pansypoo's personal rant page.

trenchant passage from Studs terkel's "the Good war"
'if our general population were subjected to the same trends and pressures that the germans were,a great many of us would d the same.maybe not as many,because we are not quite as authortarian as the germans,but a lot of us would.I think we do still have SOME BUILT IN POLITICAL SAFEGUARDS, BUT THEY ARE NOT IRONCLAD. If the depression gets worse-things are getting more bitter than they were a few years ago-I can see some of the same things developing.BUT IT WOULD TAKE A LOT(9/11) MORE THAN I SEE GOING ON HERE NOW to come to that.
Most of our heroes have been ordinary people. the ordinary man is capable of enormous heroism and enormous bestiality.That's the hard lesson of Nuremburg. It's very easy to blame Nazism on the bestiality of these people. IF A THOUSAND PEOPLE ARE KILLED BY AN EARTHQUAKE,it's aterrible thing,but its not tragic. There's no tragedy because there's no human element in it. It doesn't teach you any lesson except to watch out for earthquakes. The hard lesson of the tragedy is that ordinary people can be brought into a CONDITION TO DO THESE THINGS.That's much more dangerous.-Telford Taylor