If readers are wondering why the blog is concerned recently with totalitarianism, it is because of the recent book already mentioned by George Roberts on natural law - by which is defined the state's relationship with the individual - and another that I am now finishing, "The Garden of Beasts," by Erick Larson. While the former is decidedly conservative, the latter is a fascinating anecdotal history concerning the Dodd family's stay in Berlin in 1933-34, the father being a history professor surprisingly appointed as ambassador to Germany for those years. By the time he arrived in June of 1933, Hitler had been chancellor for 6 months, and the changes brought to Germany in that time he found astonishing. Having attended the University of Leipzig before WWI, he knew of what he spoke - that, like magic, Germans were saluting Hitler everywhere, Brownshirts ran rampant and unchecked throughout the cities, and the German people had generally become docile in the face of a rule that alarmed, immediately, all the world.
The question then, and still remains: how was this possible? How did this change occur so quickly and completely? Germany was not yet a dictatorship and the people, with their conventional president still alive, could have gotten rid of the "silly little man" as many sophisticated Germans called Hitler. Yes, they had gone through a humiliating defeat and treaty in and after WWI; and yes, the country, like much of the world, was in depression. But the rapidity and completeness of the change still astonished historians (who will never tire to write about it).
The Germans call it the "zeitgeist", or spirit of the people, and this has fascinated me since a revolution of smaller, but still consequential, size occurred to millions of young people in the 60's.
Those not a part of it or born later may not believe it, but its fruits - for better and for worse - are working in our society today. I will not go into the particulars of it, but will say that I felt it - at the age of 15 in 1969, I felt it as an overwhelming power which I has amazed me ever since (in first chapter of Dream Weaver). It was like a wave, a triumphant breakthrough which we, the affected young, were eager to ride, even to an unknown beach. It was filled with the magic of unbelievable promise, a wave that would wash away all we found unlikable in our current lives and bring us to - utopia. I believed it, just as millions of others did. Now I stand back in astonishment - what the hell had happened?
I have looked for such waves since in America and found them; usually they concern fads that instantly ignite a harmless national obsession, to be quickly displaced by another some months or a few years later (think Pet Rocks and "Don't worry, be happy"). Others have more profound impact, although on a narrow theme: anyone who was an adult in the 1980's will recall the fascination we had with secret child molestation, as if it were something new and growing (neither was true). Another was the "Obama" wave of 2008 - I was not inclined towards him, but for a week I felt the excitement and, for that week, said to myself, "what the heck? Why not?" We may point to media and advertisements and propaganda, but we have these all the time. Why do some things catch with flame and others do not?
There is, I think, a spirit to the people, whether of nations or congregations. It is controlled by something beyond calculation. Is it good or bad? In Germany, it proved fatal; in America, not (so far). Is it karma? Is it the accumulation of the past both spoken and not that reached a culmination, a breaking point? Most importantly,can we influence it in some non-direct way so that it will not pull us in the direction of Hitler's Germany? Thoughts to ponder for another blog. May the spirit of Thanksgiving go to all, FK
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