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THE POET AS SCIENTIST

THE POET AS SCIENTIST, THE POET AS SCIENTIST

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The Geek's Raven
[An excerpt, with thanks to Marcus Bales]

Once upon a midnight dreary,
fingers cramped and vision bleary,
System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,
Longing for the warmth of bedsheets,
Still I sat there, doing spreadsheets:
Having reached the bottom line,
I took a floppy from the drawer.
Typing with a steady hand, I then invoked the SAVE command
But got instead a reprimand: it read "Abort, Retry, Ignore".

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Form input - by Günter Born

Monday, June 05, 2023

What if Adolf Hitler hadn't been antisemitic?

Hitler certainly had a quite a number of bees in his bonnet, as they say, but, perhaps the most bizarre was his extreme antisemitism. Personally, I think Hitler was anti-monotheistic, more than antisemitic. However, he couldn't very well tell the German people that he was anti-Christian, and expect anyone to take him seriously. Hitler's horrific experiences in World War One convinced him there was no God. There was only fate, survival, and the Human Will. Hence, all belief in an all powerful deity was delusion and weakness, and should be ruthlessly suppressed. His beliefs were a throwback to polytheism, where multiple, whimsical Gods toyed with mankind for their own amusement, in unpredictable ways. Hence, he saw the exploitation and destruction of other nations as a natural, ethical and inevitable aspect of human behavior, and the normal route to human success and prosperity. Effectively, then, I'm not really sure that extreme antisemitism was absolutely essential to his program, or his psychological makeup. So, let's suppose that aspect of Hitler's program is absent. He still wants lebensraum for the German people, he still hates the Bolsheviks, he still wants to overrun Europe and anyone in his way. But, he doesn't particularly give a damn about Jews, one way, or the other. In other words, although Hitler himself said "if the Jews hadn't existed, I would have had to invent them", I'm not really sure that's true at all. He could still have pretty much been Hitler, without the rabid antisemitism. And, actually, I think, other than the Jewish Holocaust, everything else could have been about the same. He still comes to power, engages in massive deficit spending to rapidly rearm, absorbs Austria and Czechoslovakia, invades Poland, conquers France, invades Russia, and, ultimately is destroyed, for overreaching, and antagonizing too many powerful world leaders. Thoughts?

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