrifically weird, although it's only of late that I've noticed it being used as though interchangeable with more suitable terminology, (coincidence? idiocy? societal conditioning?) but to me seeing the term 'extermination' as applied to people has always brought home the horror of it all, peculiarly emphasizing, at least, to me, the pathology involved in the totality of the act.
I've noticed that various people may apply very different connotations regarding various words, as our context/mental associations are drawn from our own life experiences which invariably differ to those of others to at least some degree, even if minutely so, which, in such cases as this, can elicit very different interpretations of the same intended usage of even clearly defined terms.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.