Author Archives: michaelulinedwards

BLOATED AIRHEAD

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Campaign 2016. Raise an issue as a headline. One headline is USA debt. It’s a lot. Everyone knew that long before the election began. Next headline, change tax plans.

One bloated mind is unwilling and incapable of speaking intelligently about anything beyond repetition. The reason for lack of understanding is the bloated brain has a head of air – yes, the good old airhead. This candidate says he’s huge, read bloated.

The airhead fumbles while trying to amplify the headline, but no use listening. No use repeating the same thing, again, again, and again, three times in a minute. The public needs facts to be repeated. They don’t need to be a laughing stock and corrected by Democrats in their company when they repeat the party line: I was critical of women because no painted ladies smiled my way. The public needs facts, logic and reason rather than the lies, obstinacy and misstatement of a bloated old airhead.

Many candidates talk to citizens presenting their cases why they should be nominated as the party’s candidate. They don’t rely on headlines, on cliches, slogans, folk sayings and homilies. They discuss policies and programs and explain why one approach is better than another. In this way politicians reveal themselves as human beings. But the bloated airhead has ordered people from campaign events: “Get her out of here. I know she’s a ten and justifiably evaluates my misuse of cosmetics, my over-use of hair spray, my donning ill-fitting clothes and my carrying excess blubber.” (“I’m frustrated. After Christmas I couldn’t get into my clothes. They had to be taken out and more material needed tailoring because I overate and gained 20 pounds. I hate to exercise. My double chin became bigger and bigger obliterating the double chin and becoming an extra neck, like I’m storing snacks there.”)

The bloated airhead has never felt more confident. All his sycophants drool over his every move. Everyone knows his name, and no one trusts him. Everyone knows Hilary, and no one trusts her, either. Everyone has an idea who Bill and Hilary are, but no one knows who the hell the bloated airhead is. The American people may have to spring for the devil they know rather than the terror lurking in and descending from some far away, high up executive suit: Every day he demonstrates he hates people; he detests critics; he loathes criticism; he only likes to talk to people who are elites; he likes persons around him who say yes to every whim; he does not listen; he knows the headline for everything or something close but knows no details, specifics or background knowledge. [He knew Paris was once part of Germany, his homeland uber alles, but he does not know the Germans lost the European part of World War Two, so the French now have it.]

The Presidency is not an on-the-job training program; the bloated airhead is too fat for the position. But he can not be fired, terminated or liquidated if elected, only impeached. It is best to avoid the airhead on any ballot.

AMERICAN LITERATURE

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About a month ago I read a blog by a frustrated writer who would read no more. She had purchased a recently highly praised novel by a young American novelist. The blogger quoted the first paragraph of the novel; one sentence seem to run an entire paragraph. Obviously someone was trying to save on confusion and annoyances of periods.

I started the first sentence, an enormity of one disconnected sentence attached to another by commas and eventually the author or her editor, or the publisher who was paying by-the-word stopped printing the subject of each clause and frequently dispersed with the verb, leaving prepositional phrases abandoned, and floating adjectives and wandering adverbs heading off to the new planet in the solar system. Obviously, the adverbs and the adjectives don’t know where they’re going because no one knows where the new planet is. For the reader everything is as clear as mud.

I stopped reading. There is a literary movement afoot to make American more like Latin, German and Russian, without the excess declensions, specialized prepositions and multiple conjugations along with a fondness for the subjunctive where it’s not needed. In fact any language with declensions and conjugations up the wazoo provides a model for New York publishers and editors. Thereupon, all the authors pretend learnedness to be pretentious. Remember each of them have inked deals with Mephistopheles.

My analysis of the current American language in novels is correct. I did not appreciate it until reading Mein Kampf, this Spring. The translator, Konrad Heiden, observed about the German work,

Most of Hitler’s stylistic peculiarities represent no problem for the translator. The
mixed metaphors are just as mixed in one language as in the other. A lapse of
grammatical logic can occur in any language. An English-language Hitler might be
just as reductant as the German one; a half-educated writer, without clear ideas,
generally feels that to say a thing only once is rather slight.
There are, however, certain traits of Hitler’s style that are peculiarly German and
do present a problem in translation. Chief among these are the length of sentences,
the substantives, and the German particles.
A translation must not necessarily be good English, but it must be English such as
some sort of English author – in this case, let us say, a poor one – might write. On the
other hand, it would be wrong to make Hitler an English-speaking rabble-rouser,
because his very style is necessarily German.
No non-German would write such labyrinthine sentences. The translator’s last – often a feat of tightrope-walking – is to render the ponderousness and even convey a German flavor, without writing German-American sentences. In general I have cut down the sentences only when the length made them unintelligible in English. (The German language with its cases and genders does enable the reader to find his way though tangles which in a non-inflected language would be inextricable.) Contrary to the general opinion, the German text contains only one or two sentences that make no sense at first reading.
The substantives are a different matter. Here it has been necessary to make greater
changes, because in many cases the use of verbal nouns is simply incompatible with the English language. No pedant, no demagogue, no police clerk writes that way. I have used the construction where it seemed conceivable in English, elsewhere reluctantly abandoned it. German stylists may say that Hitler’s piling up of substantives is bad German, but the fact remains the most numerous German writers do that same thing, while this failing is almost non-existent in English.
In approaching Hitler’s use of particles, it must be remembered that he was at home in the Lower Bavarian dialect. Even without the dialect, much German prose, some not of the worst quality, abounds in those useless little words: wohl, ja, dean, schon, noch, eigentlich, etc. The South Germans are especially addicted to them, and half of Hilter’s sentences are positively clogged with particles, not to mention such private favorites as besonders and damals which he stews about quite needlessly. His particles even have a certain political influence, for in the petit bourgeois mind they are, liked carved furniture, an embodiment of the home-grown German virtues, while their avoidance is viewed with suspicion as foreign and modernistic. There are no English equivalents, and an attempt to translate them results in something like the language of the Katzenjammer Kids. Sometimes, however, it is possible to give a similar impression of wordiness by other means.

The translation follows the first edition. The most interesting changes made in the later German editions have been indicated in the notes. Where Hitler’s formulations challenge the reader’s credulity, I have quoted the German original in the notes. Seeing is believing.

Likewise, American novels, published recently, are actually translations drawn from more ancient, clumsy, illogical, word-favoring languages. That is the state of American literature today. Seeing is believing.

MEIN KAMPF – RACE

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Adolph is devoted to ancient rituals, science and theology. Anthropology declares there are distinctions among nationalities. Although they all look the same, Pole supposedly are Slavs; Germans are Teutons, although their stock came from the Ukraine and central Asia. Note the Germans tribe opposing the Romans during the Classical era moved: the Lombards to Italy, the Franks to France, the Visigoths to Spain. According to Adolph those persons are not German and not even Teutonic. The English became a mix of peoples: Britons, Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons and Norsemen.

In Mein Kampf Adolph tells readers only Germans are Germans: “…it is a scaredy conceivable fallacy of thought to believe that a Negro or a Chinese … will turn into a German because he learns German and is willing to speak the German language in the future and perhaps even give his one vote to a German political party. That any such Germanization is in reality a de-Germanization never become clear to our bourgeois national world. For if today, by forcing a universal language on them, obvious differences between different peoples are bridge over and finally effaced, this means the beginning for a bastardization, and hence in our case not a Germanization but a destruction of the German element.” (Page 388, 389; see also, 438-39)

It came to pass that Don Trump trumpeted this favorite passage from Mein Kampf: Persons of Mexican parents were not American, although born in Indiana. All Americans reject Adolph’s view of Neanderthal anthropology. Americans can ask themselves, how have the mongrel populations done in mano-e-mano showdowns against the PURE? Just after Pearl Harbor, Americans believed Americans of Japanese descent were not American. We put most of the West Coast population into concentration camps. How did the Japanese-Americans react? They joined the Army and went to war.

How did the mongrels speaking English, fully accustomed to American life and following American ways do against the race of supermen, racial superior, he-men pure and inbred? No contest: The Japanese-Americans kicked German butts into the fatherland and beyond. The U.S. Army 442 is the most heavily decorated division in army history. The Japanese-Americans affirmed citizenship for themselves and their families 73 years ago, and for other sons from countries and their families contributing to our war efforts.

And Don Trump? He should come into the Twenty-First Century rather than hold and defend social norms and ideals prevalent in American between World War One and Two.

MEIN KAMPF – AVERAGE JOHANN

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Adolph did not think much of his followers: Scum recurs in the text; weakling is another word. Adolph wants his followers to be disciples, not of a brotherhood where consent, love and goodness are controlling behaviors. He demands his followers be intolerant, violent and brutal especially to everyone who disagrees with them or who does not look like them.

...the masses are slow moving and they always require a certain time before they are ready, even to notice a thing, and only after the simplest ideas are repeated a thousand times will be masses finally remember them.(page 185)
On top of this there is the fact that the mass of people as such is lazy; … they remain inertly the spirit of their old habits (page 470)
At night…they will succumb more easily to the dominating force of a stronger will.
…mysterious twilight in Catholic churches, the burning of lamps, incense,
goal of oratory is “illiterate common people.”(page 475)

I cannot think why any human being or a group of human beings would follow, except Adolph is correct. Human beings are group animals. We live together in families, clans, neighborhoods, villages, towns, cities, regions, states and nations. Most people like to feel part of something, trusting on friendship alone, believing in a similar set of ideas that once made sense but are not completely reasoned, hoping unity of community action will bring about changes. People sometimes invest together.
Adolph may believe that all human beings need leading, but he is wrong. He could lead no more than one-third of the German nation to vote for him, yet he became dictator. How that happened is a failure of the German people and its government. They viewed politics as a combination of physical and psychological forces in which they did not want to participate. The Nazis themselves were boisterous as a tactic to confine, eliminate speech and communication and drown the opposition. Nazi opponents who allowed the Nazis to act thusly (yet fund them) forsook rights to communicate opinions, the nature of their expression and demonstrate their presence on Earth. Perhaps it was easier to go to the opera or symphony that night than to stand against Adolph..
Adolph dusted away all gratitude to party adherents as he ascended in the hierarchy. He considered many competing, compelling leaders enemies during the 1920s and early 1930s. They were not the common people; few of them died of old age in their beds. Adolph compelled all Germans to accept Nazi politics after April 1934. He killed a bunch of Nazis during the night of the long knives in June 1934.
Mein Kampf and the Nazi approach to the individual loses the human element. The low-down German is the hero someone who can be idolized. But look closer and those low-down Germans (scum, weaklings, illiterate common people) do not exist. They are ignored. No one in power who wants to deal with such low beings, lowlifes.

Instead, the low-down German is always mentioned and is never identified. He becomes a marketing force on which the Party can concentrate. Yet none of the party policies will benefit the low-down German, except to make his life worse. He is forgotten; he is a loser.
Adolph took power in 1933, and five years later took steps toward War. 1939 Berlin was unlike 1914 Berlin, despite the Nazi hype. In 1914 there was dancing in the streets when War was announced. 1939 Berliners merely went about their business without demonstrating approval.
1945 was a crushing blow to all Germans. Low-down Germans had much company, where the Nazis intended all citizens to be.

The lesson from Adolph and his outcome is elections are like marriages. You may have to live with decisions of another person the remainder of your life. Before trusting anyone with a vote and consenting to policies, study, learn, know, realize and if possible like the individual receiving the vote. Citizens should look at actions and words, not yesterday’s speeches, but last month’s, six months ago, a year back. In Adolph’s case how will he help the average low-down German? Heft, consider and judge everything, and decide. Nothing in Adolph’s record suggested Adolph gave a hoot about any single low-down German.

MEIN KAMPF – Propaganda

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In a presentable way Adolph relays two areas of this book providing excellent detail and precise analysis of the issues. Propaganda is one issue. The text says it best:

The function of propaganda does not lie in the scientific training of the individual, but in calling the masses’ attention to certain facts, processes, necessities, etc., whose significance is thus for the first time placed within their field of vision.(page. 179)
The whole art consists of doing this so skillfully that everyone will be convinced that the fact is real, the process necessary, the necessity correct, etc. But since propaganda is not and cannot be the necessity itself, since its foundation, like the poster, consists in attracting the attention of the crowd, endnote in education those who are already educated or who are striving after education and knowledge, its effect for the most part must be aimed at the emotions and only a very limited degree at the so-called intellect.
All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be…
The more modest its intellectual ballast, the more exclusively it takes into consideration the emotions of the masses, the more effective it will be…
The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses.
The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on those in slogans (page 180)
until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. (page 181)
[T]he most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless on fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.(page 184)
…the masses are slow moving and they always require a certain time before they are ready, even to notice a thing, and only after the simplest ideas are repeated a thousand times will be masses finally remember them.
When there is a change, it must not alter the content of what the propaganda is driving at, but in the end must always say the same thing. …the slogan itself…(page 185)

Once the propaganda serves its purpose and a following and organization may ensue, propaganda continues as the primary means to communicate between the leadership and the little people. Adolph gives many paragraphs describing propaganda and its purposes (p. 580-596), but it is speculation. Adolph does not know how effective propaganda is. This book was written in 1924, four years before the Nazis had any sort of electoral success as a minority party. They never became a majority party by an election.
Adolph violates one of this primary rules here. He drifts into theory, mind-bending speculation about what might happen. The actual events in Germany from 1925-1933 differ widely from the theorems Adolph offers. At best he describes measures that may lead to a successful advertising campaign.

MEIN KAMPF – Adolph on Oratory

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When writing about orators and how to reach the audience, Adolph is clearly writing about himself as a younger man addressing small meetings but not speaking to large rallies. He didn’t have those opportunities when this book was published, so his comments are inapplicable to mass meetings. Adolph knew the substance of this subject matter expertly. He watches the audience, small gatherings, larger assemblies. In some way Adolph is also telling rivals in the Nazi movement that they cannot communicate as well as he does. Mein makes pronouncements: Adolph has worked very hard to get where he is. No one else has the talent to carry on to larger forums.

It is not our duty to inform all weaklings that this is a question of to be or not to be.
I achieved an equal understanding of the importance of physical terror toward the individual and the masses.
Here, too, the psychological effect can be calculated with precision.
Terror at the place of employment, in the factory, in the meeting hall, and on the occasion of mass demonstrations will always be successful unless opposed by equal terror.(page 44)

I understood the infamous spiritual terror, which this movement exerts, particularly on the bourgeois, which is neither morally more mentally equal to such attacks; at a given sign it unleashes a veritable barrage of lies and slanders against whatever adversary seems most dangerous, until the nerves of the attacked persons break down and, just to have peace again, they sacrifice the hated individual.
….the fools obtain no peace,(page 43)

The psyche of the great masses is not receptive to anything that is half-hearted and weak.
Like the woman whose psychic state is determined less by grounds of abstract reason rather than by an indefinable emotional longing for a force which will complement her nature, and who,
consequently would rather bow to a strong man than dominate a weakling, likewise the masses love a commander more than a petitioner and feel inwardly more satisfied by a doctor…, tolerating no other beside itself, than by the granting of liberalistic freedom with which, as a rule, they can do little, and are prone to feel the they have been abandoned. They are equally unaware of their shameless spiritual terrorization and the hideous abuse of their human freedom for they absolutely fall to suspect the inner insanity of the whole doctrine. All they see is the ruthless..(page 42)

“Particularly the broad masses of the people can be moved only by the power of speech. And all great movements are popular movements, stirred either by the cruel Goddess of Distress or by the firebrand of the word hurled among the masses; they are not the lemonade-like outpourings of literary aesthetes and drawing room heroes.
Only a storm of hot passion are turn the destinies of peoples, and he alone can arouse passion who bears it within himself.
It alone gives its chosen one the words which like hammer blows can open the gates to the heart of the people.
But the man whom passion fails and whose lips are sealed – he has not been chosen by Heaven to proclaim its will.
…the writer remains by his ink-well, engaging in theoretical activity, if his intelligence and ability are equal to it; for leadership he is neither born nor chosen.
A movement with great aims must therefore be anxiously on its guard not to lose contact with the broad masses.
It must examine every question primarily from this standpoint and make its decisions accordingly.
It must….avoid everything which might diminish or even weaken its ability to move the masses, not for the demagogic reasons, but in the simple knowledge … without the mighty force of the mass of a people, no great idea, however lofty and noble it may seem, can be realized. (page 107)

In essence Adolph admits he is establishing a group using terror and violence to extend its reach. Adolph’s organization is no different from many crime schemes and enterprises operating in the United States. But they are prohibited by laws. Many state laws forbid behaviors and actions. At the Federal level RICO, criminal and civil enforcement, prohibit the illegal acts by which the Nazis rose.

The orator and the leader are the same person, and to spotlight that human being, he is the personality using mysterious powers. He establishes personal connections with the faithful; he has mastered the communication to lead the nation from its slump; he will make Germany Great Again. [Nobody ever explained how Germany could be Great Again, when its University system was deprived of its best minds: USA 10 – Germany 0.]

…if he is a brilliant popular orator and not be likely to repeat the same reproach and the same substance in the same form. He will always let himself be borne by the great masses in such a way to speak to the hearts of his audience. And if he errs, in the slightest, he has the living correction before him. As I have said, he can read from the facial expression of his audience whether, firstly, they understand what
he is saying, whether, secondly they can follow the speech as a whole, and to what extent, thirdly he has convinced them of the soundness of what he has said.(page 470-471)

Once again Adolph slams the simpleminded, gullibility of his followers. They are to think nothing but ponder emotions he has given them. The followers seem to have no emotions, hopes and aspirations of their own, so they need him to supply both brain and heart. It is an orator alone and no other person communicating who can tell people what to think and what and how to believe.

…it is not seldom a question of overcoming prejudices which are not based on real, but, for the most part unconsciously, are supported only by sentiment. To overcome this barrier of instinctive aversion, of emotional hatred, of prejudiced rejection, is a thousand times harder than to correct a faulty of erroneous scientific opinion. False concepts and poor knowledge can be eliminated by instruction, the resistance of the emotions never. Here only an appeal to those mysterious powers themselves can be effective; and the writer can hardly ever accomplish his, but almost exclusively the orator.(page 471)

The movement must promote respect for personality by all means; it must never forget that in personal with lies the worth of everything human; that every idea and every achievement is the result of one man’s creative force and that the admiration of greatness constitutes, not one a tribute of thanks to the later, but casts a unifying bond around the grateful.
Personality cannot be replaced; especially when it embodies not the mechanical but the cultural and creative element….[a great statesman can not be replaced] “For activity lies always in the province of art. It is not mechanically trained, but inborn by God’s grace.”
The greatest revolutionary changes and achievements of this earth, its greatest cultural achievements, the immortal deeds in the field of statesmanship, etc, are forever inseparably bound up with a name and are represented by it. To renounce doing homage to a great spirit means the loss of an immense strength…. (page 352)

…Certain ideas and even tied up with certain men. This applies most of all to those ideas whose contents originates, not in a scientific truth, but in the world of emotion, or as it is beautifully and clearly expressed today, reflects an “inner experience.” All those ideas, which have nothing to do with cold logic as such, but represent only pure expressions of feelings, ethical conceptions, etc, are chained to the existence of men, to whose intellectual imagination and creative power (page 287)

When should the leader, the orator, the personality reach his followers and gather more disciples? At night when men are tired, looking for relaxation and looking forward to the morning. (page 472-475) Adolph gives examples from the Theater, and notes the better reception to plays at night. Adolph likes the lure and setting of the nighttime services in the Catholic church, mysterious twilight, strategic use of fire. Given the correct stimuli a human being, usually “illiterate common people,” can feel transported to the proper state of mind.

It is entirely possible that Adolph before World War One attempted to act in the theater, or he took lessons.

MEIN KAMPF – Reading & Art

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Adolph does not think much of persons who read, ponder, think and conclude. After going through all the words of this book, most of which are forgettable and destined for oblivion, the reader must conclude that Adolph had trouble reading; he did not like to read; he had a reading impairment; he had problems putting together the logical bases so German sentences would make sense. He was never able to take a book (and likely never this book) and distill its arguments into words of his own. Adolph was bewildered and frightened by those who could discuss ideas, and use books and facts as frames and as references to support an argument.

People who read “possess a mass of ‘knowledge,’ but their brain is unable to organize and register the material they have taken in. They lack the art of sifting what is valuable for them from that which is without value, or retaining the one forever, and if possible, not even seeing the rest, but in anywise not dragging it around with them as useless ballast.” [A] “ reader now believes himself in all seriousness to be ‘educated’ to understand something of life, to have knowledge, while in reality, with every new acquisition of this kind of education, he is growing more and more removed from the world until, no infrequently, he held up in a sanitarium or in parliament.” (page 35)

This paragraph suggests that Adolph believes all readers are like himself. Give a book dedication and great study, and the text sits in Adolph’s mind clogging it, and interfering with extraneous superficial chattering and false sentimentalities that Adolph wanted to hear, like eating cream topping pastries sprinkled with sugared cinnamon.

Adolph believes that a human being can be retarded and become a moron. But rather than use knowledge to his best benefit, Adolph derives new terms for being intellectual (the first, six pages earlier didn’t take):
[W]hat a difference between the glittering phrases about freedom…beauty, and dignity in the theoretical literature, the delusive welter of words seeming expressing the most profound and laborious wisdom, the loathsome humanitarian morality – all this written with the incredible gall that some with the prophetic certainty – and the brutal daily press, shunning no villainy, employing every means of slander, lying with a virtuosity that would bend iron beams, all in the name of this gospel of a new humanity. The one is addressed to the simpletons of the middle, not to mention the upper, educated, ‘classes,’ the other to the masses.(page 41)

It appears that Adolph is intimidated by “the glittering phrases about freedom…beauty, and dignity in the theoretical literature, the delusive welter of words seeming expressing the most profound and laborious wisdom, the loathsome humanitarian morality…” Adolph was incapable of reaching those levels in speech, and he was incapable of attaining them by other means.
Remove glittering phrases, dignity, beauty, profound wisdom and humanitarian morality from and language, and it becomes dead. There is no communication.

What became most amazing was the rush to Richard Wagner and a few other immortals expressing German culture [some of Wagner’s folklore was Celtic (Irish/Welsh) origin, a fact lost on Adolph]. Wagner was definitely mad enough for Adolph to love him without much alteration, although one wonders how many Nazi big-wigs actually made it through 4 1/2 hours of Goetterdammerung. Americans are forewarned by Mark Twain, “I’ve heard the first Act of each Wagner opera with pleasure.”

Adolph has failed to advance logic, reasons and conclusions why the finer points of language and writing ought to be neglected, all the while, wholeheartedly, endorsing the lyrical mediocrity of Richard Wagner.

MEIN KAMPF -General comments

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MEIN KAMPF, Adolph Hitler

There is no way to review this book at once. The author’s strength is speech, specifically oratory. The first thing to know, the purpose of oratory is not to be reasonable and sensical. It is directed to the emotions of human beings, as though humans are being entertainment and are captured by the art of the speech before them. Hence, this author purposefully avoids attempts to explain anything in English or German.
It is not unusual for the modern reader to find any more of interest in the text than I did: 6.5 pages of 686 pages, less than one page of interesting text out of 100 pages. One poignant set of sentences explains why Adolph believes in Catholic priest celibacy. (p. 432) Adolph also likes to talk about syphilis and prostitution. (pages. 251, 254-55)

How hard is it to upset emotional prejudices, moods, sentiments, etc. and to replace them by others, on how many scarcely calculable influence and conditions success depends, the sensitive speaker can just by the fact that even the time of day in which the lecture takes place can have a decisive influence on the effect. The same lecture, the same speaker, the same theme, have an entirely different effect at ten o’clock in the morning, at three o’clock in the afternoon, or at night. (page. 473)
Sunday morning at ten o’clock. The result was depressing, yet at the same time extremely instructive: the hall was full, the impression really overpowering, but the mood ice cold; no one become war, and I myself as a speaker felt profoundly unhappy at being unable….
This should surprise no one. Go to a theatre performance and witness a play at three o’clock in the afternoon and the same play with the same actors at eight at night,
encroachments upon man’s freedom of will…(p. 474)
 In the morning and even during the day people’s will power seems to struggle with the greatest energy against an attempt to force upon them a strange will and strange opinion. At night…they will succumb more easily to the dominating force of a stronger will.
…mysterious twilight in Catholic churches, the burning of lamps, incense,
goal of oratory is “illiterate common people.” (page 475)

Since organization in the text is lacking, I write what Adolph says why organization is not important – in books or in politics. His first point made a few hundred times throughout the book: Adolph does not want anyone suspecting it was written by anyone academic, intellectual or disciplined. It necessarily stands to reason that Adolph prizes the superficial, craves spontaneity and revels in the nonsensical.

I am an enemy of too rapid and too pedantic organizing. It usually produces nothing but a dead mechanism, seldom a living organization. For organization is a thing that owes its existence to organic life, organic development. Ideas which have gripped a certain number of people will always strive for a greater order, and a great value must be attributed to this inner molding. Here, too, we must reckon with the weakness of men, which leads the individual, at first at least, instinctively to resist a superior mind. If an organization is mechanically ordered from above, there exists a great danger that a once appointed leader, not yet accurately evaluated and perhaps none too capable, will from jealousy strive to prevent the rise of abler elements within the movement. That harm that arises in such a case can, especially in a young movement, be of catastrophic significance.
…it is more expedient for a time to disseminate (p. 579)

This poorly constructed paragraph has three topic sentences; none are developed; none are related. For instance while arguing with himself about the value of organizing, he calls it dead but preferably a living development. What is being developed, dead or alive, organic or inorganic is not explained.
He next complains about the weakness of men, “resisting superior men.” Adolph includes himself among the superior minds. He always complains about people who read to gain knowledge, stiff intellectual types. Instead the best knowledge comes through oratory.
It is impossible to use oratory to extend wisdom or intelligence. It should be pointed out that during his life time, no one in Germany believed it necessary or worth while to memorialize any of Adolph’s words in stone. And note, Adolph was an absolute dictator in a totalitarian system.
Adolph’s third topic sentence demonstrates the jeopardy of this non-organizational approach. If the group leader does not know why he is doing, if he’s not on the ball and he’s wet behind the ears, and he is likely not the leader.
This is the ever-present fear existing in a movement: Following one path without realizing a different path needs taking, is catastrophic.But if a leader does not have the mental, social and acuity to advance the movement, it is time to choose anew.
Adolph believes wrongly that organization can be achieved by propaganda – use slogans, express fears, advance wants. Solutions should seem simple, however impracticable Adolph gives pages of propaganda notes, most of it is ridiculous and simplistic, except to a German.
Yet most political organization cannot survive on propaganda – use slogans to support an entire party, express policies of fearsome offer and advance hope based upon hate. Adolph omits the germs of ideas which stick with people into the future. It is the future sale of politics that Adolph finds tedious, boring and completely unpredictable. That was the history of him and his party. The Nazis were never the majority. Circumstances let them take executive offices, and Hindenburg’s death allowed Adolph to take all power.

The text of the MEIN KAMPF and subsequent events should not be considered inevitable, yet the readers and students frequently look at each and consider the book prescient. At best the text shows the sort of crank Hitler was when he became involved in German electoral politics, and it projects how he played to a exceptionally unsophisticated political people.

A note about the text in English. I’ve seen two English translations, 1943, and the most recent published as late at 1999. In each Edition are 686 pages; pretty much the words from page to page and the pages are also the same. Hence the page numbers above and in subsequent comments are from the 1943 edition.

SEE IT NOW – THE FUTURE

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Recent grade-B scientific films present sets which seem a step away from funky main streets of small town America today. Instead of the barber’s pole, there is a pole with a half dozen round plastic platters, like multiple serving areas for kids to NBA players. That was futuristic during the Sixties, and it dates and looks odd today. But the incongruity fits in a science fiction movie: everyone can recognize what it is but like a barber’s pole, no one know what it means.

Next to see on the screen are the race and ethnicity of people. Any film company should have its characters from various places show up in semi-native festive garb. That happens in California usually. It is difficult to know whether someone is in the United States military or with the LAPD. She may be going to a costume party. Ditto, putting these people on a movie set while filming a science fiction flick. The languages present a wild, crazy, different sound tract.

No change has to be made when asking characters to speak, not American but their first language. The misunderstandings today are brief and small. In the future it may be impossible to cross the street without knowing five languages.

A few movies have used the present day to project a futuristic society. This presents a step, an advancement reflecting a truer future than any other show. For instance the future is unlikely to be anything like The Jepsens. In the cartoon there are just too few people, too many open spaces and isolated houses abound. It is likely that houses will be owned and sold in 100 years, but honey-combed constructions of apartments, condominiums and town houses are what most of the human race will live in. It is call urbanization. There will be too many of us: From caves we came, to caves we will return

Science fiction movies rarely show the current press of human existence or what that will be in the future – close quarters, get off my back! In the movies this point can only be inferred by how many human beings are killed and by whom. Undoubtedly, the protagonist feels totally bad when a human being is smoked – less so if a droid dies. Deaths of druids evoke different emotions. After the first human beings are extinguished, death gets easier, and everyone becomes desensitized. It does not matter how many characters are killed, provided the protagonist and his brawny, brainless hunk survive as the only persons on earth, there to watch the sun rise – a new day on the planet to begin again and the human race will avoid all the mistakes it made the last time.

Are you voting for Don Trump, or Hillary Clinton?

The prospects for over-population movies are narrow. Everyone knows the likely solution, and human beings don’t like that. Everyone also dislikes solution number two: Don Trump and HRC survive and …

WHITE LIGHTNING, GATOR

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Movie reviews, commentary

I recommend these two movies. They are filmed in the South; nothing looks like a Hollywood set. Burt Reynolds, an ex-con, is out of prison so long as he helps Revenuers (IRS, State Taxes). Both stories involve moonshine, but Gator also includes gambling, protection, prostitution and drugs.

Each movie is a hardcore look at the facts and circumstances of happening and living in those worlds. Filming on location in the South lends a gritty authentication. Good characters die. It seems real, including car chases in White Lightning, and a spin around a lake in a boat to evade law enforcement in Gator.

At the end of Gator, Lauren Hutton, local TV news reporter, has a chance to leave and go to CBS in New York. Reynold’s character development in the film, watching women being slammed by southern culture, relents. Their newly minted relationship is at an end. He admits she would love New York work. He drives off into his world of the South.

This last point in movies today, leaving to fulfill professional aspirations is a throw-away point usually canned to become a politically correct: Go to New York. In Gator Reynolds has a nine year old daughter, who does not get much screen time. Yet at the end, the audience knows Reynolds will be sure his girl will grow into womanhood better prepared to face the world her father currently lives in.

I attribute the appearance of each movie to a low budget and to Burt Reynolds. Reynolds is a son of the South; he used the sets he had; he wasn’t making amendments to pretty things up for the camera. In the end he presented the South for what it was during the 1970s.