"You know," he went on, "when men who understand what is happening--the motion, that is, of history, not the reports of single events or developments--when such men do not object or protest, men who do not understand cannot be expected to. How many men would you say understand--in this sense--in America? And when, as the motion of history accelerates and those who don't understand are crazed by fear, as our people were, and made into a great 'patriotic' mob, will they understand then, when they did not before?
"We learned here--I say this freely--to give up trying to make them understand after, oh, the end of 1938, after the night of the synagogue burning and the things that followed it. Even before the war began, men who were teachers, men whose faith in teaching was their whole faith, gave up, seeing that there was no comprehension, no capacity left for comprehension, and the thing must go its course, taking first its victims, then its architects, and then the rest of us to destruction."
[from They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-1945 by Milton Mayer]
We in the US are at the same point today: there appears to be no capacity left for comprehension. What will be, will be ... and there is nothing we can do except to let the thing run its course, taking our victims, then the architects, and then the rest of us to destruction.
Que sera, sera.
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