Those who admire Nazi "competence." (Bet you know some)

 == Nazi-obsessed nincompoops ==

There are dozens of reasons why men and women of the ‘Greatest Generation’ – those who endured a Depression, crushed Hitler, contained communism, built a spectacular economy, went to the Moon, then started overcoming 6000 years of bad habits like racism, sexism and all that… all while taxing the rich, with strong unions and admiring Franklin Roosevelt -- would deem “patriotic” Republicans as anything but. Certainly not the sense of seeking the long-term benefit of a healthy and revolutionary republic.   

It isn’t just the ceaseless whining, or the anti-science, anti-fact "carnage" ravings. Or their sucking up to oligarchy.  No. Probably the biggest thing that would strike the Greatest Generation as appalling is the way spoiled “macho” American males of our time offer perverted, “grudging respect” to the Nazi regime that our parents and grandparents fought so hard to overcome.

Let’s be clear. In conversations I have found little reason to call this reflex racist, per se. Sure, I’d guess maybe a third of that community are steeped in it. But most of them rave their Nazi-Confederate admiration for a completely different reason.

Just as every Fox reporter says: “Putin may be evil, but boy I wish we had a strong leader like him!”… these guys can be relied upon to open their Nazi-kvells with a similar clause about the 1940s German war machine: 

“Oh sure, they were evil. But boy were they competent! They made great weapons, had super generals, and they sure could fight.”

Those Panzer and Tiger tanks were wow! And the V2 rocket! And that ME 262 jet fighter! And the Bismarck was amazing! And look how that blitzkrieg tactic plowed through the stunned Brits & frogs! 

And while we’re at it, let’s rave about the Confederacy! Sure, slavery was bad, but oh how old Bobby Lee and Nathan Bedford Forest ran rings around Union generals! yeehaw.

One moron tried this crap on the wrong guy, down in one of my Google+ comment threads.  It steamed me so much, I quick-typed a response.  And – well – you know me. I hate to waste a shoot-down on just one jerk. So this is for the rest of you out there who follow that cult, and those who want ammo to oppose it:

== A message for Nazi-admiring loons ==

“I see you buy into one of the most blatant symptoms of a mass psychosis -- a macho religion that portrays the Nazis as superior in some ways, even if regrettably murderous. That mythology lets you portray this as some kind of spectrum or tradeoff, implying that sometimes a guy’s gotta be a bit evil to win.

“Bull. That’s just you justifying yourself, in retrospect, for the nerds and little guys you bullied, back in school. I don’t have time to shred your entire, insipid cult, but here are just a few items:

“First, the Bismark is stunningly over-rated. It had such a poor steering system that one miserable torpedo hit far from the rudder made them sitting ducks. Instead of quickly restoring function, as U.S. Navy mechanics would have done -- (rescuing savaged vessels like the Yorktown, in stunning time -- the Reichsmarine repair crews only made things worse.

"Oh, and the Bismark had such lousy fire direction systems that obsolete Swordfish biplanes sent by the Ark Royal managed to carry out all their attacks without even one of them being shot down. Not one. A single Japanese or American destroyer would have made flinders of the entire squadron before they ever came into range.

“Sure, the HMS Hood was destroyed by a lucky shot from the Bismarck, when arrogant Brits ignored their own safety rules. Only dig what’s fundamental, fellah. The Bismarck and Tirpitz were commerce raiders and convoy destroyers – that destroyed zero commerce. Aside from the non-strategic asset of the Hood, they accomplished nothing. Failure is a kinda-big detriment to the whole “at least they were competent” thing.

“Oh! But then there’s the endless, blah blah adoration of German Wehrmacht tanks! Only you guys are crazy. Sure Panzers and Tigers were impressive machines…and each one used four times as many handcrafted parts as a T34, letting the Russians out-produce them in floods.

“By the way, the much maligned Sherman that you twerps dismiss was by far the best tank of WWII at a tank's main job, which is infantry support. Easy to make and trivial to maintain in the field, with unmatched visibility, it was by far the best infantry support tank in existence and swarmed in great numbers alongside troops, protecting them and protected by them. In other words, it did exactly what it was competently designed to do, and take the word of Gen. George Patton on that.

“Generally, Shermans did not try to duel Tigers – a false, strawman comparison posed by Nazi-lovers. We had other weapons for that. Great big 90mm, then 105mm (M7) and later 155mm (M12) equipped tank destroyer/mobile artillery that could be mass produced, ten for every tiger. Yet they killed tigers one for one on the battlefield. Less romantic than tanks and hence, idiots completely ignore them.

“Yes, the V2 was impressive, and it cost more in money and resources than 100 fighter planes, the lack of which left Germany torched. Oh, and many failed because the slave laborers sabotaged them. Many others overshot because of tricks by British Intelligence

“As for the ME 262, sure it was impressive. The Brits had a fighter deploying to face it. But that proved unnecessary. Our P51s simply waited for a 262 to burn out its fuel. We then just followed them back to base and shredded them landing... and the base, as well.”

Late note: One of you in comments added: "The British victory in the Battle of Britain was a result of British technological advancements and knowing how to use these advancements effectively as part of an organised defence system. This was also the case for the Allied success in the Battle of Atlantic." 

Yep, from radar and acoustics to sonar systems below and centimeter radars above, that the U boats never even suspected, allowing planes to catch them surfaced at night, to Ultra code decipherment, to proximity fuses, to electronic mine sweepers... every Nazi "competence" could be matched by dozens on the allied side... once the allies made one simple decision. To stop being gullible.

I could go on and on.  But why bother? Nothing will penetrate your vile habit of admiring evil movements, just because they seem (to you) to be “strong.”  

== This cult has to go ==

That dashed-off set of answers to one idiot won’t end the treasonous cult of Nazi-admiring dopes who murmur: “sure, they were evil but….”

There is no ‘but!’ The Nazis were schmucks who drove out every decent scientist and many fine engineers from what had been the leading scientific nation, before Hitler. Scientists who strengthened our side and helped make us unbeatable. Just as the Fox-Koch-Trump madness is driving all the scientists and other fact-users out of today’s loony-mutant version of American conservatism.

Oh, but what about those blazing German victories early in the war? I have long held that we live in the universe where Nazis got every break handed to them, from Stalin killing all his generals to the French refusing to form an armored division, to Chamberlain believing everything that Putin… er, um, someone else… told him. And yes, the same applies to the American Civil War, when initial Union stupidity – not Southern brilliance -- gave the Confederacy victories.

Only now, another ingredient to the puzzle has surfaced! See a new book Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich about the Germans' secret weapon that helped them win early battles... and that ensured they'd grow so crazed, by a few years later, that they became complete dolts on the battlefield. Norman Ohler documents how that regime, and Hitler himself, were very likely stoned most of the time on Pervetin, essentially crystal meth, which enabled them (at first) to send armies dashing through places like the Ardennes, because German soldiers went up to ten days at a stretch without sleep.

In fairness a rather weak – and misguidedly moralistic – attempted rebuttal of Ohler’s case is offered by The Guardian. 

This - by the way - sheds new light not only on the Wehrmacht’s Ardennes breakout but on the subsequent Miracle of Dunkirk, dramatized in a new film (Dunkirk) by director Christopher Nolan. Varied theories have been offered, for why the Nazis did not press a final attack, in order annihilate the cornered British Expeditionary Force. One hypothesis holds that Hitler didn’t want to humiliate the British, quasi-Aryans he wished to have as allies, a notion that’s not just preposterous but noxiously so. A better explanation attributes the miracle to frenetic heroism on the part of a dozen French divisions, who battled to help their BEF comrades (and some French) to escape. Only now, Blitzed offers the best theory of all. The forces of Guderian and Rommel were shagged! After more than a week without sleep, German soldiers had collapsed into a meth-crash. If ordered to attack, they’d have gone in like movie zombies, just as easy to kill.

Of course this is what happened on a larger scale to the Nazi regime and forces, as a whole. By 1945 they were like Hitler, palsied and fried, making dismal freshman mistakes of generalship and hallucinating whatever fables British Intelligence fed them. And yes, the parallels with today are so blatant I needn’t go any farther.

== Could they have won? ==

We’ve been enjoying Amazon’s dramatized extension of Philip K. Dick’s classic novel The Man In The High Castle, whose expanded canvas remains faithful to the original, while giving us several of the most memorable villains in television, since Breaking Bad.

Though not without some critique. New York artist John Powers riffs cogently and tellingly about this recent television sensation, as well as HBO’s Westworld. Powers makes some interesting points – e.g. that the producers of these shows ostensibly are anti-oppression and favor egalitarian impulses; but that they wind up partly undermining their own message with excess respect for the villains’ underlying message. 

“To believe in Westworld, you must believe in an off-screen world dominated by an economic elite that craves the freedoms and privileges of the wild-west, a future drenched in a nostalgia for 19th century Manifest Destiny. - that is a future drowning in 19th century inequality.”

Powers make fascinating points about the unsupportable levels of wealth inequality we are rapidly approaching – a situation that does not bide well for the very same aristocracy that is manipulating for it, hand over fist.

No, we are facing a long struggle ahead, folks, against the very same side of the human spirit that gave us the Nazis and the Confederacy and that lurks in some -- not all -- of the fantasy side of our science fiction genre. Romanticism is impervious to fact or disproof. It concocts incantations that glow by their own light, needing no footing in science or argument, negotiation or reason. This is why our current wave of American romanticism wages war on every knowledge profession or caste in the nation, against even the concept of verifiable -- or falsifiable -- fact.

For years I have said: "forget the hoary-stupid "left-right" metaphor. This is a return to the Civil War that periodically wracked the United States since 1778, and has burst forth at least eight times, since we broke away from England. 

Now all pretense is gone, as we see virtually every major federal department in Donald Trump's government will be led by someone from a former Confederate state.

It will not be easy to stand up for the Union, this round. But other generations of Americans stood, and so can we.  And it starts with simple things, like taking a stance of zero-tolerance toward insipid morons who speak of "grudging admiration" for movements that were not just vile, but also moronic.

"Sure they were evil, but..."

There is no but.

== Miscellany! ==

Between 1990 and 2013 (the last year for which there is good data), the number of people living in extreme poverty dropped by more than half, from 1.85 billion to 770 million. At the same time, child mortality has dropped by nearly half, while literacy, vaccinations and the number of people living in democracy have all increased. Resist the gloom merchants of both right and left!

There were an estimated of 20 million horses in March 1915 in the United States, at the point where motor vehicle just began taking jobs away from them. A USDA census in 1959 showed the horse population had dropped to 4.5 million. Numbers began to rebound somewhat, and by 1968 there were about 7 million horses, mostly used for riding. In 2005, there were about 9 million horses.

Sick of lame efforts to divide us according to rigid generational categories, like boomer, Genex, or Millennial? Sure, there are polemical uses… but some are starting a movement to call themselves “perennials.” Or members of a greater whole, spanning all ages. The most important thing - after all - is your state of mind.  And ability to walk to the fridge.

So way cool… a compilation on Hollywood film-makers’ matte-artistry, doing believable backgrounds that supply settings for movies.

Okay… Razer’s Project Valerie is a laptop that deploys three… yes three… 17+ inch screens.

Keep your eyes open for a very interesting book by Phil Torres: “Morality, Foresight, and Human Flourishing An Introduction to Existential Risk Studies.”

This would make an excellent add-on to my popular essay -- Whose Rapture?  “Security experts should also keep an eye on 2039, since this year is the 1200th anniversary of the Mahdi’s occultation in the Twelver Shia tradition (which is a minority tradition, but dominant in countries like Iran). As the Islamic scholar David Cook conjectures, “the 1000-year anniversary of the Mahdi’s occultation was a time of enormous messianic disturbance that ultimately led to the emergence of the Bahai faith. ... [A]nd given the importance of the holy number 12 in Shiism, the twelfth century after the occultation could also become a locus of messianic aspirations.”

== Wisdom ==

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

― Maya Angelou

“Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.”

― Maya Angelou

"Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words are the weapon of lawyers."

 — William Taylor of Arizona