Germany

Theme: The Fully Politicized Society

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Sgt Mom  recently posted about the “Sad Puppies” affair:  basically, it seems that the science-fiction publishing industry and its leading association and award structure have become highly politicized in the name of “progressivism”…in reaction, a contrarian movement arose called the “Sad Puppies”  (there are also “Rabid Puppies”)…and these groups have been vitriolically attacked by some prominent members of the SF publishing establishment.

It strikes me that this would be a good time to update and repost my earlier Theme roundup of posts on the general topic of politicization.

A very funny post about a very serious topic.  Sarah Hoyt, herself a science fiction writers, tells of (and illustrates) some of her own experiences with the Science Fiction Writers Association.

What kind of things do you think they talk about at a convention of the National Art Education Association?  Best ways to teach perspective and watercoloring techniques?  How to explain Expressionism and Impressionism?  Not these days.

“Political correctness” has become a serious threat to American society

What makes people want to live in a politicized society, and what is day-t0-day life like once the complete politicization has been accomplished?  In this post, I cite some thoughts from Sebastian Haffner, who came of age in Germany when the Nazi movement was casting its spell, and a vivid fictional passage from Ayn Rand, who grew up in the early Soviet Union.

Gleichschaltung.  A word much favored by the Nazis, it means “coordination,” “making the same,” “bringing into line”…especially, in Nazi usage, “forcible coordination.”  The orientation toward Gleichschaltung is very apparent in today’s “progressive” movement and today’s Democratic Party.

Prestigious Physics Professor Protests Politicization. Harold Brown, professor emeritus at the University of California Santa Barbara, explains the reasons for his resignation from the American Physical Society.

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Remembering

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Today, June 6, is the  71st anniversary of the Normandy landings. See the  Wikipedia article  for an overview.  Arthur Seltzer, who was there, describes his experiences.

Don Sensing points out that success was by no means assured:  the pivot day of history.

Two earlier Photon Courier posts:  before D-day, there was Dieppe  and  transmission ends.

See  Bookworm’s post from 2012, and  Michael Kennedy’s photos from 2007

A collection of D-day color photos from Life Magazine

Neptunus Lex:  The liberation of France started when each, individual man on those landing craft as the ramp came down each paratroop in his transport when the light turned green made the individual decision to step off with the only life he had and face the fire.

The Battle of Midway took place from June 4 through June 7, 1942. Bookworm attended  a Battle of Midway commemoration event  in 2010 and also in 2011:  Our Navy–a sentimental service in a cynical society.

See also  Sgt Mom’s History Friday post  from last year.

General Electric remembers  the factory workers at home who made victory possible.      Also,  women building airplanes during WWII, in color  and  the story of the Willow Run bomber plant.

Update:  a very interesting piece on  the radio news coverage of the invasion

Movie Review: People on Sunday

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People on Sunday, Criterion Collection DVD

When Americans think of Weimar Germany,  the images that tend to come to mind are of degenerate nightclub habitues and drug users…marching Brownshirts…hungry people…and political violence and rising anti-Semitism.  This movie shows a different side of Weimar:  four young working people go to the beach on Sunday.

The film was made by Billy Wilder and several other aspiring directors, screenwriters, and producers, almost all of whom later wound up in Hollywood. It’s a silent film, one of the last made, probably because the team could not afford sound equipment.  They also could not afford to hire “real” actors:  instead, they chose likely-looking people off the street and had them play characters who shared their own real-life professions.

Erwin is a taxi driver,  Wolfgang is a wine salesman,  Brigitte sells records for a living,  Christl works as an extra in movies, and  Annie (Erwin’s girlfriend) is a not-very-successful model.

On Saturday, Wolf picks up Christl near a subway station, where she is apparently waiting for someone who hasn’t shown up.  They go to a nearby cafe (“it’s tough to get stood up,” he sympathizes, to which she responds “I *don’t* get stood up”)  and make plans to meet the next day for a picnic at the Wannsee lakefront beach.  Christl brings her friend Brigitte, and Wolf brings Erwin.  (Annie was supposed to come, but wouldn’t get out of bed.)

This has been called an “effervescent, sunlit” film; it has also been called “cynical.”  Both interpretations are correct, IMO, although the cynicism aspect is pretty subtle. I thought the acting done by the nonprofessionals was quite fine.

It’s impossible to watch the film today, of course, without thinking about what was coming just a few years down the road.  If you have heard the word “Wannsee” before, and you are not a Berlin resident or visitor, it is probably because this district was to be the site of the Wannsee Conference, at which the initial planning for the “Final Solution” was done.

There are almost no actors in this film, other than the 5 non-professionals mentioned above; the people in the background in downtown Berlin and at the lake are not extras but rather are real-life Berliners going about their normal lives.  Watching, it’s hard to imagine that these quite-normal-seeming people would soon collectively perpetrate some of the worst crimes in history, or that many of them would themselves meet an apocalyptic fate.

The movie (previous titles considered had been Summer 29, Young People Like Us, and–rather presumptuously–This Is How It Is and No Different) was a big hit with Berlin moviegoers, and has apparently been very influential in the evolution of film.  There’s a well-written review at  wonders in the dark.

The film was revived with considerable effort, involving the processing of multiple surviving partial prints.  The whole thing is available on-line,  here; I watched the Criterion Collection DVD, which also includes a 2000 documentary about the film, featuring an  interview with Brigitte Borchert, a short film by the People on Sunday cinematographer, and a booklet on the film’s making and influence.

Why Did Bush Invade Iraq in 2003 ?

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usa-politics-bush

There is quite a series of Republican politicians declaring that they would not invade Iraq if they knew then what they know now. JEB Bush is not the only one. Ted Cruz has made Talking Points Memo happy with a similar declaration.

Earlier in the week, Kelly asked Bush if he would have authorized the invasion, and he said he would have. On Tuesday, Bush told Sean Hannity that he hadn’t heard the question correctly and wasn’t sure what he would have done. Cruz, on the other hand, said he knows what he would have done.

“Of course not,” Cruz said in response to Kelly asking if he would have authorized an invasion. “I mean, the entire predicate of the war against Iraq was the intelligence that showed they had weapons of mass destruction and they might use them.

Of course, the “WMD” argument is a more recent addition to the story. Nobody talks anymore about why Bush was forced to invade in 2003. WMD were a small part of it. That is forgotten, of course.

Mr Speaker, thank you for recalling Parliament to debate the best way to deal with the issue of the present leadership of Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Today we published a 50 page dossier detailing the history of Iraq’s WMD, its breach of UN resolutions and the current attempts to rebuild the illegal WMD programme. I have placed a copy in the Library of the House.

At the end of the Gulf War, the full extent of Saddam’s chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programmes became clear. As a result, the UN passed a series of resolutions demanding Iraq disarm itself of such weapons and establishing a regime of weapons inspection and monitoring to do the task. They were to be given unconditional and unrestricted access to all and any Iraqi sites.

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Parallel Observations, 94 Years Apart

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In my post Advice from Goethe on How to Attract Women, I cited some of Goethe’s thoughts about why the Weimar girls preferred visiting Englishmen to the local male talent. When his friend Eckermann objected that Englishmen were not “more clever, better informed, or more excellent at heart than other people,” Goethe responded:

“The secret does not lie in these things, my good friend, Neither does it lie in birth and riches; it lies in the courage which they have to be that for which nature has made them. There is nothing vitiated or spoilt about them, there is nothing halfway or crooked; but such as they are, they are thoroughly complete men. That they are also sometimes complete fools, I allow with all my heart; but that is still something, and has still always some weight in the scale of nature.”

“In our own dear Weimar, I need only look out of the window to discover how matters stand with us. Lately, when the snow was lying upon the ground, and my neighbour’s children were trying their little sledges in the street, the police was immediately at hand, and I saw the poor little things fly as quickly as they could. Now, when the spring sun tempts them from the houses, and they would like to play with their companions before the door, I see them always constrained, as if they were not safe, and feared the approach of some despot of the police. Not a boy may crack a whip, or sing or shout; the police is immediately at hand to forbid it. This has the effect with us all of taming youth prematurely, and of driving out all originality and all wildness, so that in the end nothing remains but the Philistine.”

Skipping forward 94 years, I was intrigued to find some rather similar comments in the memoirs of Wilhelm II, the former Kaiser of Germany:

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