"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, "was the ever widening gap, between the government and the people right after the attack. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, and it became always wider.
What happened here was the gradual diminution of a reaction or even a response from the people, little by little, gradually becoming accustomed to being governed by surprise announcements; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap between the government and the people and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about that gap."
And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self deception has grown too heavy, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose.
Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't done ( for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. You are compromised beyond repair. Too late."
- Excerpt from Milton Mayer's They Thought They Were Free c1955
"People who shut their eyes to reality, simply invite their own destruction" - James Baldwin
COMMENT: Are your eyes closed?
Pray for your nation
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