Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Hitler Is To Religion As Kumquats Are To Trigonometry

Completely orthogonal.

I'm trudging through Mein Kampf right now. I doubt I'll make it to the end. It's utter sludge, obsessed with race and politics*. Uncle Adolph has some sharp observations about houses of parliament and congresses - that the elected representatives, for the most part, are weathervanes who change their opinions to match the majority so they can keep their jobs - but outside of those, it's pretty torpid stuff.

I just finished a long oration on religion.

Mein Kampf, if you didn't know, was dictated to Rupolph Hess while Hitler was in Landsberg prison for agitating or protesting or maybe just being a frightful bore at parties.

Anywho, this particular spate of blather expressed clearly Hitler's belief that church and state should be separate and any intersection between the two should be punished. That is, a political movement was stupid to try to co-opt a religion and priests and ministers should keep their mouths shut about politics, unless, of course, they supported the German people, Then they could go at it.

I've not done research into the topic, but my bet is that any priests or ministers who backed the Nazis did so for the same reasons some priests and ministers back Hillary and Bernie - it just happens to align with their political views. If they gained prominence, it was likely because the local party hacks used them to validate the party, despite what Hitler said.

Whatever those unfortunates did, Adolph in no way shows any comprehension of Christianity. He not only doesn't write about it outside the prism of race and politics, it's obvious that it doesn't inform his worldview at all. He is all Germans all the time and everything else is in service of this monomania.

Special bonus tidbit: He goes off on the Jews with crazy rants pretty early in the book and it's obvious that he's a complete nut. Those worldly leaders and businessmen who thought they could work with Herr Hitler had clearly never cracked open a copy of Mein Kampf, or if they had, they didn't bother taking him seriously. Pathetic. Der Fuhrer told you exactly what he thought and what he wanted to do and, like the modern ostriches ignore Islamic radicals' manifestos, the German businessmen and pusillanimous creeps like Neville Chamberlain just blew it off.

The Nevster would have waived the Iranian nuke deal paperwork around, too, dismissing all those "Death to America" daily vocal warm up exercises with ease.
* - Obsessed with race and politics? Who does that remind you of?**

** - I just noticed that this classic question ends with a preposition. That's nothing write home about.***

*** - Another one!****

**** - OK, I'll stop now.

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