They Thought They Were Free

January 5, 2006

S

Wed, 4 Jan 2006 23:55:14 -0800

" What no one seemed to notice was the ever widening gap between the

government and the people. And it became always wider.....the whole

process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided

an excuse not to think....for people who did not want to think anyway

gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about.....and kept

us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so

fascinated.....by the machinations of the 'national enemies,' without

and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things

that were growing, little by little, all around us.....

Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on

occasion, 'regretted,' that unless one understood what the whole thing

was in principle, what all these 'little measures'.....must some day

lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer

in his field sees the corn growing.....Each act is worse than the

last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next.

You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when

such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow. You don't want

to act, or even talk, alone.....you don't want to 'go out of your way

to make trouble.' But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or

hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes.

That's the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all

reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the

visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which

you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying

it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and

fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves,

when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed.

You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a

year ago, things your father.....could never have imagined. "

--- Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955)

ONLY THE TRUTH IS REVOLUTIONARY

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