Is This the Storm or the Warning?

It also gives us a very special, secret pleasure to see how unaware the people around us are of what is really happening to them.
- Adolf Hitler

For five years, we have watched the Bush administration, in a very calculated and definite fashion, continue to implement its plan that gives the president authority far beyond anything that could have been imagined by anyone who considered their society to be evolved beyond the base instincts of men who only know the selfishness of their own power. Those archetypes were the scourge of the twentieth century. Certainly we had attained some enlightenment along the way that signaled an end to such dangerous motives? In actuality, no such point was reached. That is a fact that cries out for recognition in order to understand the current circumstances.

Just as viruses mutate in order to cause broader damage to their unwitting future hosts and as we are always one step behind in order to obliterate them, the sickness brought on by the parasites in power will result in far more casualties before it is eventually, if ever, brought under control. The vast number of symptoms associated with the sickness require immediate attention, making it difficult to focus on the overall diagnosis itself.

That is what has happened to America.

Every single week, its citizens and the world are faced with these new symptoms: the illegal and unjustified Iraq war, the continual revelations of political corruption, the violations of civil and human rights, the ultimate power grabs made by an executive that believes it is above the law and, therefore, untouchable.

While we're bombarded with apocalyptic distractions of impending doom from terrorism and possible plagues like avian flu, what is actually destroying citizens on a daily basis is the government which they are perpetually bound to and from which there is practically no escape.

In the hopeless confusion of all criteria under the influence of a totalitarian ethic, harshness towards the victims was held justified by the harshness practiced toward oneself. "to be harsh towards ourselves and others, to give death and to take it," was one of the mottoes of the SS repeatedly emphasized by Himmler. Because murder was difficult, it was good, and justified. By the same reasoning, he was always able to point proudly, as though to a Roll of Honor, to the fact that the Order had suffered "no inner damage" from its murderous activity and had remained "decent" .
- Joachim Fest

I make no apologies for using examples from Hitler's regime to illustrate the parallels between these two periods of time. If we refuse to consider a time when the most egregious human rights abuses occurred to contemplate the road we are now being led down, we also refuse to participate in our own enlightenment. The enormity of the crimes involved may be hugely dissimilar, but the mindset of the leaders of today is no different.

We are not so far removed from Germany in the 1930s to think that mankind has somehow moved beyond horrors at the hands of the powerful. We have only taken one small step forward, turning back to clearly see what we're trying to escape from. If we are to continue on that journey, we must not believe that simply walking away from an earlier time is enough. It never is.

"Faith without works is dead".