INTEL REPORT--Are we on the road to another world war? I woke up to a lunatic President threatening Iran…again. This time, because (hold on, your eyes might glaze over) Yemeni rebels attacked the Saudi oilfields with cruise missiles and drones. (LOL, wait what?
Believing that Yemeni rebels have cruise missiles and drones is a little bit like believing Saddam had WMDs or that a bunch of dudes in Afghanistani caves were scarier than the combined armies of the world. It’s another lie. But I digress.) You’d be forgiven for shuddering. Deep down, I’d bet you’ve thought it at least a few times over the last year or several. World war. Is another one coming?
Let’s think about it together — and I promise I’ll be gentle. And rather than getting bogged down in the mind-numbing intricacies of this country’s rebels versus that country’s insurgents, let’s zoom out and look at the big picture — because there’s one single number we should all be very worried about right about now, one that predicts another world war.
How did World War II start? Why did fascism rise? Was it just because Germans are strange and nasty people in lederhosen? Of course not. Germans are civilized and decent people. And they were back then, too — despite us today perhaps not wanting to believe it. But that was Arendt’s point: the banality of evil. Something happened to make the average German a rabid, cheering, violent…fascist. Or at least the kind of person who looked away when their Jewish neighbours were dispossessed, expropriated, shunned, beaten, starved, ghettoized, and…murdered.
What was that mysterious “something”? (Read the rest.)
-cw
