All the Good Germans
And anyone who stands by and participates, by proxy or inaction.
I’ve been dreading writing this essay all week because it is one that will not make me any friends. It’s one that may, in fact, lose me friends.
In fact, I wrote it three months ago, and sat on it, because I know no one will like it, and will certainly flip me shit for it, but today I’m in a mood to quarrel, so fuck it.
One of the things about writing is that it requires you to be honest, and honesty, especially about difficult subjects, is not a thing that people enjoy.
Everyone shoots the messenger if the messenger is telling the truth when things are bad. I’m fine with that. I didn’t get in to writing to make friends, I got into it so I wouldn’t die. Or so I could die for a thing I loved.
I don’t love dishonesty. Neither should you.
My motto has always been “Truth without discretion can save the world (but it won’t make you any friends).”
This is so.
Many people thus butter the message, or put spoon into the sugar, because they have a vested interest in people liking them. In prospering. In making others compelled to hear their words in service to their ego.
This world has slowly broken me of all those inclinations, so what you will hear is unvarnished, and it will perhaps be difficult, and if that disturbs you, I’m afraid you’re going to have to eat a spoonful of tough shit.
The time has come.
The fascists in the United States are a problem. They are not THE problem.
YOU, if you are there, and if you are not actively resisting in any way you can, are the problem.
The Good Germans.
And what is a Good German?
A Good German is the person who sees the Nazis taking people away, suspending all rights, consolidating the government, and because their house, their job, and their family are in Germany, because they have a vested personal interest in the things and security they have accumulated, then pretend that the smoke they smell is not Jewish corpses burning, it’s bread.
Or worse, they know it is Jewish corpses, and they just go “Well, what can I do? It’s not like I can quit my job.”
This is evil. As evil as putting the bullet in the skull yourself, and going forward, you need to know this. And think of it, every single time you turn a blind eye.
I see you doing it.
I will haunt you.
That is my duty, that is my ability, and that is my contribution.
I am the revenant who will speak for your dead.
If you come up with a way that I can be there in person, when I truly believe there is a charge to be had, I will lead the forlorn hope.
Save me a spot, when you decide to get off your asses.
Until then, shame.
My mother was a raging, rampant, cruel, violent, addicted narcissist. She struck me, she belittled me, she tried to kill me when I was a teenager for trying to stop her from drinking.
I haven’t spoken to her in twelve years for a damned good reason.
I’m not sure if she’s evil, because I don’t care. When a thing is functionally indistinguishable from what it might be, the corollary becomes causative.
At first I vilified her exclusively. After all, she did those terrible things. She continued, even, in sobriety, to act in the fashion she had while inebriated, in destructive ways that continue, so far as I am aware, to this day.
That was childish logic on my part. Impractical logic. Lacking pragmatism.
Now I vilify my father more, in my head.
Why?
Because he, while deeply flawed, knew better and could have stopped it at any point.
Yes, at a cost. Our moral duties have a cost.
You all need to learn this.
You have gotten soft and convinced it is not the case through luxury and abundance.
The lecture can come in the form of listening to a messenger you don’t like (me in this case), taking difficult actions, or a bullet fired at your loved ones, in escalating order.
I know which I’d prefer. We’re pretty much past talking at this point owing to inaction.
Moral duties are not two-for-one on Amazon or free, like novels on the internet, nor entitled regurgitation of pablum on social media thinking that a voice or an action. This is not a fucking test you cannot take, or makeup when you’re not sad.
It is a test we are taking now.
You are failing.
You are being a Good German.
My mother was what she was. She is what she is. The Donald Trumps of the world are broken. They know what they’re doing, and they’re reprehensible for it. But they can be stood up to. Their power is illusory, performative, and granted by the consent of the governed. This is true in families, this is true in governments, this is true in religion, and this is true in ourselves.
We must not give ourselves permission to abdicate our moral duties.
I have written before about our criminal apathy as a people, and I will do it again.
Every time she hit me, he could have raised a hand to stop her. Would it have cost him? Yes. Divorces are costly, and unimaginable when marriage is all that you know.
Every time she drank, he could have withdrawn the funds. She might have struck him. She might have stolen his kids. These are scary propositions, yes, but to avoid them because they are scary is to participate.
The contempt that I feel for my American brothers and sisters right now is so palpable and infuriating that I lost control of myself today for the first time in a long time. I let out a primal yawp and lost myself.
And if you don’t too, when I explain, I weep for your fucking soul.
Watch this video.
Watch it.
I will tape your motherfucking eyes open if you try to get out of this.
Watch as a woman is targeted and physically assaulted in an American town hall for making comments. Watch as men in black refuse to identify themselves before assaulting her. Take a good fucking look at what your inaction allows.
Then fucking go do something.
I don’t care what.
Something.
This is happening all over, all the time, and no one is doing anything.
The most disgusting part of the video is not the men with power abusing their power. That is their way. The most disgusting part of the video is not the people who applauded the police out of uniform and their purview of authority without proper identification. That is their way of action, has been for some time. We know this. They are incapable of being good or doing right as a group. Individually, it is in general question.
The thing that made me scream was the men and women who kept filming. That I can watch this video at all. That they could drag her away while she rightly pointed out that these men were behaving like rapists and kidnappers in public in broad daylight ON FILM and instead of throwing the camera down and throwing a punch, they kept filming for the likes. They kept filming for the BIG SHOW they think they’re a part of. They pointed a camera so their voice would be heard even as it is silenced.
Someone will film them instead of helping when they’re dragged away, too, because they are worse than the fascists. They are not fascists, and they stood by and watched, for fear of consequences.
Those are good motherfucking Germans.
When I left this country, many times, I have said a thing no one seems to hear that is nonetheless true.
If you are in Germany as it’s being taken over by Hitler, your options are few, and I do not wish those options upon you, but your options, they are.
1) You get out and fight from afar to the best of your ability by whatever means you have, knowing that to stay is to participate. You will lose much.
2) You stay and you fight like hell on the ground you stand on, knowing that you will lose much.
Note that there is no option three, where you stay, and do not fight, and do not lose anything, because the time for that is past. The time for that was all the years when we voted for Nader and watched Guantanamo be built up and let the police militarize and did not fight for the courts.
I know you do not want to fight, because I see you not fighting. And that you do not want to lose anything, because you will not do anything that causes you to lose even the most minor of comforts.
The world does not care.
I do not care.
This woman being dragged away does not care.
And you will not care when they drag away you and your kids.
Your choice is to fight or participate.
And if you do not fight, god damn you.
None of you are fighting in any real way.
Fight.