What’s the difference between then and now? Absolutely f***ing nothing. The problem? No one f***ing cares that there is no difference because I live in stupid f***ing hell! According to The Kansas City Star and in reference to the top picture, “A Republican candidate for Missouri governor on Monday vowed to burn books if elected after he was criticized for a video showing him burning cardboard boxes with a flamethrower. … Eigel’s remarkable comment promising to burn books comes as he embarks on a campaign for governor attempting to appeal to the staunch right wing of the Missouri Republican Party. Public book burnings typically illustrate extreme censorship related to political, cultural and religious materials. They often invoke historic atrocities such as burning of Jewish texts in Nazi Germany or racist bonfires by the Ku Klux Klan.”
Now, Eigel “claims” they were only cardboard boxes. (But he would be happy to burn books!) So I really don’t care what he says he wasn’t burning, for the intention — explicitly stated by Eigel himself — is to burn books, which takes us right back to 1930s Nazi Germany. I know, I know. The references to the Nazis are perhaps overdone, hyperbolic, and trite at this point. But the comparison is no less valid. Indeed, nothing under the Sun is new. Before the Nazis made hate and ignorance fashionable, I’m sure there were some references to a historical era that right-thinking people made in comparison to the German and Italian fascists. Hate is not new. Ignorance is not new. Stupidity is definitely not new. What’s new is the date and technology. Although, good ole burning of burns seems to be a favorite low-tech standby.
Of course, the images above remind me of the well-warn quote by Heinrich Heine in his play Almansor (1821), “Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.” (That [burning of the Quran] was but a prelude; where they burn books, they will ultimately burn men as well.) (Good luck finding an English translation of this complete work.) Catholics were particularly good at burning people, also known as “witches.” But I digress. The point is this: Dumb f****s would instead gladly remain in ignorance by burning knowledge, and they want the rest of the world to be stupid along with them because a stupid citizenry is a pliable and gullible citizenry who can be made fearful of their shadows and “witches,” also known in today’s parlance as the gays, brown, and black people. Same concepts, different era. Same hatreds, same targets. Same stupidity, same stupid humanity. The end is here because we’ve all seen this movie before and know how it ends. Welcome to stupid America! Too stupid to save itself and too stupid not to want to re-live the same film over again. Oh, well! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯