Sack of Ashes

To: Der Spiegel

Re: The construction of two more genocide memorials in the center of Berlin]

Oh screw.... why the hell don’t you just give every German a 13 kilo sack of ashes at birth which he can use to distraught himself with at periodic intervals throughout his life.

This whole endless commemoration of guilt is a wretched exercise and will ultimately prove counterproductive.

Except perhaps for some Visigothic sperm somewhere along the line, I am not of Germanic extraction. I am from the other side of the Rhine and am proud of my own. That said, Germany is a great country. It is at least one chamber in the heart of Christian Civilization.

The accomplishments of the German People are things that enrich my life daily. You have produced among the world’s greatest scientists, poets, artists, and musicians. Why this endless, masochistic self abasement? Has someone convinced you into some sort collective anti-neurosis to supposedly balance a previous hysteria? That is not the way toward true balance. No good will come from compounding complexes.

Pope Pius XI condemned Nazism as ethnic pride that went too far becoming at once superstitious and idolatrous. He saw the true nature of the beast. But superstition and idolatry can also arise from morbid ethnic self-hate.

The Nazi regime can be regarded as an aberration or as historically inevitable but in the end and in all events as reprehensible for what it did to innocent and ordinary people. But to elaborate a cult of demonology is stupid and superstitious. Other nations have committed equally terrible crimes.

Neither should you forget that the literal holocaust (i.e. fire-storm) was the one Germany suffered at the hands of monsters like Portal and Lindemann and their expressly stated policy of “demoralizing” civilians with constant fear and death. That too was a murderous crime against innocent and ordinary people.

This is not to compare sufferings but to avoid doing so. To compare sufferings is pointless and odious. It rains on the just and the unjust alike and no one's suffering is more special than another's.

Nor is this is not to argue a tu quoque moral relativism. It is simply to recognize that we are, alas, a morally equivocal species. The human soul is 50% black. The proper way to guard against that perilous fact is to take the Lord’s Prayer to heart; to always remember that we are daily capable of trespasses and to never forget that we must always forgive.

But to forgive is to move on, letting the dead bury the dead. That is not achieved by scarring your cities with monumental black tombs and darkening your minds with morbid guilt.


Chip

New York Times News Farts for Israel

To:-- New York Times

Your reporting on the crisis is Gaza is partial and repugnant. You are a fart horn for the Israeli government and your potempkin reportage sanctions violations of international humanitarian law. I am not fooled. Your name would better be the Spew York Times.

P.S. Did I mention that "Shopping Spree" Erlanger is a fetid moral turd?

[Ed.Note: When Gazans broke through the border to buy food and other survival items, the Times' Jerusalem correspondent, Steve Erlanger, sneered in his report that they had gone on a shopping spree. Marie Antoinette faced The Chop for far less of a remark.]

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Every Dog's Right to Bark

Germany has been hot under the collar ever since Tom Cruise arrived to impersonate Claus von Stauffenberg and to make a film about the July Plot to kill Hitler. What upset Germans was not Cruise's acting skills (or lack thereof) but rather his membership in the Church of Scientology. This so offends official Germany that Cruise was initially denied a working visa to make the film. Scientology is illegal in Germany on the grounds that The State has determined it is not a valid religion but rather a "conspiracy" to dupe people and part them from their money. Cruise has been compared to the Evil Doktor Goebbels himself and when a newspaper editor dared to speak up on behalf of the movie itself official Germany went into paroxysms of indignation.

Dear Der Spiegel:

It never ceases to amaze me how little Europeans truly understand freedom of religion and speech. Mr. Cruise's religious beliefs are his right and his affair. God gave every dog the right to howl, and no less to man. If you don't like his religion, don't believe it. Es ist einfach.

That it may be used to "dupe" people is (yawn) beside the point. Karl Marx's criticism that religion was the "opiate" of the masses was not directed at Scientology but at the established Protestant Churches of Germany in the first instance. After all.....the nature of an opiate is to dupe. And last I looked, the Protestant Churches of Germany were collecting tax monies from people who might not believe a damn bit of their creed.

Lastly, to compare Cruise to Goebbels is hysterical nonsense. But then again, God gave every hyena the right to shriek.

Chip

Two Words

To:-- The Progressive

Re:-- "Coming Recession: Bad for Bush. Worse for the American People" in which various "lessons learned" are discussed.

I said 6 years ago that Americans (US) would not learn a damn thing until hit over the head by a 2 x 4. And what do they have to learn? Two words: "class war."

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