A deep, lurking unease…

Hi all:

This blog has been dark of late because I was testifying as an expert witness in a trial.  I’m finished with that and ready to address a topic that’s been on my mind ever since I read this book review in the San Francisco Chronicle.  This quote from the review will set the tone for my troubled thoughts:

As Goldhagen argued in his controversial book on the Holocaust, "Hitler's Willing Executioners," the leader's decision is not enough. He must have plenty of willing murderers who take up the eliminationist cause. Goldhagen shows in a wide variety of contexts - from the Germans to the Khmer to the Hutu - that when tyrants give their followers the opportunity to "solve a problem with murder," enormous numbers of volunteers lend themselves to the task. The perpetrators believe their victims deserve it: "Mass murder begins not in abstract structures or inchoate psychological pressures, but in the minds and hearts of men and women."

While the book review is very critical of the author in certain aspects, it was the thought of “followers” who could, if given the real opportunity, kill their fellow citizens, based upon fears and hatreds whipped up by evil leaders, that got me thinking.

I look at what has been going on in this country since Bush II, and particularly since Obama’s election and get chills.  Hundreds of thousands of “followers” are blindly parroting mindless hatred, not even realizing that the very interests they are “defending” are objectively NOT in their best interests.  If you don’t believe that many, many of those people at the Sarah Palin rallies would actually kill their “enemies” if the climate degenerated to the point where killing is sanctioned by leaders, then you need to think again.  I actually heard people yelling out “kill him” (meaning Obama) at those Palin rallies and neither she, nor anyone else condemned such thoughts.

What really has me concerned is that the power that Palin and her crew wield appears to me to be growing or at least solidifying in their followers.  It is becoming more strident and scary each day.  You may say, “well everyone knows that Palin is a brainless nitwit  who could never get elected,” but that brings to mind my story about Ronald Reagan.  It was at the time when Reagan had announced his run for governor of California.  I was in law school at Boalt Hall then and was at a party at Sanford Kadish’s home (Sanford was a great law professor and later dean of the law school).  I distinctly remember standing  on Sanford’s deck with him and a bunch of my fellow law students looking out over the beautiful view of San Francisco across the bay.  We were all derisively laughing about this “second rate actor” who had the audacity to believe that the sophisticated people of California would elect him.  “Not a chance,” we scoffed.  Well, you all know the story.  It ended up with him becoming President in 1980, which marked the beginning of the systematic dismantling of our democratic institutions,  leading up to our present sorry state.

My point is, do not sell this Palin woman short.  Fear her and her followers.  Be vigilant and reactive at all times.  Things are going to get much more ugly and scary.

~  Quaking Tom