What was he trying to say?
In light of
last week (Sean Spicer claiming Hitler had never gassed his own people) I had
to take a few days to process this. I had to sort of what bothered me the most.
But, first let’s
look at what he said:
But first of
all: This was an unforced error—he didn’t have to say anything. He was talking
off the top of his head, comparing Assad to Hitler. All of this was Spicer’s
attempt to defend Trump’s aggressive retaliation (59 or 60 missiles, the number
I wasn’t able to nail down) on Shayrat Airfield because of an earlier chemical
attack authorized by Assad. This is despicable. Saddam Hussein gassed his own
people, Kurds. Poison gas was used in both WWI and WWII. From all appearances
it appears to be a horrible way to die. Nevertheless, Sean Spicer sought to
invoke a comparison to Hitler when discussing the US response.
And here is
where he got tripped up.
I’m still not
sure what he was trying to say. I know if talking one to ten in terms of evil,
Hitler is like a fifteen. So that’s where Spicer went. He went nuclear—when it
wasn’t called for. But by doing so he first sounded like he was defending
Hitler, I mean even he wasn’t so bad. I guess in an attempt to say if Hitler is
a fifteen then Assad has to be a twenty on the Richter scale of evil. Keep in
mind this is all subjective.
So he asserts
Hitler wasn’t even so bad as to use gas, then to clarify—on his own people.
A so-called “charitable
ambulance” Gekrat bus
Sonderbehandlung was a Nazi campaign developed to eradicate
the country of the sick, elderly and those deemed no longer fit for work. A
special van went out equipped to gas select individuals. The Nazi campaign was
in operation from 1941 to 1944 and was later expanded to the concentration
camps—thus, death camps. Not Holocaust centers.
These were
Germans. Albeit: gypsies, vagrants, tramps, the “work-shy”, idlers, beggars,
prostitutes, troublemakers, career criminals, rowdies, traffic violators,
psychopaths and the mentally ill. Eventually, selections increasingly included
political or other persecuted peoples, Jews and so-called asoziale. The other.
And, here is
where I find Sean Spicer’s whatever you call it statement the most abhorrent—how
could he forget that these were Germans? How did the very idea that Hitler disposed
of humans at all escape his memory? His sense of history?
Now I’m not
trying to say that Spicer is evil or compare him to Assad or Hitler, and I do
believe he made a mistake; he misspoke if ever this phrase could be used, we
can truthfully say it here. But how could he even begin this thread of logic? Without,
of course, it unravelling. Just like it did for Hitler and Nazi Germany. All
their explanations, eugenics, racism, etc eventually began to call attention to
the fact THAT HE WAS ORDERING HIS OWN PEOPLE TO BE KILLED.
Eventually,
people began to resist and stand up to what their country and government was
doing. Stay tuned for next post.
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