Crashing the Hitler "Love-In"

Boy, does America LOVE Hitler or what????

I mean, he's just downright EVERYWHERE these days! At health care town halls, on protest signs made by 1st graders and then held by their parents.



Or made by parents and held by 1st graders, as such:



Wait, these kids are even younger!! AW, isn't that just PRECIOUS???????

Then there are those who actually put a little time and effort into their signs:



It helps to have a non-union cousin working at Kinko's!

Ah, takes me back...follow me, children, to a place long ago, circa 2004:



Know what? It's just as stupid now as it was then. As much as I despised Bush, I always thought comparing him to Hitler was childish and WAY too easy. Bush was not Hitler.

He was Nero.



But I digress...

So why the new wave of Hit-LURVE sweeping the nation? One very simple reason:

Hitler, to anyone under the age of 50, is not REAL. He's a monster to scare children with. Hitler has become a fictional charcater, right up there with Emperor Palpatine, Dr. Doom, and Governor Sarah Palin. (Just kidding. We all know Dr. Doom is real, duh). Hitler to us has become what Napoleon was to our grandparents-- a bad guy who lived in the past, hence he holds no real meaning to us except when we need him as a stunt boogeyman.

Or to compare him to a poopyhead we just don't like.

I came across this wonderful blog entry, and I'd like to share it with you all. Puts things in a very clear perspective from someone who has had a little more experience dealing with REAL Nazis:

My grandfather was a devout Nazi until his death in 1989. He never talked about killing anyone nor did he have any leading role during the Third Reich (he was an engineering teacher), but there was always that hostility toward all things foreign, toward liberal ideas, toward socialists (and in post-war Germany, Social Democrats). Sound familiar? The incredible destruction and collapse of his beloved country and the extreme suffering and poverty it caused his family was always blamed on outsiders, the enemy who was lurking from all corners just to mess with his pure Germany.

Thing is, my grandfather was a loving family man, with the sweetest wife you could imagine (grandma passed in 1984), raising four sons in the middle of death and destruction. I knew him to be a strong-willed man with a good sense of humor. A little intimidating for a child like myself, but also full of stories. I always enjoyed visiting my grandparents as a kid — we would go sailing, hiking and camping — and if it weren’t for all the iron cross, eagle and swastika stickers on his bookshelf, I would consider my grandparents’ house and family vibe completely normal. In other words, my grandfather was a HUMAN BEING.

Now before anyone gets their grundies in a bind, read on:

In the past few years I think my people have collectively arrived at a new junction where we are realizing that there are infinitely more profound ways to deal with our past beyond denial, ignorance, or paralysis. Movies like Downfall that personalize Hitler would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. To link yourself with a man and a time that you have learned to associate with such inhuman monstrosity is almost impossible to process. See, if we accept Hitler as an archetype of pure evil it puts him outside of our human capacity to process, learn and evolve. But if we let in the truly scary thought that Hitler was a human being we suddenly allow ourselves the chance for healing the part within us that is capable of such profound hatred.

http://svenworld.wordpress.com/2009/08/08/so-you-wanna-talk-about-hitler/#comment-79

In other words, stop making him a cartoon. And stop using his image to try to make a point, unless you are talking about Pol Pot or Idi Amin or some other psycho-bastard who killed a shitload of his own people because he thought it was funny.

Say it with me-- Barack Obama is NOT Hitler. George Bush is NOT HITLER. NO ONE IS HITLER BUT HITLER. Period.

Unless, of course, you're Dick Shawn. Then MAYBE you're Hitler.