Open Thread - 03-04-22 - Killing Nazis
I was born to kill Nazis.
The psychological training began with images from books, magazines, the Tube, and the spoken word, tales of wartime exploits. All of which were very impressionable on a young tabula rasa mind, like planting seeds.
The physical training began at a very young age, much like the Spartans of yore. Toy soldiers lined up across from each other in grand Napoleonic set piece battle formations. Sometimes a marble randomly rolled into the ranks determined the outcome. Sometimes hands doubling as artillery decimating all the corps. Sometimes slow methodical attrition picking off hapless infantrymen one at a time. This early training taught the importance of battlefield logistics.
As I grew a little older and was allowed to supervise myself in the outside world of the neighborhood, it was first fingers, then sticks and with the advent of the Christmas supply lines, it became toy guns.
I commanded an entire neighborhood block. My well trained hand picked squad could reconnoiter, pincer, and flank with the best of them. The Nazis had no chance in my neighborhood. We were fighting for mom and apple pie, don't you know. We'd stand over the fallen enemy in triumphant glory, even when they tired of laying on the ground and wanted to get up. "You can't get up Nazi, pow pow pow, you're dead". Wasted Nazis had a tendency to resurrect from the dead to live and fight another day, like zombies, Nazi zombies.
Then as time caught up a new enemy was born. In Southeast Asia. The images from books, magazines, the Tube, and tales of horror from soldiers returned tarnished the glory of defeating Nazis. The shit had gotten real. I saw the flag draped caskets, the '68 Tet Offensive, Walter Cronkite's admissions. The disabled Vets For Peace. Students cut down in Ohio. The hollow husks of friends that returned. The prospect of living the games that I had played as a child became a grim reality.
Somehow the conditioning had failed with me. I no longer wanted to kill Nazis, hell, I didn't want to kill anything. I traded in my toy soldiers, toy guns, and combat squad for flowers, protests and peace signs. The war games were over for me.
Howard Zinn's writing had taught me well.
Comments
With all the problems America faces,
blowing up Russians with nukes over Nazis in Ukraine doesn't even make the list. Rec'd!!
Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.
Good morning folks...
what bugaboo is hiding under your bed this morning?
Zinn
Absolutely. I still suggest to my grandkids it be read before they try to educate me on the way of the modern world. I’ll be even buy them a copy.
Another fan
of Howard Zinn.
NYCVG
Me as well,
with the wwdeuce battles in the neighborhood. Setting up the toy armies in a big load of soil that had to be spread and the neighbor telling us to make a mess of it.
Good Times
Korea and Vietnam never made it to the game for us, might have been too raw still. Or too controversial.
As far as today?
Nazis with Nukes be a No Go for me. Do they all have to die?
Nah.
If they go all Inglorious Bastard on their ass on the ones they Do find, again,
I’m OKay with that.
Russia did all it could to avert a military confrontation in Ukraine.
For eight long years, Russia refused to acknowledge the independence of the eastern provinces.
Russia continued to keep all bridges of communication with the West open in the hope of reaching an agreement to end the impasse.
Russia made it clear to America time after time, that it has red lines that cannot be crossed, including not accepting Ukraine to join NATO.
From the Saker, Guest Analysis, couple days ago.
Worth reading in full.
edit to add; https://dissidentvoice.org/2022/03/10-questions-about-russia-ukraine-and...
Also a good read:
7. Could it be that Ukraine is randomly arming civilians and forcibly conscripting all men because dead Ukrainian civilians make for a great photo op to manipulate ignorant, uninformed Westerners?
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
That is excellent
All are good…
7. Could it be that Ukraine is randomly arming civilians and forcibly conscripting all men because dead Ukrainian civilians make for a great photo op to manipulate ignorant, uninformed Westerners?
10. Do you actually believe that changing your Facebook profile picture or lighting the Empire State Building in the colors of the Ukrainian flag do anything other than reinforce the propaganda as the powers-that-shouldn’t-be attempt to smoothly transition from fake COVID fear to fake World World III fear?
damn, I was
trying to get that to post and it just wouldn’t go.
Thanks for taking care of that!
On another topic, if I can figure out how to cross load photos from my phones gallery to this site with out blowing shit up, I’ll share pics and introduce you to Lucas.
A Gift. Truly.
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
Looking forward to meeting Lucas
If you want some help message me. It’s really quite easy to post pictures. You will need to do a slight edit to your photos before you post here or they post sideways. I just do a small crop.
Same vintage, different enemy, same landing zone.
I became a proficient rifleman, with paper targets, in the PAL league, but was not allowed so much as a BB gun. So I borrowed from friends ……. until I dropped a curious catbird that had landed directly overhead. It didn’t even have time to flap a wing, just dropped to the ground, never to fly again.
Something deep in me knew I had done something very wrong. I was not hungry. I was not being attacked and was in no danger. I had become a killer. Not a hunter, a killer.
I don’t do things like that any more …. hardly a consolation to the bird that would never fly again.
“ …and when we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine,and understand who God is, and what our own potential is and duties are as human beings.- RFK jr. 8/26/2024
Good morning
And the new enemy is Russia. The brainwashing required to supplicate the masses into hating
a different geopolitical group has been pretty much wall to wall for several years now.
Like you, I was traumatized by the news and images of the US police action in Viet Nam at a
young and impressionable age. Loosing older friends, counselors and others made me question
the moral sensibility of attacking another foreign nation.
The demonstrations helped to shut that deadly aggression down. But the peace dividend didn't
last very long. The military operations shifted to Central / South American countries, then Middle Eastern countries, then African Nations and Eastern European lands. It just never stops.
I am tired of this endless warmongering by the pentagons and NATO nuts. Call me a pacifist, but
pushing for more war is not the answer. How to shut down the money spigot thru congress for
sanctions, war toys and propaganda is the challenge. Before we all get blown to smithereens.
question everything
Good morning everyone
Headlines we woke up to:
"Zelensky Left Ukraine for Poland," Russian State Duma Speaker Says---from Sputnik News---unconfirmed.
From The Saker
From the NY Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/03/us/politics/russia-ukraine-military.h...The Times predicts Ukraine Military has punched above its weight and will be out of gas very soon.
Pepe Escobar has a lot to say today. Here's one:
China weighs in on the general injustice, as quoted by Pepe.
NYCVG
It's what's for dinner
Nazi pheasants, nazi deer, nazi quail. I was born to kill my dinner.
Woodacre, California 1967
Woodacre recently deemed one of the "most wealthy" and also one of the "most whitest" zip codes in the Bay Area. LOL pew pew pew! It is where my dad designed, built and lost his dream home. Before that we lived in Belvedere, which is why I was born in San Francisco (no hospital on little island). I think Belvedere was deemed the mostest, but I could be wrong.
I do know Belvedere has been busy opposing the massive 42 units of housing the new mandates call for, because where would those units go? Every thing is visible, so of course there will be no bla or poor people there so close to the stinking rich. All the bla people are still kettled in Marin City as far as I can tell.
---
There is no cure for MDD, major depressive disorder, which is why I probably shouldn't be around loaded guns all the time. Rape, murder, it's just a shot away. Most depressives don't live long lives anyway, nazis don't care. Those are plain and simple facts I never bothered to look up because professionals. I wish someone had told me when I got the diagnosis, hire a financial planner NOT a psychiatrist. oh well
Can a black woman be a racist? London Breed. All this shit is totally fucked up, after years and years of psychotherapy all I see now are crazy people. And nazis. Everywhere. lol
Naked Voice
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqXyjbgs5rU width:420]
Peace and Love
giddyup
But Nazis and crazy people are around everywhere, so
you are ok to see them, no hallucinations.
Be well and much love and peace to you.
https://www.euronews.com/live
Man I thought that was me in the picture, memories
came pouring back. Commanding the squad, digging a foxhole killing Nazi's with my fake Thompson machine gun....
So I guess history is certainly repeating itself once again
I saw this on Twitter
We've been so brainwashed, propagandized, it's beyond any adjective I can think of
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
We Americans, as a population,
are the single most effectively propagandized putzes on the planet.
How did it get this way? Simple. We've been told since birth that we aren't. No, not us. We are Free, and we are the Best, and No One Can Tell Us What To Do, and We Are The Only Ones Who Can Do It Right. Which is why we swallow all the crap we are fed without a second thought. 'Murka, fuk yeh! Loose lips sink ships! Why would the man on the teevee lie? To us? Sacrelige.
We live in a completely post-truth world. The very concept of objective truth itself has been deprecated, and replaced by subjective spin. And our government (and their now wholly-owned media) are indeed the absolute best: at spinning, and herding us, with our explicit consent. All they need to do is to suppress the unpleasant, and sprinkle powdered sugar and Jimmies on whatever they do choose to let through.
There haven't been many pictures of flag-draped caskets rolling off of planes at Dover here lately, have there? It certainly isn't caused by a shortage of caskets... Now, let's cut to "Dancing With The Stars", after these commercial messages.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Very well said!!!
Jimmy and Max tell us how wrong Joementia/Neolibcons and NATO have been.
Putin didn't start the war, that was started back in 2014 with the Maidan Coup,
Putin is just trying to end all the killing that the Minsk Accords were meant to do
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H0rCqaGtJw]
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
Air raid sirens and a little bit of chicken
LOL I am so glad you have not given your last fuck yet. Burn that thing at both ends why not. Hope this isn't too much Jimmy, it did also make me LOL like "let's cut to dancing with the stars".
FAIL! CNN Runs Applebee's Ad Over Ukraine War Coverage
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKdUJeOXsqY width:500]
Peace and Love
gawd help us
My maternal grandfather
was a retired Marine. He enlisted at age 32 on Dec 8, 1941, and was retired rather forcibly after getting a number of holes punched in him by people of the Japanese persuasion during the 1944 Battle of Guam. Needless to say, as a result, people in my family were much more inclined to hate on the Japanese than the mere Nazis.
But hell, we'd hate on all of them equally. My grandfather was easily the single most prejudiced person I've ever encountered, and made it well up in the local hierarchy of the Klan before his death. He was the person who introduced me to the term "gookxican", which was the other primary epithet he would use for non-white folks besides "Jap" (his favorite) and the N-word. All were used liberally when he would observe the world.
If you grow up in that sort of environment, you have two choices: embrace it or reject it. I chose the latter, got out of my hometown to go to college, and really have never gone back. I've never been a gun person as a result of all of that either. I've always said that if I ever bought one, I'd only need to buy one round of ammo for it.
I'm eternally grateful that my number didn't come up for the Saigon Clambake.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
I remember growing up after WW2
in NYC, and there was dead hours for television, after soaps and before the news and prime time. They showed a lot of film from the 30's, 40's and early 50's. There were a lot of propaganda ww2 films "30 Seconds Over Tokyo", "Run Silent, Run Deep", "Stalag 17", etc. in glorious B&W. Over and over, year after year we fought ww2 and those "Japs and Krauts".
I also remember sometime in the mid 60's our government had to announce in the news to stop hating on Japan and Germany, that they are our friends and trading partners, and those VW bugs and Datsuns were ok to buy. It's when I realized propaganda and brainwashing is a real thing, and we were as bad as anyone in inflicting it on our people, especially through entertainment.
I lived in the middle of nowhere as a child.
There were no neighbors, no neighborhood.
Dad allowed me and my brother to play with his helmet, a German helmet he had brought home from the war, and he taught us to march, carry and shoot a rifle. He had turned very anti-war, did not give a damn that we lost some of his medals. We lost the helmets, as well.
All "fun and games" stopped whenever our nearest neighbor married a woman from Germany. The woman was part of Hitler's Aryan Race experiment. She had worked for the government, had been paired with an SS Elite soldier, had one son and one daughter. When she came to America to marry our neighbor, she left behind her kids behind, later brought her teen aged daughter to Texas. The great irony of the experiment in a super race was that the daughter had many deformities. She could barely chew, due to her mouth being so misshapen. Nevertheless, she had a genius IQ, as did her Mom.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Good morning JtC. I was too easily confused as a kid
I fear. There was a time when there were reasons why I couldn't play any of those games except some fake sword fights with my brother but who was good and bad and why wasn't too clear except maybe robin hood and the sheriff of notingham.
Location eventually permitted cowboys and indians for a bit but the indians helped the pilgrims and we celebrated that and tonto was a good guy and the indians were here first and it's ok because there were good guy cowboys and bad guys, marshals and rustlers and robbers, and cattlemen against homesteaders and sheepmen but what? wanna go over that last bit again?
Ah the Alamo to the rescue but it's only 16 miles to baja and the mexicans seem like regular folk and they're our "allies" now and they have great food. Dad fought some Nazis, in Italy where they were put to stop the Allies , after Dad fought the Italians, but the Italians were ok, some live next door, and they've got good food, it was their rotten government and they're our allies now, and and the Germans are ok, it was the damn Nazis and the Germans are our allies now. Besides, we're on the Pacific coast, and our enemies out here were the damn Japanese, but they're our allies too and besides, it was their, government, well, actually, their military and their imperial aims. You know, they wanted to control other places and the resources there.
So, the real enemy is Korea, but there are two Koreas, and it's really the Chicoms but by the time we get to that point we're no longer pretend shooting each other in backyards and empty lots and it's all vague and macarthur and shit and why. Well, the Chicoms, as opposed to the good Chinese are commies, like the Russians, and we hate and must be ready to fight them and we say "under god" because they're atheists and we're Christians (but the Jews aren't, but they're still ok, and some Christians are really bad guys because reasons) The young are innately a tad credulous and gullible, but only to a degree. The commies wanna share shit and that's bad and Christ wanted to share shit and that's good, but we don't do it because invisible hands and shit and speaking of invisible I don't believe in magic anymore (that's a good boy) and that includes gods and shit (what? How can you say that?), and about them indians and commies, I'm no longer convinced and I suspect that if I poke deep enough there is something fishy about the alamo.
Well, we'll talk about that later, right now we have to sort out this Viet Nam shit? Wiet who? It used to be French Indochina, then the Japs took it and then the allies and Vietnamese threw them out and the French took it back but the Vietnamese threw them out so we have to go there to stop commies. Wait, why were the French there? Well ... the French, British, Spanish, Germans and Russians all had empires, it was how things were done back then. Hmmmmm. And the CIA and Cuba and Kennedy? Uh, huh.
So stop wars, imperialists, and damn, how about we fight the real enemy, fuckin' ideologies, all of them; and by now young, young launcelot, having failed to find a proper enemy among the multitudes of other is heading off to Berkeley with high school diploma, student ACLU membership and SNCC button in hand and the knowledge that Nazism is an enemy, though not the only one, and Fascism, and multitudes of other isms too but that you have to kill the isms and not so much the adherents
be well and have a good one.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Barely still morning here...
We started our childhood military training being cowboys an Indians, and then graduated to playing war...so we started with US genocide before tackling Germany's and Japan's. Our bicycles were horses before they became motorcycles like Steve McQueen's in the great escape.
It took VN to wake me up and become antiwar. Nothing like facing real war to turn you against it. Easy to cheer it on from the sidelines.
This morning we continued whittling on our dwindling pile of wood chips....spreading them in a flower bed. So I'm a good tired.
Take care and have a great weekend!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
so true - Nothing like facing real war to turn you against it
I think this is the wrong thread. I get confused in which thread I am supposed to post.
yeah it was the right thread. Sigh.
https://www.euronews.com/live
hey mimi - you are posting to a thread from March 2022
just so you know
question everything
I am well known here for knowing nothing - thanks anyway
https://www.euronews.com/live
I am not so sure that actual Americans are on the War Kick
If you go by what the Main Stream Media says about what the "majority" of Americans believe about anything you will not reach a reliable conclusion. There is one powerful strand of evidence that suggests that a significant number of Blue Collar People who do not live on the internet are NOT buying The Narrative Of The Hour -- the Convoy Movement.
I have to agree that the Wired world is showing a nauseating credulity these days. I argue that is because for the first time in our lives, the propaganda is now aimed at us -- rather than the less educated nincompoops who constituted the Silent Majority, The Reagan Democrats and the Religious Right. We have been conditioned to despise these fellow citizens because their votes put Reagan and the Bushes into the White House.
So now, the same jackals who used to boob-bump all those Angry White Males are now smarty-pants bumping our social class with ridicule of all who "believe" that the media lies on a regular basis. Supposedly, we are now Trumpers and Russian Stooges. They are now censoring as fast and as furiously as they possibly can all of us on-line die-hards who remember killing nazis in our back yards.
Luckily for us, you cannot use internet censorship to censor folks who don't post stuff on the internet.
The political struggle to come will be decided by whether the White Collar and Blue Collar segments of society can find a way to unite. Keep in mind how fast Establishment Whoppers can evaporate. Between the autumns of 2001 and 2004, the Last Stupid War went from providing Shrub with 90% approval ratings to having to steal the Presidential Election, again.
I remain very pessimistic about our chances to reach even a tolerable conclusion to the current Two Headed Bullshit Fest going on now. But pessimistic is not the same thing as fatalistic.
The bottom line is that "smart" people need to learn some humility, fast. Remembering our innocent youth of plastic toy soldier war is a good way to start.
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.
Americans, who have a very shallow history
....and no indigenous connection to the stolen lands they live on, have an excuse for their amnesia and gullibility and lack of a center core. Americans have always straddled terrible scontridictions that they have pointedly ignored. There's not much solid ground under their guiding ideologies, the bones of their ancestors are not buried under their feet, and they are likely to change the rules and tear up the treaties anytime they want to. Nothing is sacred for long.
But the fact is, the Europeans are equally gullible and delusional-on-command. White people are a once-isolated race of humans who stayed on their indigenous lands, and remained immersed in their own turmoil, until about 1,500 AD, when firearms were invented. Only then did they find the courage to venture out into the brown world to spread their chaos and greed.
.
All those central values that we "remember" and think we can return to, are just another layer of convenient denial and manufactured narrative that glosses over the fact that our civilization is based on the oppression and exploitation of 'others.' We are the natural-born Fascists we fear, and we haunt our own dreams. We are starting to see that, now.
I hope "we are starting to see that now."
The U.S. elites of business, war, and politics have finally started a war they are bound to lose and which is uniting Russia, China, and a lot of the global south and east into a coalition that will probably bring down the U.S., Europe, and various allies currently trying to create a world under oligarchic sway. After studying the fall of various historic empires, I haven't much faith that any new groupings of nations will solve our problems of war, inequality, and general human cussedness, but I'm all for stopping the current U.S./NATO led madness. I suspect climate catastrophe will unite the survivors for awhile anyway.
-Greed is not a virtue.
-Socialism: the radical idea of sharing.
-Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy, In a speech at the White House, 1962
stopping the current U.S./NATO led madness
would be a good start to returning
the spin of the earth into more sensible
harmonics
question everything
My childhood was a little different
The brothers who were the most popular kids in the neighborhood were the sons of a "Japanese war bride" so I grew up fighting Nazis exclusively. But why Nazis? Because they were evil. Everything was about how much fun and glory it was to fight and kill evil. Fight Nazis.
And the Russians fought Nazis too. We didn't agree about something real important, but we both fought Nazis.
Now you say the Nazis are the good guys? Nazis? Hell no!
On to Biden since 1973
And there are those that never grew out of their childhood
fantasies.
Like this Senator and his deceased buddy.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-zoPgv_nYg]
Edited to add:
I suppose you could add this guy as everything that he touches seems to impact war.
It appears as if the sanctions are having an impact.
But not in a good way!
https://www.ft.com/content/f6553a0a-c317-4ace-bf64-5757e72fe7c2
Edited to add this:
China explains its view of the situation in Europe.
The supreme paradox of modern moral thinking
We get much of our view of "Good VS Evil" from the very same headwaters as our "Gold-Standard of Evil"!:
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-good-guy-bad-guy-myth
I never saw the movie Inglorious Basterds, but I heard (from an iffy source, admittedly) that its hidden message was that the director was calling the audience Nazis.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Powerful!
Excellent essay!
I played cowboys and Indians or I guess Native Americans with my brother’s guns that he didn’t want to play with. I don’t remember why I quit or when. But I was Annie Oakley.
We’ve been brought up to hate one group after another because our country always needs an enemy to fight to justify our enormous war budget that literally takes food and shelter out of our lives. I’m appalled that we are now supporting the same type of Nazis that our grandfathers fought against. We were one of the 2 countries that refused to vilify. Go figure.
The US industrialists supported Hitler's rise to power
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaWz42tmxug&t=1s]
It's déjà vu all over again...
Yeah I posted a few articles on that
a few days ago in the dose if you missed them. Fascinating reading.