They, too, smile who carry out emotionless torture and death.
Josef Mengele (in the above photo) enjoying some leisure time at Auschwitz. Maybe he had a chance to play a round of golf or two in between performing his experiments on human concentration camp prisoners.
I’m no scholar of WWII war crimes but I have never ONCE heard of any Nazi or SS officers who showed ANY remorse following their captures (if they were captured at all). They were steadfast. It’s haunting and terribly disturbing. No amount of time and ghastly reflection and worldwide shock could provoke a morsel of shame or regret.
This callous disregard for human life wasn't programmed into their DNA— not likely; this was learned behavior. Perhaps just as much it was the un-learned that proved catastrophic. This sociopathy and cold bloodedness was cultivated and developed by a cultural dynamic. Hitler was merely the match to the gun powder that was manufactured in German society decades and even centuries before.. It was a cold, automated, obedient society; high on efficiency and performance and low on compassion and empathy. So, too, is Trump the match to the gun powder that exists in the minds of so many Americans (40%).
I think Americans (collectively) lack a conscience. Not because we will necessarily tolerate murder and torture but because we don’t really care about the suffering of others. We don’t care!!! If we did do you think our society would look and smell like it does? Hell to the NO! We are indifferent to the poverty that affects nearly 1 in 10 of OUR citizens--that affects 23% of children under 18. We just care about our own bank accounts and possessions, granite countertops, and pursuits of the flesh. We’ve got it all wrong. Standing for the national anthem is not important. Actually caring about our neighbors and how we behave as a country is EVERYTHING.
We have been taught and conditioned that it is ok not to care. We can put a few quarters in the Salvation Army bucket at Christmas time and that makes us feel good enough about ourselves for the whole year. It’s a horribly low standard of civility. It’s as low as the standard that existed when we had institutional slavery. We all thought we were cool then, too. Those of us who were not slaves slept good at night. We didn’t miss a speck of sleep knowing that our society embraced slavery.
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NO ONE does what Oskar Schindler did and completely distances himself from the thinking and culture (Nazis) of those around him. Schindler had no role models—no one among his peers he could look to as inspiration. No other Nazi wanted to save the Jews, and certainly no one wanted to spend their entire fortune and risk their own life to do it. It took Herculean levels of independent and critical thinking. He didn’t do it to please God or so he would have a better lot in “Heaven”.
It wasn’t just his empathy that made him extraordinary; it was his ability to swim upstream against a dangerous current....for the simple and perfect reason that it was the right thing to do.
He was totally not interested in being and acting like anyone else. He set his own standard. His conscience was the master designer. That is the glaring difference between Schindler and virtually everyone else in the world. Schindler had a highly developed conscience; all of his lesser refined human characteristics were powerless when up against his conscience. This is the measure of a man.
How is a sociopath (like Trump and his accomplices) born? What happens (or doesn’t happen) that allows the human conscience to not develop, to prevent empathy and compassion from developing? What synapses in the neurons failed? What is missing that allows Trump to exhibit such horrible personal behavior day after day? What is missing with the 40% who embrace him and excuse his behavior?
Answering these questions (and asking them) is how we prevent the development and emergence of people like Hitler and Trump; people who exhibit and represent the absolute worst human characteristics our civilization has ever seen.
There is no way to camouflage this, and like the Rise of the Third Reich, then....it's upon us now.
