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Ruth Gruber & The Watering Hole Phenomena
Amy and I just watched "Ahead of Time," the documentary about the astonishing life of Ruth Gruber, a pioneering journalist and photographer who, at 99 years old, is still offering profound wisdom about life. If you want to know more about her and the movie, which I cannot recommend highly enough, click here.
When Ruth Gruber left Brooklyn, NY, to become, at that time, the youngest PhD. in the world (20 years old), she did it at the University of Cologne in Germany. While there, despite being Jewish, she attended a rally of the National Socialist Workers Party (the Nazis) at great risk to her safety, sitting in the box next to the platform where she heard Adolph Hitler speak his ultimate hate speech.
In the movie, they show Hitler speaking and saying, "Death to the Jews. Death to America." Sound familiar? These are the exact same words spoken by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, at all of his many political rallies. They are also the exact same words spoken by Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of Lebanon's Hezbollah, an Iranian-supported paramilitary organization of formidable strength which, like Iran, is one of the largest sponsors of terrorism in the world.
When Hitler said "Death to the Jews. Death to America," no one believed that he meant what he said. He's just making political points with his people, most people said. No one, I repeat, no one, expected Adolph Hitler to actually militarize Germany, a nation humbled and almost destroyed by its defeat in the first World War and the crushing inflation that plagued it afterward, unite with Italy and Japan and almost defeat the United States of America, Great Britain, Russia, China, and many other countries. What almost everyone alive today fails to understand is HITLER ALMOST WON WORLD WAR II!
It shouldn't be necessary for me to explain to you why Germany and Japan almost won World War II but I'm sure it is. History is not a subject understood by many people today. But I'm not going to do it here. I'm not even going to go into how it is also possible that Iran and Hezbollah may very well follow in Germany's footsteps once Iran adds deliverable nuclear weapons to its arsenal of terror. Suffice it for me to repeat a statement by Margaret Mead that has given hope to many positive people trying to do positive things, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can
change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." This can, however, also be readily applied to the Russian Revolution, Pol Pot's butchery in Cambodia and, of course, to Adolph Hitler's rise to power in Germany, itself.
So why is there so much dissension among us positive, patriot people today? Why are we so divided? In my humble opinion, the division is actually quite simple and it's not about Liberal/Progressive vs. Conservative or Republican vs. Democrat. To me, the division is "Are you suicidal, by which I mean are you thoughtful and committed to putting the interests of other people ahead of your own and those you love, or are you thoughtful and committed to protecting yourself, those you love, and your country?" I cannot see things any other way, given that I am an intelligent person who knows and respects the lessons taught by history and as someone who reads the news obsessively and is painfully aware of the reality of the fact that there are men with armies and money who get up every day, thoughtful and committed to destroying the United States and, indeed, Western Civilization, which means killing me, Amy, Zane, you and everyone we hold dear.
Why have so many people forgotten the lessons of history when it has never, in the history of the world, been easier to avail one's self of information about what has happened in the world? That's easy; we're soft. We're scared and we're scarred. The traumatic events of September 11th, 2001, are now ten years out and, thanks to the hard work of our security services and a lot of luck we have not yet seen a repeat of such a devastating attack by our enemies. Of course, this could change in the time it takes me to write this sentence and post this blog. Remember, there are hundreds of cells of committed enemies of you and me being thoughtful about how to destroy us at this very moment and our security services and luck cannot always succeed in keeping us safe.
Making our situation even more precarious is that the suicidal/self-protective divide extends to our "leaders," politicians, academics, industrialists, scientists, celebrities, and cultural creatives, and everyone else, thanks to their influence. Far too many people are working overtime keeping the average person from knowing that there is, indeed, an existential war on, a war on the same level as World War II, but different, of course, because we are in the 21st Century, after all. This is all the more reason to learn from history so we can see the similarities between now and the past, i.e., "Death to the Jews. Death to America," as only one example, so that we can identify as much as possible the threats we face now in their new forms.
I am a New Age author. I am a psychic. I have been studying astrology and the tarot and have done readings with both for decades. I believe in the goodness inside all people, even crazy people. I also believe that there are crazy people who can do crazy, evil things to other people as if they are playing with dolls. I also believe that these people can rise to positions of power where they can manipulate other crazy people who can manipulate other people until you have a political system where there are enough people doing the crazy bidding of crazy people to the detriment of good people. This happened with Hitler and Stalin and Mao Tse Tsung and Pol Pot and the thousands of lessor known criminals who prey upon the people of their nations, cities, towns, villages, neighborhoods, etc.
So why do people not want to think about the lessons of history? Why don't they want to remember 9/11? The Holocaust, or should I say, the Holocausts because there have been hundreds if not thousands of them down through the ages?
I call it the "watering hole" phenomena. Society is like a bunch of animals down at the local watering hole in Africa. Everybody is busy drinking when out of the reeds comes a lion or some other predator and starts chasing one of them, catching her or him, killing, and eating this unfortunate animal. Everyone at the watering hole takes off running in all directions and they don't come back until they're really, really thirsty. But they do come back. And when they come back, they're very wary, they look all around before they put their head down to drink, they take a sip and quickly look up and all around again and again with every sip.
But the next day they're not as nervous and the day after that they're even less wary and cautious. And in a few more days they're drinking just like they were when the animal was taken and killed and eaten by the lions, figuring...? Actually, I don't know what they're figuring, it makes no sense to me. I'd be looking around each and every time as careful and nervous as I am when I drive my car because just because I'm a good driver doesn't mean that the other cars on the road are driven by good drivers.
And sooner or later, the lions strike again; the lions ALWAYS strike again, of course. You know it. I know it. I suppose the people who think we should all love each other and that that, for some reason, means that we should forget that there are lots and lots of bad people and contingencies that we KNOW are ALWAYS going to be out there waiting to strike like lions, that they know it, too, but they don't want to admit it, to themselves or to others? I don't know.
All I know is that the world needs more people like Ruth Gruber to report on what is going on. This woman was the neuron of the world's brain synapses that helped the world see that sending displaced Jews back to Germany was one of Britain's more horrendous and cruel mistakes, and so they were allowed to go back to Palestine, after having been attacked by British ships trying to get into what was to become Israel. Unless we have people like Ruth Gruber, living their extraordinary lives and doing so much good, the majority of people will simply put their heads down and content themselves drinking from the watering hole while the lions laugh and get ready to kill and eat the weak.
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