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War Talk by Arundhati Roy (South End Press; 2003; 143 pp.; $40/$12 www.southendpress.org)

“War Talk” by Arundhati Roy is a collection of five essays and a meditation on war that essentially acts as introduction to the book. These were originally published between May 2002 and January 2003 —in other words, they deal predominantly with a post 9/11 worldview. It is a deceptively thin volume but full of pithy insight by an international observer unencumbered by the blinders of Anglo- Americanism.

The common thread through all these pieces is the particularly troubling specter of nationalism in all its guises. The war in question here is the feared escalation into war of the existing conflict over the Kashmir region between two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan. As such, she asks us to question all war, especially the so-called “war on terrorism.” She examines issues breeding and feeding it and other wars, such as race and religion. War, once inculcated, then becomes “the key to distracting the world’s attention from fascism and genocide, or to avoid dealing with any single issue of real governance that urgently needs to be addressed,” this is damning and just as applicable to any one of the more than 20 international conflicts now percolating.

In her essay “Democracy: Who is She When She is at Home?” Roy details the state of Hindu-Muslim conflict in India and particularly how religion affects national politics. The suffocating grip of state power and slow erosion of civil liberties she discusses could easily be applied to any democracy.

Fighting for democracy “means keeping an eagle eye on public institutions and demanding accountability. It means putting your ear to the ground and listening to the whispering of the truly powerless,” she writes. “It also means not allowing your newspaper columns and prime-time TV spots to be hijacked by their spurious passions and their staged theatrics, which are designed to divert attention from everything else.”

“Come September” [which is also the name of the new CD by her via AKPress] deals with the post-9/11 United States unapologetically. Roy particularly objects to absolutes in discussing nationalism. It’s the hackneyed “either you’re with us or against us” debate through new eyes. And, yes, she demolishes it in a single deftlywritten paragraph. She repeatedly challenges us to consider the effects corporate globalization has had on our planet.

In one of the concluding essays, she praises the life’s work of media critic Noam Chomsky.

Certainly, this is challenging reading because it requires the reader to be engaged and thinking. We now live more than ever in a world that requires us to consider events beyond our own backyard. And it’s not easy to swallow prose that challenges our insular view, especially when we’re told something as obvious as “The American Way of Life is simply not sustainable. Because it doesn’t acknowledge that there is a world beyond America.”

Roy is based in New Delhi, India, and perhaps best known as author of “The God of Small Things,” a novel for which she won the 1997 Booker Prize. She is not out of her element as an essayist with her forthright, alarmingly simple, crystalline prose. The questions she raises are germane, just not ones that can be simply answered by intelligent, compassionate human beings. This is a book that demands to be read, discussed, and shared.

— Linda Dailey Paulson [LDPAULSON@YAHOO.COM] is a Ventura-based freelance writer and reviewer.

Pirates and Emperors, Old and New: International Terrorism in the Real World by Noam Chomsky (South End Press, 2003;233 pp.; $18; www.southendpress.org)

Noam Chomsky has many titles after his name. He’s a linguist and foreign policy critic, a media critic and MIT professor. He also is an activist and often called a gadfly for his outspoken leftist opinions. More importantly, he is a prolific writer and intellectual to whom many turn for his singular, pithy insights on world events.

“Pirates and Emperors, Old and New: International Terrorism in the Real World’s not a new book.

This is yet another reissuing of the original book which examines fundamental ideas about what constitutes international terrorism. Obviously, a timely topic given all that has happened in the world since the first edition was released 1986.

This particular edition of Pirates and Emperors includes a new introduction by Chomsky plus two new chapters. The first is a substantially hefty essay on United States relations with Israel and Palestine framed by the later Palestinian Intifada. This was originally published as a book introduction. The other is his response to 9/11, based on a speech he gave at Tufts University in December, 2001.

At the core of these essays, the essential question Chomsky tackles is “who are the terrorists?” To paraphrase Pogo, the enemy might be us (As in “U.S.”). “Prominent international affairs specialists have warned since the 1980s that the U.S. is perceived by many as a ‘rogue superpower’ and a serious threat to their existence,” writes Chomsky, and satirically, “But that is all to the good, if it induces fear and subordination.”

The image continually cultivated by United States policy-makers, he holds, is of a rough and tumble absolutist government. “You’re either with us or against us ... and if you’re not with us you’ll be pulverized. That’s why we bomb countries like Afghanistan: to give recalcitrants some idea of what we’re capable of doing if someone gets in our way.” This image was cultivated upon one in your public library, chances are you will remain an American Idle.

Although the material presented is extremely important, sometimes Chomsky’s style makes reading and comprehending the ideas presented nearly impossible. Most irritating is his far too frequent use of quotation marks. It’s slow going, often impenetrable. The two most recent essays, oddly enough, are perhaps the most readable material. Perhaps that’s as much a reflection on the topics’ currency as the writing style.

Included for those wishing more information are extensive footnotes. These include references to specific periodicals as well as several other Chomsky books and articles.

That said, Pirates and Emperors does deserve to be read. Even wading through a single essay results in a barrage of ideas and information.

— Linda Dailey Paulson [LDPAULSON@YAHOO.COM] is a Ventura-based freelance writer and reviewer.

From Crabgrass Muffins to Pine Needle Tea: A National Wild Food Field Guide by Linda Runyon, (Health Research Books., 2002. $33.95)

In 1972, Linda Runyon, a registered nurse, decided to leave New Jersey suburban life and take up homesteading in her beloved Adirondack Mountains with her youngest son and a family friend. Fed up with defending the garden plot against weeds, insects and other wildlife on top of her other homesteading tasks (which including tending a fire for cooking and warmth, hauling and purifying water, and preparing food and fuel for winter), she abandoned agriculture for foraging and managed to feed herself and her family on a wild foods diet both in the New York mountains and the Arizona desert.

Runyon found living on wild foods so fulfilling that she created this guide so that others might benefit after an evening’s read rather than spending 13 years in the wilderness. The book includes not only the expected field guide to edible plants, but an extensive and more-varied-than-youwould- expect recipe section to make wild foods interesting even to the pickiest palate, anecdotes from Runyon’s homesteading days, nutritional tables, helpful notes on cultivating wild foods and a very necessary section on poisonous/edible lookalike plants. Memorize this section(and Runyon’s advice on how discover if a plant would give you allergies (that is edible for the rest of the world) before chowing down on novel food sources!

The photographs, by Runyon and associates, are the weakest part of the book. Runyon’s drawings and illustrations give her book character and charm; however, to safely identify a wild food before eating it, enter the plant’s scientific name into your favorite Web search engine and look through the photographs (especially from USDA sites)it returns.

Wild foods or, as Robert Rodale characterized them, “the famine foods” produce something edible under all conditions. When agriculture fails, foraging for these plants preserves life until the next harvest. However, while wild plants produce under all conditions, they do not produce as many usable calories per plant as domesticated foods when agriculture succeeds. The time saved in not having to sow, water, weed and defend against pests is usually more than offset by the time spent finding, harvesting and prepping wild plants into a meal that people will actually eat.

For some people or for some crop types during a poor harvest, it’s the meal they serve their families rather than the route they took to create that meal which is important. If you’ve always wondered which wild plants could be eaten and/or if you wanted to supplement your family’s current menu with tasty wild food dishes they will enjoy eating (really!), spend an evening with Runyon. Whether you primarily put food on the table through agriculture or foraging, by reading this book you know you will always have something nutritious to feed your family.

Artists in a Time of War by Howard Zinn (AK Press/Alternative Tentacles; 2002; $14.96; http://www.akpress.org)

What is the duty of the artist in society? This is a question not easily answered in America, especially as actors, musicians, writers, and others are openly blacklisted for espousing their views on politics, politicians and war. But historian Howard Zinn tries with an October 2001 lecture at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. The resultant CD is entitled Artists in a Time of War.

There is a great value in hearing an articulate thinker present his own ideas interspersed with those of others. It is also much more lively than reading words on a page. It is engaging to hear ambient noise periodically: babies crying, cellular telephone rings and coughs being suppressed. The tracks are almost seamless.

As exemplars of how artists have commented on war throughout the ages, Zinnsites Mark Twain, e.e.cummings, Eugene O’Neill, Langston Hughes, and others. These people not only demonstrated their objections to war through their art but also let their opinions be known as good American citizens. Twain, for example, denounced thenpresident Theodore Roosevelt’s war in the Philippines. “He stepped out of his role as just a storyteller whom everybody loved and got into the fray and dared to say thing that so many people in the country were not saying. And of course people then questioned his patriotism,” states Zinn. “Patriotism does not mean support for your government. Patriotism, as Mark Twain said, means support for your country.”

He also name-checks Peter Ustinov, I.F. Stone, John Dos Passos, and Emma Goldman while asking us to examine our beliefs on war, patriotism, and citizenship. This in the wake of 9/11 and Afghanistan, particularly.

“I am asking all of us to transcend what is coming at us from all sides,” says Zinn in conclusion. “And to think carefully and clearly, for if we are all going to be herded into actions that are even more dangerous than we are facing now, then later we will regret that we went along silently and did not raise our voices as citizens to ask: How can we get at the roots of this problem? And what can we do about it? All of us can do something, can ask questions, can speak up. It is the American thing to do.

It is the patriotic thing to do.”

The speech is about 45 minutes, but it has been broken into 13 self-contained segments. This allows listeners freedom to re-listen to sections of interest or share them with others. This is one in a relatively new series of AK Press audio books, which features speeches and spoken word by Zinn and fellow radicals Noam Chomsky, the late Judi Bari, Ward Churchill, Jello Biafra, Alexander Cockburn, and others. Perfect alternative to books on tape, especially on those drives where there is no KPFK or KCRW signal.

— Linda Dailey Paulson [LDPAULSON@YAHOO.COM] is a Ventura-based freelance writer and reviewer.

“Winged Migration” (Film) by Jacques Perrin (2003) (now showing at the Palm Theatre in SLO)

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Mainstream films are not typical subject matter for coverage in HopeDance, since they are for the most part mass-marketed entertainment, save for the occasional one having sociological relevance. However I would hope, and even dance, that once in a while a motion picture would come along that strongly reverberates with this publication’s readership, and hence is worthy of review in it.

I believe one such film is the quietly amazing, documentary-like, “Winged Migration” by Jacques Perrin. A 2003 Academy Award® Nominee for Best Documentary Feature, this film is a tremendous achievement in both content and execution. It chronicles a year-long cycle in the life of several species of migrating birds as they leave their summer habitats in the falland head to their warmer winter climes. As each species is introduced, a simple subtitle line or two names the birds and the distances they have traveled for thousands of years. Staggering numbers like 2,500, 6,500, and an almost unbelievable 12,500 miles are a part of these respective birds’ twice-yearly migration patterns.

The spectacular settings and the beauty of the birds would be a fulfilling visual feast by themselves, but the creators of this production, over three years in the making and taking place on all seven continents, actually developed unique techniques and camera conveyances allowing us, the viewer, a glimpse into these spectacular migrations from the birds’ own point of view. This is, in fact, the great achievement of the film, not only to impart the ardor, unquestioning commitment and struggle of these animals in the annual course of their existence, but also to literally see it from their perspective.

In addition to already familiar helicopter photography, the filmgoer is treated to the vicarious experience of flying along with flocks of geese and duck. High quality 35mm motion picture cameras were mounted aboard specially equipped small unmanned radio controlled and relatively unobtrusive flying devices which were capable of, for example, flying in the very midst of a “V” formation of geese. The camera’s tilting and panning were remotely controlled by a camera operator in another location so that the perspective is of another member of the flock, looking around at his other feathered friends as they cast occasional matter-of-fact glances back at us.

This incredibly intimate point of view takes us along their journey in a most unique way. Instead of the camera as “objective observer,” here it is more of a “participant.” And herein lies the great power of this humble yet majestic piece of film making: for not only do we get to go along and fly over misty mountaintops, but we also are made painfully aware of our own human intrusions into their innocent lives through our poor stewardship of the planet and disrespectful poaching methods.

This was a bold risk taken by the film makers, because the danger is that it might come off as preachy and biased. Instead, the unobtrusive quality established early-on simply gives us the shared experience these creatures have and is therefore not editorially heavy-handed, for the obvious facts speak for themselves.

The viewer not only leaves the theater with a sense of wonder, but also the slightly sickening moral weight of the undeniable encroachment our civilization has imposed on the natural order. In this way, the film has a responsible sense of honesty and immediacy, that depicts this timeless experience as it really is today, in all its glory and majesty, as well as its tragedy and waste. Certainly not to be missed, and rated G so that even our youngest may be gently apprised of this important reality.

With an excellent soundtrack, and sparse narration, it will not have the same impact on your home television; therefore it is well worth any effort to see it on the big screen. Reviewed by Radames Pera

Crescent by Diana Abu-Jaber (W.W. Norton; 2003; 349 pp.; $24.95; www.norton.com)

Grains of truth inform and shape fiction. Often it is in books that portend to be reality that we learn the most about the world around us. Perhaps this is because we are willing to suspend reality to experience or imagine things in literature we would never otherwise experience because we are too busy holding on to our own opinions and realities.

If there’s any book for Americans to read now, it is Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent, which unfolds in an Arab-American community in Los Angeles. Abu-Jaber deftly weaves together contemporary Middle Eastern politics with a story about love — romantic and familial — and what it is like to live in exile.

Her prose entices and urges pondering important issues without ever hammering points home. It’s intense conversation served with baklava and gossip.

Particularly insightful are her haunting descriptions of the state of being in exile. “[T]he loneliness of the Arab is a terrible thing; it is all consuming. It is already present like a little shadow under the heart when he lays his head on his mother’s lap; it threatens to swallow him whole when he leaves his own country, even though he marries and travels and talks to friends twenty-four hours a day.”

The primary character, Sirine, is a chef at an Iraqi-Lebanese restaurant called Nadia’s Cafe that functions as the Arab expatriate community’s unofficial social hub. Her cooking attracts university students and professors as well as those craving a taste of home. She is thirty-nine and-a-half and not terribly lucky or especially unlucky in love. Sirine has had boyfriends but “never broken up with anyone, she just loses track of them, adding new men as she goes.”

Beginning each chapter is an installment in a story told by her uncle, with whom Sirine has been living since childhood. The death of her parents, both emergency relief workers, is a touchstone for Sirine and it also informs her relationship with Hanif, a professor. Each of the characters are fully formed, which, with the beauty of the prose — Abu-Jaber is poetically judicious in her use of adjectives — and pacing, make for a thoughtful, compelling page-turner.

Publishers Weekly called Abu-Jaber’s novel “as exquisite as the ‘flaming, blooming’ mejnoona tree behind Nadia’s Cafe ...as political as it is poetic, instructive as it is entertaining.” An opinion with which we heartily concur, but to be more concise, “Crescent” is a lyrical must-read.

— Linda Dailey Paulson [LDPAULSON@YAHOO.COM] is a Ventura-based freelance writer and reviewer.

Money by Thomas H. Greco, (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2001)

This book was written by Thomas H. Greco who is involved with Tucson, Arizona’s local currency and is a consultant to other organizations. He is also the author of a previous book: New Money For Healthy Communities.

For anyone who is not familiar with local currency systems, they are networks of businesses and individuals exchanging goods and services. They are similar to barter networks except that they use local scrip or account ledgers to make transactions.

Like many advocates of local currency, Greco is highly critical of how money is currently used by financial institutions. In his book he argues that we need to “reinvent money” so that it works for people and communities.

The first section of the book looks at problems with our current financial system. His critique centers largely on banks which help distribute money through loans. Greco notes that banks were originally locallyowned businesses that sometimes took an interest in community needs. Today the banking industry is dominated by multinational corporations with almost no community ties. The result is policies which often don’t reflect the interests of the local community.

He also looks at the impact of globalization on local economies. The increasing specialization in the global economy has caused many communities to abandon goals such as versatility and self-reliance.

The second section of the book looks at various local currencies from the depression era to the present. He gives an overview of the LETS and Ithaca systems which emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as more recent programs, such as Tucson Traders which he helped found.

One of the more interesting systems mentioned was Friendly Favors. Friendly Favors is an online system where members give “Thank Yous” for gifts they receive. There is also a section on Argentina’s barter clubs which emerged after the mainstream economy collapsed.

Money also offers some suggestions for improving the Ithaca Hours system, and for implementing what Greco feels is the ideal local exchange system. The book also includes an index with contacts for various LETS and Hours systems.

There are parts of this book that might make a non-economist’s head spin. But overall, Greco provides a decent analysis of the problems with our current economic system and the need for alternatives. Martin Thompson

Writing Dissent by Robert Jensen

Political activists with radical ideas often find themselves shut out of the mainstream news media. Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream is designed for activists who want to take on that challenge. Based on the author’s experience as a journalist, activist, and academic, this book offers insight into radical politics and mass media and then moves on to describe practical strategies for breaking into the mainstream. Illustrated by the author’s own opinion columns published in daily newspapers, Writing Dissent explain show journalists work and how activists can successfully work with them.

“Robert Jensen has written a tremendous introduction to journalism for writer and citizen alike, a veritable how-to guide for anyone to enter the world of mainstream news and opinion-making. Clear, well written, and to the point, there is nothing else like it. The book also includes examples of Jensen’s own columns from the past few years, which are worth the price of the book by themselves. Readers will soon see why Jensen has emerged as one of the leading radical writers of our times.”

—Robert W. McChesney, Professor, University of Illinois; Author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy

The Greatest Sedition is Silence Four Years in America by William Rivers Pitt William Rivers

Pitt is also the author of the best-selling “War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You to Know”, in which he interviews Scott Ritter. Pitt’s articles are published across the internet and in major papers. “The Greatest Sedition is Silence” is a highly critical account of George W. Bush’s rise to power. It covers political ‘hot’ topics in a highly readable style, and is backed up with major internet promotion and radio/newspaper interviews. This passionate and controversial book is the work of one of America’s most outspoken and talented new journalists. William Rivers Pitt’s caustic critique of the last four years of American government gives voice to the growing tide of dissent and outrage with America’s leaders both inside the country and in the wider world.

Burning with anger, this incisive and readable book argues that, under George W. Bush, America makes a mockery of the values of liberty and truth that it purports to stand for, and that it is now more important than ever to speak out.

William Rivers Pitt reveals how the crisis in American has been engineered by a group of Christian conservatives whose attempts in 1998 to bring down the Clinton government led to a perversion of the American electoral process, resulting in the illegitimate installation of George W. Bush into the Presidency by five likeminded conservative Justices of the Supreme Court.

In the aftermath of September 11th, America has in many senses lost its way. Citizens are counseled to “watch what they say” by the White House, just as questions of deadly import are ignored by the government and the media. In their rush to defend “liberty,” George Bush and his allies are actually endangering the freedom of the individual, as laid down in international law. Yet how do we save freedom by limiting it? Why, after all this time, have there been no answers regarding what really happened on 9/11?

Pitt’s message is clear: seeking answers and demanding truth is not treasonous. In these dangerous days, with all that is at stake, the greatest sedition in America is silence.

Brave Hearts, Rebel Spirits: A Spiritual Activists Handbook by Brooks Shelby Biggs (Anita Roddick Books; 2003; 250 pages, $18.95)

In “Brave Hearts, Rebel Spirits,” we are presented with brief biographical synopses of the lives and efforts of 33 outstanding individuals who have fought and some even died for the sake of radical change, or who live to continue to fight for a better way. Following each chapter is a list of relevant organizations that can be contacted for more information about the foregoing subject matter. The book is both inspiring and pragmatic.

There’s a rare subtext to “Brave Hearts,” bespoken by a refreshing dedication to honesty on the part of the producers. While the book clearly is meant to inspire ñ and does inspire — some significant faith in the effectiveness of nonviolent protest movements, there’s no glorymongering in it. In fact, no silver linings are pretended within its pages. This means that, in addition to the central message, which is (to my reading of it) “Love and dedication can change the world,” there’s a strong caveat: Be prepared to pay the ultimate price, because change for the better does not often come except by a route of grave sacrifice.

And what a price, so many of the people described herein have paid! Their public lives, destroyed. They, and their loved ones, murdered. Their successes, assaulted as failures. Any reader of this book has to wonder, “Am I willing to do this? Do I really contain, within myself, the soul of a radicalist, hell-bent on forcing an opening of the eyes of the world to its more beautiful potential? Am I willing to die for what I believe?

Take, for example, one of the more rare entries in this journal of protest, that of the “non-spiritual” former Sioux ARM leader John Trudell, whose wife and three children were killed in a suspicious conflagration even as he torched the American flag in Washington, DC. He’s quoted as saying, “My grandparents didn’t teach me spirituality, they taught me wisdom. There’s a difference.The messages were simple: Do the right thing. Do the best you can with what you have. We didn’t consider that religion. We considered it reality.”

Consider the words of Neta Golan, a Buddhist Israeli Hebrew who lives at ground zero of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict [See www.gush-shalom.org for more about her.]. She has been instrumental in organizing interfaith, international participation in the interposition of foreigners between Israeli aggression and Palestinian vulnerability. The book puts it, “Every volunteer is warned of the danger of participation. ‘You may be arrested, you may be deported, you may be injured, you may be killed. It has all happened before, and it is real,’ says Golan.”

Brave Hearts isn’t fluff. It lays down a firm, definitive border between inspiration and comfort. It makes no assertions about Why, since people living on the edge already know why. It offers examples of How, and When, for anyone who needs a frank reminder of what is at stake. It’s a bare-fisted anthology of activism, drawn forth from love, ponderous principles, and a frank acquaintance with harsh reality. It doesn’t say, “Just do it.”It says, rather, “It must be done. You are needed.”

Aspen Rains is a free lance writer who lives in Los Osos and can be reaced at aspenbluewinds@yahoo.com.

They Thought They Were Free – The Germans 1933-45 by Milton Mayer (University of Chicago Press; 1953; 346 pps.)

I thought this book might validate — or rule out — my concern that our current political climate has some similarity to the rise of the Nazis. Although it didn’t do either of these, the book did provide many insights. Milton Mayer wrote this text after visiting Germany in 1953, eight years after the end of World War II. Mayer knew that Nazism could not be explained away as resulting from the tyranny of a diabolical few. He spent a year in a small, typical German town (Kronenberg) where he could interview “the average German,” choosing ten typical German citizens from the town and interviewing them over a series of months.

It turned out this was an ideal window of time to examine the issue, as it was recent enough to allow for fresh memories from the German people about the Nazi movement, yet enough time had passed so these Germans were not fearful about speaking truthfully. The book ends with a pessimistic examination of the German people, which proved to be overly ominous, although I don’t think that detracts from the value of the rest of the book.

The key time period for a comparison between then and now would be from the Reichstag fire in 1933 to Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938. Like the Reichstag fire, 9/11 was used as a reason to suspend some of our civil liberties to keep us safe from a vaguely identified enemy. Both events mark the beginning of the real initiation of a political agenda and are comparable in terms of the respective governments’ political use of them (leaving conspiracy theories aside). Kristallnacht marked an even more portentous time in Nazi Germany. As in many German cities on that night, the Jewish Synagogue in Kronenberg was burned to the ground (and some of these “ordinary” citizens had a hand in that). Perhaps we haven’t reached a comparable point to Kristallnacht here in the U.S., although it’s worth noting that Hitler didn’t invade Poland until the year after Kristallnacht and we have already invaded two countries. I think the more important comparison would be between the German citizens of that time and Americans today, which is a strength of Mayer’s book.

His approach is to relate conversations and anecdotes from the ten German citizens picked, providing a reasonable basis for comparison with today’s attitudes. For example, one subject related expressing outrage to his family over the burning of the Synagogue, only to be asked by his son, “Are you for the Jews, Pa?” I think a similar attitude can be found here with the “Saddam supporter” comments hurled toward anyone opposing the war in Iraq, or Bush’s “You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists.” In these situations, the focus quickly shifts to the named “enemy” rather than the actions of the leaders. As one subject put it, “Nazism 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.” Anyone watching Fox News?

The slow rise of Nazism and the gradual acceptance of things are frequent themes of the book, “You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.” As our government attempts to expand the USA Patriot Act, which was only supposed to be temporary, one sees little outrage from our citizenry. Those whom you might expect to be opposing the government’s current policies sit quietly. The same was seen in Nazi Germany, “When men who understand what is happening ... do not object or protest, men who do not understand cannot be expected to.” Most striking, these ordinary German citizens came off as truly ordinary, not as some crazed, rabid Nazis bent on destroying the world (although I think that the level of anti-Semitism would be an exception to this). In their world, the government was doing what was best and they were merely trying to be good patriotic citizens, unquestioning towards a government they believed had their best interests in mind. As one put it, “What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or… it could not be released because of national security.” Likewise, I see an America that has accepted yearly wars and a loss of civil liberties while quietly watching reality television programs.

Of course, there are also some important differences to consider as well. The Nazis gained popularity first as an economic movement, providing jobs and breaking down class barriers, while inspiring a nation that suffered after the First World War. It makes one take strange solace in the fact that the Bush Administration appears to be destroying the economy and increasing class hierarchy. In addition, America is much more culturally diverse than Germany, and rallying all of the populace or identifying specific “enemies” may be more difficult here. This country also has a stronger tradition of oppositional Democracy, which would be more difficult to completely squash. However, I think we can take some lessons from the German experience that Mayer examined. It would appear that relentless vocal opposition, slowing the machinations of a government gone mad, is the best insurance for preventing a repeat of history.

Steve Pitelli is a physician and peace activist living on the Central Coast of California. He can be reached at NoBushWar@aol.com. Check out his latest activist intellectual labors at www.commondreams.org.