I’ve been reading two separate books these past mornings, centered around two men: Adolf Hitler and John F. Kennedy. Each suffers from overblown reputation, one for evil and the other good intentions. But it does reinforce in me the idea that there are two forces in politics that feed one another: leaders and movements. Right now we have neither.
This coming Tuesday the Democrats will be given a well-earned cold shower, having provided us with neither vision or leadership for six years. But therein lay the problem of American politics, that we turn to the weak and disingenuous Democrats as relief from strong and deeply stupid Republicans.
Back and forth we go.
Piece of Mindful 
Say what you will about Hitler.
He did kill a lot of Jews.*
*sarc.
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Just got that. A little slow.
Our focus on Nazi evils serves to obfuscate the horrible war crimes committed by Allies.
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That’s what Nuremberg was all about.
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Correct me if I am wrong, but I do not think that the Holocaust was on trial at Nuremberg, rather, they diligently found crimes that Nazis had committed that Allies had not, and prosecuted on those crimes alone. I don’t think Holocaust came into vogue until Eichmann. And again correct me if I am wrong.
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Actually, when you look at some of the criticism of the Nuremberg trials, it was: ‘the charges against the defendants were only defined as “crimes” after they were committed and that therefore the trial was invalid as a form of “victors’ justice”.’
While the Holocaust wasn’t “on trial” per se, the people tried at Nuremberg most definitely participated in the Holocaust.
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Hannah Arendt sat through the Eichmann trials and could not get over the fact the he seemed passive, mild, even harmless. Her conclusion: Evil is banal.
Mine: whatever went on there, Eichmann was not part of it in any significant way, and was used as a scapegoat.
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Hey, just wait till 2016 when we get another Bush-Clinton matchup! That should be a hot and steamy antidote to the current cold shower.
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Yeah, like a choice between being bludgeoned to death or drowned.
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