Pogo strip by Walt Kelly, Earth Day 1971
“We are confronted by insurmountable opportunities.”—Walt Kelly
The Third Reich was a consensual dictatorship
—that's a Zustimmungsdiktatur in German.
Hitler had “almost until the very end” the consent of the German people.*
Fortune flashed him her intoxicating smile. He knew best, they said.
Twelve years it lasted—just a little while—plus fifty million dead.
Whatever fate may be, it works in painful ways its purpose to perform.
What seems exceptional may shortly be the norm.
It’s 101⁰ F out there today . . . they say there’ll be a storm.
*Tobias Buck, Final Verdict: The Holocaust on Trial in the 21st Century (New York: Hachette, 2024), 247.
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