Stalin and Hitler were two, enormously gifted and powerful men who led their people to absolute ruin. It's difficult for me to say how wrong they were, but I know that Benedict XVI would have an answer that would satisfy my exacting curiosity.
I am still awestruck by the degree of calamity that was heaped upon humanity in the disaster that was WW2. I remain in its wake, and I cannot imagine not learning great moral lessons from it until the end of my life.
Mostly these days, I stand and wonder how much of our economy is real - how much of it would survive the energy and fission another such charismatic could thrust upon our world. We seem to be lacking anyone as large and so we are weak for such a man.
I spent the afternoon with my brother Doc. We ogled muscle cars in Santa Monica reminding ourselves of our good fortune to have been raised in a time when we looked up and saw astronauts. Today, youth look up and see posters of Bruno. There is a store on the Promenade called Zara, and none of the clothes are made for men our size. The hat vendor's wares fit too tightly on our heads, and people are schlepping around in Smart cars..
I told my father today at lunch that if every American in the entire bourgeois used flushless toilents and drove hybrid vehicles for the rest of our lives, we'd never stop the climate change initiated by China burning coal for electricity.
People go to war to protect their children, not to protect the CETA job program. People go to war for blood revenge, not for affordable healthcare or senior centers. People don't go to war for the sake of green vehicles. There aren't any fatheaded Irish brogues playing police sergeants in any of our movies any longer, but there are still similar roughnecks out in the country. They are men who are not handsome or particularly brainy or charming, but they take pride in their ability with a wrench or a shovel. Like the Muslims so many disturbed Americans believe in at bottom in Iraq, they are illiterate, religious, hard working and complete human beings that don't like being pushed around. They will not conform to your idea of a perfectable world, and when you try to take things from them, they will push back.
How many of these economies of thought are for real?
You have got to have 2.1 children to grow. If you fall below 1.6 you never come back. So the DINKs are all fleeting. Marry all the metros and other-sexuals you like. It's a false economy. It's unsustainable. It will get overrun, because ultimately, when it comes down to it, people fight. People go to war.
How much can you destroy in a war when you have the fundamentally wrong idea? How many people can you motivate with a bad philosophy? When it comes to understanding that children are our wealth - we're behind curve of common sense.
Two young cute women in matching light blue t-shirts beseeched me to feed hungry children someplace in the big old dirty world. I was told that through my donations to their program, I could raise a child for the price of a Pinkberry. This from women who haven't the faintest notion of what labor pains feel like. I wonder if the sponsored villages would go to war for their donations, if the men would take up arms keep those cards and letters coming. I'm not convinced this charitable economy is real. It depends upon mall strollers who feel guilty about eating frozen yogurt.
Just before I picked up Doc at Fifth and Wall, a slim man stopped in the crosswalk and demanded money from a woman in minivan. I watched how he jutted his head and pointed his fingers. At first I thought he knew the woman, the way he flagged her down. Then I knew better; she handed over two handfulls. I saw him ten minutes later angrily shouting to himself walking parallel to the police station just off Skid Row. You and I know that there are signs on the outdoor malls reminding us that we are under no obligation to pay panhandlers. That's how stupid we have become. And whatever their angle, the charity cases are demanding, and treat us like sheep.
Most of the time all they need is a dirty face and a cardboard sign, but why not get aggressive?
The homeless, jobless, faithless don't drag kids around. They're unsustainable too. But the calamity hasn't hit yet. Oh maybe we need two more points on top of the current unemployment figures for the spillover. It might take more. Doc says he knows 40 year old men signing up for military service. You don't get to play around with your so-called rights in the Army, the sergeants don't let you get away with it.
The best people I have worked with in the computer industry, yes the computer industry, grew up having either served in the Armed Forces, or worked on a farm. There's still a real IT revolution going on - we're learning how to communicate and collaborate and stretch economies into different shapes. But yeah maybe we could live without it. I'm expecting to be in the proper sector. My customer is using my skills to help them save money and work smarter, not upload pictures of their in-laws or send 140 character messages. So maybe we could live without 40% of the business, just like we're all learning to live with 9 million new cars sold per year, down from 16 million. You just don't upgrade so quickly.
So what happens when people save money and the economy just doesn't grow? The unsustainable sectors disappear. Like Enron. Like Hitler's Sixth Army under Paulus at Stalingrad. Like other large ideas with bad philosophies underneath them.
I'm at the end of The Hitler Book. Just for the description of how he died in Berlin with his world unraveling, it was well worth the effort. Hitler's ultimate failure was long and slow and agonizing. I'm still awestruck by how many millions can die in vain. I still can't get over the fact that so many of us think we're immune.
