Iām feeling the sick desire to watch some American television news right now. On the other hand, Iām not sure how long I could stand it.
Just for comparison, main stream media here in Austria seems mostly neutral to me, unless making sure that everyone knows that the US unilaterally broke the JCPOA and reporting US and Iranian government statements in a he-said-she-said style counts as anti-American these days.
In the comment sections, however, less than one commenter in 50 sides with the US. If thereās any disagreement, itās about whether Trump deserves more credit for canceling the strike than for allowing it to go along that far, about whether everything is Trumpās fault or Boltonās fault, and whether Obama would have been worse.
Everyone expects America to start shooting back at 5.45.
(is that reference commonly known in the English-speaking world?).
If we come to shots fired over a cap-and-trade bill, we truly are lost. Of course, it is completely normal for repubs to try to nullify an election. But, wait, isnāt that what they keep accusing us of doing?
Yeah, itās more the āImma shoot the copsā than the ālegislators going to pull shenanigansā thatās a concern. Legislators will always pull shenanigans. But a literal shooting war? Thatās chilling.
Itās hard to google due to translation, I guess.
On 1st of September, 1939, Adolf Hitler held a speech in front of the Reichstag, which was broadcast live in all of Germany. He outlines how Poland has supposedly been provoking Germany for a long time and how Germany has always tried to find peaceful solutions. After some time, he claims that Poland had violated German territory during the previous night (heās referring to the attack on the radio station in Gleiwitz - which had actually been staged by the SS and not perpetrated by Polish troops after all). Then, the famous quote:
Seit 5.45 Uhr wird jetzt zurĆ¼ckgeschossen!
āSince 5.45, we are now shooting back!ā
This is how World War II started.
The translation doesnāt quite capture the rhetorical genius of the lies - the original is in passive voice, more like āshots are being fired backā. Itās just inevitable, not something that Adolf Hitler, the pacifist, would have wished to do. After all, he has always wanted peace. At the same time, the word āzurĆ¼ckgeschossenā, with its ārā and double āsā, is especially suited for an exaggerated Hitler-style pronunciation, so at the same time, he could also suggest strength and determination. Also, it means that the quote can be shortened almost to a single word in German and still be recognized, you just need to exaggerate the pronunciation.
One of the groups, the Oregon Three Percenters, joined an armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016. Dozens of people occupied the remote Oregon refuge for more than a month to protest federal control of Western lands. The standoff began to unravel when authorities fatally shot the groupās spokesman and arrested key leaders as they headed to a community meeting.
āThe Oregon State Police has recommended that the Capitol be closed tomorrow due to a possible militia threat,ā Carol Currie, spokeswoman for Senate President Peter Courtney, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press late Friday.
The governorās office also confirmed the threats.
Oregon State Police, in a statement, said it has been āmonitoring information throughout the day that indicates the safety of legislators, staff and citizen visitors could be compromised if certain threatened behaviors were realized.ā
Also late Friday, Courtney and House Speaker Tina Kotek, both Democrats, condemned comments made by Sen. Brian Boquist, a Republican from Dallas, Oregon, that urged the state police to āsend bachelors and come heavily armedā when they come to bring him back to the Capitol.
There was a similar pretext for engaging in extreme violence in Nazi Germany regarding Kristallnacht the year before (1938). Basically, a young man who had spent years of his childhood in hiding, having lost most of his family to the growing anti-Semetic violence, shot a German ambassador. That was the excuse used to start it all. Which, among other things, is a good reminder that the violence against āothersā had been extreme for quite some time before any official shots were fired.
