Delicacy of Monday

    

 I am perplexed;

 famous men rest

 somehow,

 retiring into their

 nineties with their

 spouses at their

 side

 and every seventh

 morning fame is
 thwarted for the
 rest


 though they dream
 the pain
 of nobody

          

       


              What was the 
              hollering about 
              last night, in
              South Carolina?

I don't publish Ribbentrop fils,
as he is shown all over the web
these days, as an archetype. Do
I propose a Republican-like simile,
between his monstrosity and theirs?
Certainly not.


How much suffering must one 
will and cause in this country, 
to gain notice for what one does;
how ghastly, before there is shame?


These others are simply innocents
who bother Republicans. The final
one they would deem, too expensive, better left to their god to relieve.

Just after this posting went up,
and just before hopping in the
shower Tuesday morning, I sent 
off an e-mail to the source of 
one of these images, confiding 
in part:


I have felt acute disappointment 
in the publication, here and there, 
of Ribbentrop's picture.
I was extremely reluctant to use it.
But he serves an appropriate purpose 
in the question I ask, 'how terrible 
do you have to be, before you start 
to be ashamed' - For that reason I 
hope you do not disapprove.


Upon emerging from the shower, I saw
his comment blinking on my telephone,
and I published it and then took the
posting down, sending him a note to
say it was not his comment but my un-
derlying dismay with the popularity
of this picture, that brought this
about.


The subject of that picture's al-
lure is a very broad one, but the 
narrower ground on which my friend  
objected to me in private - and
is very welcome to repeat here in
public - is the familiar and prob-
ably accurate judgment, that it's
best to compare nothing to Nazism.


This, however, I had not done. I had
compared conjugal deprivation of the
innocent to 50 years of conjugal lib-
erty for an officer of the Waffen SS,
constantly promoted and at least four
times decorated by the régime, for
leadership of the NSDAP's annihila-
tion machine. I had expressly not com-
pared Republican suppressions of lib-
erty to Nazi precedents, so that I 
could ask the fundamental question of
the hour, and in order to illuminate
exactly how Republicans frame extremist
similes as a matter, evidently, of core
duty.


The page has previously received re-
buke for disallowing one demographic
exclusive rights to complaint against
Nazism. I don't know anyone who hasn't
the duty, much less the right.


The bibliography of this blog is ex-
tensive in its registry of the conduct
of the Waffen SS, from Tim Snyder's
Bloodlands and Max Hastings' Armaged-
don and All Hell Let Loose, to three
great studies of the judeocide, itself.
But the argument in favour of recalling
Nazism's schadenfreude, its whipping 
up of fear and pride, its incitement
of rage and contempt, inter alia, 
is that such touchstones of its means
have a way of seeming to be safely
buried with its bones. That is not 
the case, in my country. All of these
qualities, air strikes excepted, are
directed against my liberty as we
speak, and primarily by Republicans.
For mammals, they quack pretty good.








i     Photography Will McBride
ii    another country

iii  Family album Rudolf von Ribbentrop

      Waffen SS