- by Garnet Rogers
I see people here rightfully decrying hate and racism, and wondering how we could have forgotten just how terrible fascism and Nazism are. I see lots of films and photos of the death camps being shared, and footage of naked women and children being herded into fields to be shot next to an open grave by grinning Nazi soldiers who feel no shame, but who in fact grin and wave at the camera.
"How can we have forgotten?"
The thing is, no one has forgotten.
The truth is, there are people out there, people we all know, people in our families and in our neighbourhoods and workplaces, cops and teachers and civil servants who know all about it and they Just. Don't. Care.

I once sat in a Royal Canadian Legion Hall with a man who was related by marriage to my brother. A man who had served in the Canadian Army during the war in the European theatre, a proud veteran, who, after he'd had a few too many boiler makers, leaned over and confided to me that, "Well, you know, I served all through France and Germany, and I saw those camps. I was there when we opened one up, and I saw it all. All the bodies and the open pits. And I know we're supposed to hate Hitler and all that, and I know we had to take him out. I just wish we could have given him another 6 months to finish the job before we did."
"Finish what job?"
"The Jews. Finish the Jews."
"What?"
"I know it's not popular to say, but you know I'm right.We shoulda let him finish the Jews off, The world would be a better place."

This is a guy who saw the worst that human beings are capable of.
He saw the end result of the Final Solution.
He had the stink of rotting bodies and the smoke from the cremetoria in his nose.
He was witness to a whole race being hunted down, rounded up, and treated like vermin.
And in the end, he was just fine with it.
He was not only fine with it, he wanted more.
He came back from the war, got demobbed and settled in to live his life, and be a "good" Canadian, getting married, having kids, decorating the Christmas tree, dandling the grand children on his knee, and telling jokes and reminiscing about the good old days with his chums at the Legion.
A "good man."
Right.
In contrast, Gail and I both knew a man, a German from a famous family, who also served in the war as an officer in the Wehrmacht,
He was on the German team at the '36 Olympics, and was one of the few to publicly congratulate Jessie Owens, and only got away with it because he was from a famous aristocratic family. He was also a horseman and an art dealer before the war, and after he died stories came out about how he had purchased art from his Jewish friends, and raced their horses under his own name and had given them the money so they might escape before the hammer came down.
He was pulled out of an English holding camp after the war by some of his Jewish friends who were working with the British, trying to identify camp guards, and who told the British officers how he had saved them and their families.

I walked out of the Legion that drunken night in Dundas, and I never saw that former Canadian soldier again until the day of my brother's funeral, where he came up and slapped me on the back. Being a coward, and trying to preserve peace in an already difficult atmosphere, I never confronted him. I simply withdrew the hem of my garment.

I'm not sure where I'm going with all this, except to say it's a choice.
It's always a choice.
You can either acknowledge someone's humanity and behave accordingly, treating them with love and kindness, or you don't.
It's a choice.
It's easy to say these thugs in Lacoste shirts know nothing of history, and are marching out of ignorance, and because their teachers and parents failed them. But it's not true.
They know the history. They not only know it, they celebrate it. They revel in it. They venerate it.
And after the torch light parade they get to go home and resume their jobs for the most part, and they and thousands like them will continue to make choices.
They will serve as cops. They'll become firemen. They'll work at your local government agency and process your license. They'll teach your kids.
And they'll vote.
They'll vote and vote and vote again, for whatever candidate they feel best serves their agenda.
And many of the rest of us will not.
We'll get caught up arguing about how our candidates are somehow flawed. "Those e-mails." "She's too hawkish" (Compared to whom?...I mean, really, in the context of what we are now seeing.)
And all the rest of the 3rd party bum wash.
We'll stay home and sit on our hands and more and more of these cretins will appear, and they will continue to get their way.
Between sessions at the gym, working on their biceps and trips to the tattoo parlour, they will agitate and network, write letters and become an ever more dangerous political force.
How many states now have Open Carry?
40? 45? All of them?
They wanted that and they got it done.
And it worked. No one dared confront them in Charlottesville. And no one will next time, because they have guns and pretend army guy uniforms, and the cops will look the other way to avoid a blood bath.
Mitch McConnell and his cronies were afraid enough of their voting bloc that they made it happen, knowing that when some terrible event occurs they can appear on camera and give the "thoughts and prayers " speech, and it'll be all just fine.
They don't want blacks and Jews and immigrants voting, so they support whatever candidate they know will gerrymander the districts to their advantage.
And so on.
They will continue to vote.
And they will continue to win.
Despite what apologists and revisionists will tell you, Hitler didn't stage a complete coup d'etat.
Hundreds of thousands of Germans voted him in because he was saying what they wanted to hear.
And these chino wearing warriors heard loud and clear what the current president of the United States was saying and they got behind him, and they won, and we are now reaping the whirlwind.
They'll continue to vote and win and prosper and live amongst us.They'll continue to enact and enforce their laws, and make unauthorized traffic stops, and teach our kids, and spew hate on the air, and everything else, and above all, vote and vote and vote, because we don't.

republished from Facebook with the author's permission - with thanks - Editor