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Letter to a Progressive Young Relation
Dear Pepsi,
I think I told you about a book I’ve read by Melita Maschmann called Account Rendered; a dossier on my former self. Maschmann grew up in Germany and joined the BDM (the girls’ version of the Hitler Youth) eventually becoming one of its lead propagandists. She traveled around the Third Reich, working to organize the resettlement of “ethnic Germans” on expropriated Polish farms.
After the war, she realized what she had taken part in—though it took her longer than one might imagine–and
this memoir was the result. It takes the form of a letter, addressed to her best school friend, a Jewish girl.
Maschmann wishes to explain ( not excuse) herself. She wants her friend to understand how an ordinary, normal German girl came to be a full and active member of a movement for social justice (that was the term they used), one that would eventually force her Jewish friend to emigrate from Germany to escape the Holocaust that murdered millions.
What is striking about Maschmann’s account — what I want to emphasize to you, my beloved Pepsi — is how sincerely she believed herself and the movement she was part of to be motivated by love. She thought she was helping the poor, and seeking justice for the oppressed.
She even tried to get her Jewish friend to join the BDM, in the honest belief that Nazi anti-Semitism was about “The Jews,” an abstract, malevolent force responsible for the miseries of her countrymen and the world, and yet somehow not directed at actual Jews–her best friend, or the nice neighbors in the apartment downstairs.
Maschmann imagined that the “excesses” of Kristallnacht, “provoked” by the murder of German by a Jew, was an aberration, the result of excess zeal on the part of a few. The Night of Broken Glass revealed nothing to her about the core values of National Socialism. She was offended at the thought that people might believe it should.
I hasten to point out that this young woman did not conform to Nazism because she was afraid to do otherwise. Throughout the war and beyond, she confidently counted herself a patriot, an independent and philosophical thinker, and anything but a mindless zombie. She openly criticized her peers when she thought they were letting the side down, worked incredibly hard, and sacrificed much and even bravely for what she believed to be an honorable and–yes!–ultimately loving and humane cause.
Though she claims not to have known about the gas chambers, she certainly knew about the ghettos in Poland because she saw them herself. She looked right at suffering people on the other side of the wire, and found ways to translate them into something other than human beings. On the occasions when she felt uneasy, she gave herself a “rational” talking-to.
It is unnerving to read the book, because she is so completely recognizable. She could be any of us.
Just how easy is it for an honest, intelligent, unusually idealistic person to get seduced by a movement that harnesses idealism to cruelty, and teaches nice men and women to rationalize the demonic?
UNSPECIFIED: Pedestrians glance at the broken windows of a Jewish owned shop in Berlin after the attacks of Kristallnacht, November 1938 (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
There are, obviously, limits to comparisons between the pre-war Jews of Europe and American police officers and of course, there are big differences between the American socialist left of 2020 and the National Socialists of Germany circa 1938.
Still, I think it is worth looking at those photographs and doing a gut check. If some “extreme” elements of your movement are smashing shop windows, burning houses of worship, looting businesses, throwing bricks and bottles of urine at police officers and attacking innocent people (and, if it comes to that, specifically targeting Jews) might all this ‘fringe” activity, in fact, be more closely related to the core values of the movement than you might want to admit?
“The tree is known by its fruit.” So maybe it is you, rather than I, who misunderstands what this is about?
And how much responsibility will you be willing to accept should the result of all this protest and turmoil turn out to be other than a racism-free, peaceful paradise?
Unlike Jews, police officers, if they are tired enough (and they are very, very tired) can, with some personal and financial sacrifice, quit. Many are quitting. “In droves” is the phrase being used most often.
And do you say to that, “good riddance?”
A total of nine (9) unarmed black people were killed by American police officers in the whole of 2019. Twice that many died in a single night this week in Chicago, when the police were stretched so thin that they could not provide even the inadequate level of protection their diminished and demoralized numbers had managed before the riots began.
Minneapolis was already short four hundred cops—and the city council refused to fund new hires, claiming to wish to spend its money on other priorities. So when the riots started, Minneapolis police officers were already over-stretched, overworked, over-tired, and burned out.
The upshot is that we already know what it looks like when you “dismantle” or “defund” the police. It looks like this:
Thanks to a mendacious and ill-conceived “movement,” signed onto by far too many Democratic politicians (I notice that both Biden and Bernie are expressing, at last, some sense in all this) it is already getting harder and harder for any agency to find and hire any warm body to be a police officer, let alone to attract the kind of thoughtful, discerning and self-disciplined people we want and need to do the job.
Nationwide, police recruiting is already down 63%, and yes, I think you should understand that the “F*** the Police” chants of the “peaceful” protesters create the context in which violence against police takes place, and violence suffered by the police is interpreted. Thus, it is getting harder to persuade people to apply for law enforcement jobs. Even the Portland, Maine Police Department had to offer signing bonuses for new hires last year.
And it is getting harder to convince them to stay.
Who on earth would want to be a police officer in Minneapolis? In Chicago? The NYPD has been running on history and the fumes of the Giuliani years; how long will it be before the once-proud NYPD will be unable to fill vacancies, or be forced to drastically lower its hiring standards in order to do so?
And how are they going to pay these guys, or the unarmed social workers and restorative justice teams they imagine substituting for law enforcement? Already, businesses are pulling out of the looted cities, and with them go jobs and the income and profits that can be taxed to pay for services. Why would Target re-build stores in a city that not only failed to protect their property and the lives and well-being of their employees, but now plans to reduce police protection or withdraw it all together?
If Target doesn’t rebuild, and if Walmart, Walgreens and all the rest decide it’s simply not worth the effort to invest in cities that appear to be enthusiastically embracing dysfunction in the name of “justice” the result will be fewer city services, more and wider food deserts, more black and brown people who have nowhere to go to buy food, get their prescriptions filled, buy diapers and school supplies or apply for entry-level jobs.
On the plus side, our state, like other purple and red states, may actually benefit by the exodus of qualified law enforcement from blue states, and blue cities. We may also benefit from the need of businesses for safer working environments. So we can look forward to seeing yet more “white flight” from Democrat-controlled cities—though to the extent that most black Americans are middle-class, the outflow will be more diverse than the term suggests.
Already, my sister and brother and (black) nephew, who left DC and San Francisco respectively to flee the Coronavirus are thinking maybe they’ll just remain in Maine…though not, of course, because Maine is mostly-white. They support the protests 100%…but do find they like living in a place that is safe, friendly, clean and orderly…and they like having grocery stores and drugstores nearby, and well-trained, professional law enforcement to protect them, their property and the order of their lives.
Welfare-dependent white people in this state, unburdened by the tender solicitude of progressive “allies,” will be able to share in these goods, and their lives will be better and more hopeful as a result. But the lives of inner-city black Americans will be immeasurably worse. Thanks to the protests. Thanks to you.
Published in Domestic Policy
…except that’s not really convincing.
I’ve seen “reporters” who complained about being tear-gassed, arrested, or worse, because they showed up at a riot with official credentials, stood right in the middle of a bunch of violent thugs, and got steamrolled when the cops moved through and the “reporters” didn’t move with them. When things are going badly, nobody’s going to stop in the middle of a riot and take a good close look at the 2″x3″ badge hanging around your neck, no matter how much you yell “PRESS!”
If you’re a reporter, and you want to cover this from close up, stand slightly off to one side and document things. If you want to talk to protesters, do so. Wear some good running shoes.
When Antifa bullies start chucking bricks at the cops, don’t stand between them to get that really-cool shot with your iPhone. Or if you do, realize that you lost that particular bet with reality.
Beginning? It always was. It is merely one of the more recent in a long series of lies to “explain” the failures of Progressive schemes to end problems such as poverty.
Left wingers’ “thinking”:
It’s so incredibly juvenile. I hope Pepsi grows up a little as a result of Mean Granny’s wisdom. You go, sister!
Thank you. That’s really good.
I just finished listening to a terrific podcast by Michael Bane. The first 18 minutes or so discusses the loss of liberty and the moral implications of bowing down in submission; there’s also some good material on home security/defense. Also gun geekery.
More home defense in another Bane podcast, but the best part starts about 32:00 with a terrific analysis of the impending surveillance state. I think this is the one in which he calls Fauci “Hillary’s chief panty sniffer.” He also brings something from Joe Huffman which is terrific. Huffman wants it used, so while I’m omitting the interesting prefatory explanation I’m putting the guts of the thing below.
The Jews In The Attic Test
People tend to understand the importance of freedom of speech and the freedom of the press pretty well and some of the other rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. But the Second Amendment was and is viewed as unimportant and perhaps even counterproductive by many in today’s society. I explained to the others in my little band of activists that I looked at all laws that restricted freedom with a view to the impact it would have in a worst case scenario of our government run amok. Will this law make it difficult or impossible to protect innocent life from a government intent on their imprisonment or death? Although I pretty much made everything up on the spot I told them I called this test my “Jews In The Attic Test”. Furthermore I told them that if it fails this test no further discussion is really needed, the law must be opposed in the most vigorous manner possible.
Some laws that fail the test and why:
I may need a retraction. Nothing is funny. Humor is rape.
Powerful. Thank you!
Worse than juvenile. Most children are not malevolent monsters.
Did you know that Karl Marx wrote poems which read as if they were written by a school shooter?
Well not quite singular. There is Quietpi, Jose Pluma, and Al French. By the way Al French has been both a road deputy, and a prosecutor. There is of course Jack Dunphy, a former LAPD officer, and is still working today as a police officer for another agency.
It is no accident that we all belong to Ricochet, Disagreement with any of us has never been disrespectful.
I couldn’t remember all their names, so I thought I would take liberties and just say “singular”.
“Anyway, Doug will know the names of all his Brethren in Blue, and maybe he will correct my omissions,” I thought.
Sometimes I am just so prescient I amaze myself.
(The first three write fairly often but, as it seems to me, more often as regular citizens. You always provide us a cop’s perspective on society).
No.
And of course, they’ll be agitating to turn Maine blue like the places they fled.
The problem is—and this may be worth a separate post—that I keep thinking it’s an intellectual problem. That if I just provide the facts, and make a persuasive case, my relative will see this as I do.
And then what?
Not that I always remember it at the right moments—what was it I spent all that money on Seminary to learn? —but “God Is Love.”
This is the simplest and most challenging sentence in the Bible (possibly the world). “Love your neighbor as yourself” requires figuring out “what does love look like in this situation?”
There are a few occasions upon which the answer is fairly obvious and the action required simple. My husband does imitations of me, yelling at the television because there’s a baby on the show and it’s crying. “Pick up the baby!”
But as soon as you get beyond that level, it gets a lot harder. It becomes the imperfect and only occasionally rewarding work of a lifetime and, if I may say so, the work of a whole human culture.
Pepsi has love and a genuine desire to do right by his neighbor. So do I.
I’ve got facts, I’ve got words and the ability to string them together into an argument, and I am absolutely motivated by love—for Pepsi as well as for my country and for God.
Since I’ve got a hammer, Pepsi should be a nail. So I hit him.
And—surprise!— it didn’t work.
Figuring that out can indeed be hard, but leftism encourages people to treat all who disagree as less than human. Indeed, Marxism while purporting to be about helping those who are poor and powerless it actually treats individual real people as disposable.
I could have any kind of phony credential on my phone – it’s just a picture. However, the real thing would be harder to fake, although it could happen.
If you got pulled for a traffic violation, would any cop accept a picture of your driver’s license instead of the real thing? Doubtful . . .
I prefer the garden analogy. You planted seeds. You may not ever see them grow and bear fruit, but you did what you could, and all you can do is keep at it. I think this is what it means to “lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
Absolutely. This is what makes the Melita Maschmann story so strange and powerful: she didn’t have to be an evil person in order to participate in evil.
In James Bond (and similar) good-and-evil films, the bad guys are motivated by a self-conscious badness. Not even greed! Just wickedness for its own sake…and they’ve got hordes of henchmen willing to sacrifice their own lives for someone who openly describes himself as evil.
This is more or less the way Hitler (et al) saw The Jews, how Communists see the capitalists, how #BLM activists see White Supremacists. There is no real motive to explain their schemes other than wickedness.
In a strange way, it makes sense. Why on earth, other than sheer, sociopathic sadism, would governments controlled by—indeed, inseparable from—white supremacy shell out millions to maintain welfare-dependent inner city neighborhoods with terrible schools and an appalling percentage of the menfolk under the direct supervision of the criminal justice system.
If you judge from the results, it is difficult to imagine how those in power could create and maintain this reality unless they were racists who, for their own perverse reasons, want black people to suffer.
That these conditions were actually created by people who believed (and still believe) themselves to be acting out from the best possible motives…is very difficult to grasp. That a whole country-full of Nazis truly believed that they were doing good and noble things…and that they could go on believing it even after Germany had been completely destroyed…what does this say about our ability to tell good from evil?
At the very least, it should prompt us to be very humble.
And I think there is something to my suggestion that smashed shop windows, like burned or banned books, should be taken as an ominous sign. Not to mention piles of corpses.
«L’enfer est plein de bonnes volontés ou désirs.»
Upon reading your post I immediately added the book to my kindle queue, and will get to it just as soon as I finish my current one about Organic Farming in France, and its origins that were associated with fascism before becoming more leftwing.
I have long claimed that you can’t really have social justice without killing on a large scale. That thought was put in mind by a film or documentary about the Cambodian Killing Fields that I saw year ago, in which it seemed that the program of the Khmer Rouge was basically a social justice movement carried to its logical conclusion, though it didn’t put it that way. (That film had me scratching my head at the start, because it somehow blamed the Killing Fields on Richard Nixon, just like we nowadays blame all the world’s ills on Donald Trump. But it didn’t really dwell on that part. In those days talking about any of the world’s tragedies without blaming Nixon would have been like eating your meal without first saying grace, so I suppose those words about Nixon were ritual boilerplate. The rest of the film was quite informative.)
But I had no idea that the Nazis used that term in their movement, though my recent reading of Black Earth by Timothy Snyder got me thinking about how Hitler’s program had some similarities to social justice movements.
Good. I see I am not the only person who has been thinking a lot about Vaclev Havel’s greengrocer these days.
I don’t recall if it was Thomas Sowell or someone else who said that if the KKK had had a meeting and tried to come up with a program to systematically destroy black lives, they couldn’t have come up with a better method than the Great Society programs.
Well, considering the KKK was the militant wing of the Democratic Party (before Antifa), that’s pretty much what happened.
While we agree on the result, I’m willing to accept that the *intent* of LBJ and those in Congress was benign. They were stupid, but not intentionally evil.
Even if I knew the world would end tomorrow, I would continue to plant my apple trees.
— Martin Luther (disputed)
Haven’t read much about LBJ, have you?
Heh.
While those on the Left are generally both misinformed and ignorant, information and logic are not the answer. This is, mostly, a (literally) Trivial problem: a problem mostly of the Trivium. It is not grammatical (though that enters into it with the corruption of language,) it is not logical, it is rhetorical.
To persuade requires a heart connection as well as a head connection. Moses had this problem when facing Pharaoh. It’s not trivial, and the human heart can be appealed to by dark forces.
Let’s not forget that the free/subsidized housing etc, is also what black people, at least especially their “leaders,” demanded and still demand, and indeed demand MORE of.
Yes, but LBJ wasn’t the whole country or even the whole Democratic party. He didn’t sell it to the nation by saying “let’s stick it to the black people.” He sold it as justice and fairness, decency and humane-ness. To this day, people see it that way.
I would imagine my parents thought the Great Society would fix the problems they genuinely wanted to fix. They weren’t stupid or uneducated, nor were they somehow removed from the mechanisms of power– indeed, my dad was unusually well-connected and well-informed.
EDIT—Sorry everyone! No, I’m not having a stroke. I hit the comment button too soon, and then had to take a phone call!
Anyway:
Interestingly, this is what the concern about White Supremacy is based in—the fear that we could all be Melita Maschmann, part of something awful and not realizing it until it’s too late. It’s not a completely ridiculous fear. It makes sense to question ourselves and crucial to have, built in, a mechanism by which we question one another.
Broken windows…piles of corpses…and the deliberate suppression of free speech?
Bad signs.
Andrew Klavan argues that the human default for organizing society can be summed up with “There’s Pharoah, and those connected to Pharoah…and there’s everyone else.” The American Revolution was the first revolution to successfully change the formula. Because it isn’t natural, the tendency is always going to be for corruption to bring us back to the usual pattern, no matter what name we place on Pharoah (People’s Counsel, Politburo, Fuhrer, etc.). CHAZ, in Seattle, is already doing this—they couldn’t even go thirty six hours without a strong man emerging, and armed men extorting money from the hapless homeowners and businesspeople caught on the wrong side of the barriers.
Human beings also like to simplify into binaries: Good/Evil, Owners/Workers, White/Black, Black/White, Sheep/Goats. Within a closed system, like communism or Freudian psychoanalysis, the definitions of good and evil , sheep and goats are strictly enforced. If a sheep puts up her hand and objects, even mildly, to the system…she’s a goat.
J.K. Rowling is now a goat, for example. Joe Biden is—to his credit— risking becoming a goat by pushing back, however mildly, and for however long, against “defund the police.” Social media allows all of these processes to proceed so swiftly, however, that it isn’t unreasonable to believe we’ll already have had the backlash by the time November rolls around.
Unless, of course, it is raining blood by then. Or the Cascadian Subduction Zone has gone kablooey. Or…?
I wish I could think that about these “peaceful” marchers. They have to know they’re providing cover for the violent elements in their “movement” . . .
Note: the “you” in this comment post is NOT directed to Ricochetti. That “you” probably isn’t a member of Ricochet.
I have nothing but disgust and contempt for anyone participating in any BLM protests, peaceful or otherwise. The only legitimate reason to protest would have been if justice was not going to be served after the death of George Floyd in police custody. With the dismissal from the MPD, arrest, and charging of the police officers in question, that question was answered, at least until the trials. Continuing to protest is just public masturbation of your virtue; shining yourself up for all to see how good and noble you are. If you continue because you seek to influence the trial, or give Chauvin et al. summary justice, you are the equivalent of a KKK lynch mob (including the face masks).
If you are continuing to “peacefully” protest when the protests have overwhelmingly been hijacked by the violent and destructive Antifa, etc., then you are part of the problem.
Arguing that you need to “understand” how our “systemic racism” causes people to loot and destroy the property of others, means you are the racist bigot. Your actions and words demonstrate that you don’t think “black and brown people” can behave in a civilized manner. You also ignore that the worst instigators are “persons of palor”. That is very condescending. Unprovoked violence and theft is a universal human trait. No race is more prone to it than another. However, certain ideologies are more prone to it than others.
If you are telling me that “Silence = Violence” then you will not like what I have to say: #Golf.Foxtrot.Yankee.
BLM are nothing but a Marxist Black Supremacist group. Unfortunately, there are plenty of would be Bobby Seales and Huey Newtons out there right now, but not too many MLKs.
Looters are Slavers. They are stealing the labor of others. When you work to earn money, you give up some of your life to support your life. When somebody else steals or destroys things that you bought with your money, then they have taken some of your life. They deserve to be treated as if they had tried to shoot or knife you.
Our garbage media only make matters worse. One can only hope that they live adjacent to places like CHAZ and get a taste of their own medicine, good and hard.