Needed to get that out...
Jun. 12th, 2008 11:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skull_bearerMy father's birthday party is tomorrow, Friday the 13th. It's perfectly fitting and I can't help but giggle.
Started learning German again, properly this time, with actual lessons. It's going pretty well, and I think everyone there has gotten used to my giggling like a retard throughout the class. Promoting the nazis to 'main character' status has paid off magnificently, because they and the mutants know that any actions on their part which the opposition shows objection to could lead into a war of mutually assured destruction, so WW3 has gone cold and I can learn German without Erik screaming in my ears. Peace at last.
Started learning German again, properly this time, with actual lessons. It's going pretty well, and I think everyone there has gotten used to my giggling like a retard throughout the class. Promoting the nazis to 'main character' status has paid off magnificently, because they and the mutants know that any actions on their part which the opposition shows objection to could lead into a war of mutually assured destruction, so WW3 has gone cold and I can learn German without Erik screaming in my ears. Peace at last.
Also, random rant. It's kind of annoying, being so fascinated by the Holocaust. It could be worse, there's no shortage of imformation on the subject, and while I can deal with the general depression the subject causes, I can't with that caused by the knowledge that the subject will become 'dead' history within my lifetime. It's crushing :( Not to mention it's endlessly awkward:
Random Person (RP): So, what do you like studying?
SB: History.
RP: Wow, that's pretty neat, what period?
SB: The Holocaust.
RP: ....
So far, I haven't had anyone go out and tell me I'm a sick monster, but it almost inevitably spawns two answers:
1) Are you Jewish? (I don't mind this, it makes sense and my usual reaction is: "I swear I ought to convert, the number of times people have asked me that!")
and/or 2) Oh yeah, it's terrible, but blah blah blah is just as bad...
This last one always winds me up. Partly because yeah, Rwanda/Darfur/Tibet/Austria is pretty bad but I'm not interested. I know the human race is pretty bad, thank you, I'm probably more aware of it than you are. Secondly, no, it's not as bad. I don't think anyone's managed to get a genocide death toll as high as Hitler (they should just give up, like when you play a game in an arcade and see the high score's so insane you just give up in disgust and now I have a very disturbing mental image I'm going to have to draw).
This also never fails to wind me up because it so often leads into a rant about Israel, and my feelings towards Israel are rather ambivilant, yes, their foreign policy can suck on a dead man's balls and is doing waaay more harm than good, but I can't go entirely against them. firstly because if I had to live anywhere in the Middle East, Israel would be the only option, secondly because a lot of people I know and like and work with are die-hard Israelis and thirdly because dude, where do you think all my holocaust books come from? I've got a lot to be grateful for. Not to mention that after what happened the last time somebody swore to wipe them out, I'm pretty sure in their situation I'd be responding to any threat with napalm.
Often the Israeli bashing leans to outright anti-semitism and I walk away felling very dirty and more than a little disgusted. I'm a historian, not a human rights activist. I'm not interested in politics that aren't at least sixty years old or with the actions of countries that weren't even there at the time (if they were, I wouldn't have anything to study, but that's a rant for another day), I'll march and wave placards and do my bit, but I'm not going to use the Holocaust as a platform to broadcast your views, not neccesarily because I don't agree, but because it cheapens both that you have to use something as utterly tragic and monsterous as the Holocaust to broadcast anything.
(And that, JKR, means war)
Random Person (RP): So, what do you like studying?
SB: History.
RP: Wow, that's pretty neat, what period?
SB: The Holocaust.
RP: ....
So far, I haven't had anyone go out and tell me I'm a sick monster, but it almost inevitably spawns two answers:
1) Are you Jewish? (I don't mind this, it makes sense and my usual reaction is: "I swear I ought to convert, the number of times people have asked me that!")
and/or 2) Oh yeah, it's terrible, but blah blah blah is just as bad...
This last one always winds me up. Partly because yeah, Rwanda/Darfur/Tibet/Austria is pretty bad but I'm not interested. I know the human race is pretty bad, thank you, I'm probably more aware of it than you are. Secondly, no, it's not as bad. I don't think anyone's managed to get a genocide death toll as high as Hitler (they should just give up, like when you play a game in an arcade and see the high score's so insane you just give up in disgust and now I have a very disturbing mental image I'm going to have to draw).
This also never fails to wind me up because it so often leads into a rant about Israel, and my feelings towards Israel are rather ambivilant, yes, their foreign policy can suck on a dead man's balls and is doing waaay more harm than good, but I can't go entirely against them. firstly because if I had to live anywhere in the Middle East, Israel would be the only option, secondly because a lot of people I know and like and work with are die-hard Israelis and thirdly because dude, where do you think all my holocaust books come from? I've got a lot to be grateful for. Not to mention that after what happened the last time somebody swore to wipe them out, I'm pretty sure in their situation I'd be responding to any threat with napalm.
Often the Israeli bashing leans to outright anti-semitism and I walk away felling very dirty and more than a little disgusted. I'm a historian, not a human rights activist. I'm not interested in politics that aren't at least sixty years old or with the actions of countries that weren't even there at the time (if they were, I wouldn't have anything to study, but that's a rant for another day), I'll march and wave placards and do my bit, but I'm not going to use the Holocaust as a platform to broadcast your views, not neccesarily because I don't agree, but because it cheapens both that you have to use something as utterly tragic and monsterous as the Holocaust to broadcast anything.
(And that, JKR, means war)
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-13 02:02 am (UTC)Believe it or not, bug's and my best friend said it. she is not incapable of being educated though- years ago, she said that gays shouldn't be allowed to marry because 1. they don't want long term relationships anyway and 2. people would start marrying their dogs. Today she supports groups like http://www.soulforce.org
On the holocaust so far she has come around to "well maybe it happened, but they exaggerate the numbers".
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-13 11:21 am (UTC)