What Does America Have In Common With Nazi Germany?

I just recently learned the obvious; Adolph Hitler didn't just dream up the idea for the Nazi Concentration Camps. He had examples. And one of the best examples of the time was American Indian Reservations of the 19th century. From that revelation, I eventually realized that our civilization, by accepting the existence of our faults and adapting, can avoid a lot of misery and death.

Adolph Hitler did not grow up in a vacuum. I hear he was a big fan of stories of the American West. Even if he wasn't a fan, he had to have known about American Indians. He had to have heard some stories of the “conquest” of the American West. And he had to have known about the forced marches to “Reservations.” Maybe this is why so many traits of the Nazi Concentration Camps resembled American Indian Reservations.

The continued existence of American Indian Reservations is a time proven example that certain “undesirable” people can be rounded up and forced to leave desirable places. It is also true that if this “ethnic cleansing” is done with a callus hand, many of these “undesirable” people will starve, get sick, and die.

It isn't hard to imagine some despot studying American history and determining that the forced relocation of Native Americans to Reservations was a success. And it isn't that much harder to realize that some truly evil people might even view all the resultant starvation, illness and death as a desirable consequence.

...Hey, the goal was to get rid of them.

It's one thing to think that American Indian Reservations were no better than some Nazi Concentration Camps. It's another thing to realize that Hitler was likely inspired by American Indian Reservations to create the Nazi Concentration Camps.

The similarities are uncanny. But there are Americans who will not be willing to compare America to Nazi Germany. They don't want to believe that Americans could be that evil. No rational argument will convince them. They just won't believe it. Nonetheless, the forcing of Native Americans onto “Reservations” happened – a lot of innocent people died – and all of them were rendered politically impotent. Which proves it's not just Nazis we have to fear, it's the capacity of human nature towards monumental evil and indifference.

...And if Indian Reservations of the 1800's don't sound like Nazi Concentration Camp prototypes to you, well... you've never been forced onto a Reservation.

So, why hasn't this obvious revelation not been brought up more? Americans simply don't want to think about it. The potential for America (the good guys) to be evil on a mass scale simply doesn't fit into our self-image. We're supposed to be about freedom. But we don't want to think about the obvious fact that some powerful Americans feel they should have the “freedom” to oppress. (Examples: slavery, sweat shops, election rigging, union busting, bailouts, looting of pension funds, and today's student loans)

This habit we have of looking away from painful truth has made Americans easy to manipulate. Face it; if you don't want to face the truth, it's easy to distract you from the truth.

I've heard that the greatest crime most of us ever commit is the crime of indifference.

We just want our problems to go away. And if somebody else handles that, whatever they do, we usually don't ask questions. The super-greedy-rich are no different. But they have the power to really mess things up. And it looks like that's just what they did. To some extent, the indifference of the rich led to the “ethnic cleansing” of the American West.

Consider this:

There was no Welfare back before and during the Gilded age. The poor were just encouraged to go away... “Go West.” This emigration served as a pressure relief valve for Eastern U.S. society. If the desperate didn't like it there, they didn't have to riot or revolt. They could just leave. In fact, when all the other desperate souls were leaving too, there was no one left to organize a revolution with. This left the super-greedy-rich in control. And what did they do? They manipulated the laws so they could get even richer – now.

Herein lies the key to the fatal flaw of our civilization:

So many of us want it all – now.

...And very rarely can one get it “all, now” fairly, conscientiously, and sustainably. Which means some of us are willing to cheat, overcharge, cut corners, and ignore the consequences of our actions.

Back in the 1800's, the consequence of encouraging the poor to go away was that their desperation was just felt elsewhere.

The Native Americans who were in the way of this Westward migration of “legal” immigrants were literally in the way. Consequently, Native Americans were encouraged to go away too – at gunpoint.

So... My point is:

America had to suffer through the Native American “Holocaust” because the super-greedy-rich didn't want to help the poor.

Does any of this sound familiar?

(As I write this, certain Tea Party members of our American Congress have shut down our Government in an attempt to deny poor people health care.)

Have you ever wondered why Native Americans were not considered American citizens until 1932? Immigrants could become Americans. And anyone of European descent born in America was automatically considered American. But if your skin was brown, even if your ancestors had been here from time immemorial, you were essentially a foreigner. Sure, a whole lot of that was racism. But racism usually has more to do with struggles for resources than we'd like to admit.

Obviously, the people with guns wanted what the people without guns had. But more insidiously; the people in power wanted an empire – and they wanted other people to take it for them – preferably for free. So, they sent off the poor to do their dirty work.

By telling the poor to “go West,” the super-greedy-rich could get rid of their poverty issues locally and later lay claim to some of the mineral, water, and land wealth the poor whites took for them in the West. We still see the results of this today with massive mines on “public” land – owned by far-away corporations who hardly pay any taxes or royalties to anyone – including the U.S. Government.

What we have here is systematic exploitation that has existed since before the United States was even formed. And though the U.S. Bill of Rights was a huge improvement over monarchy, there still exists huge loopholes for the super-greedy to take advantage of others.

It didn't have to be that way. Native Americans could have been given a route to citizenship. The promise of freedom, democracy, justice, rule of law, and liberty is an inspiring expectation. Some Native Americans did try to become U.S. citizens – the Cherokee, for example. But they found no justice. The rule of law always ruled against them. And worse; the only thing they were free to do was leave – the Cherokee got forced, at gunpoint, off to Reservations (proto-concentration camps) in Oklahoma.

If 19^th Century America had been a just democracy, they would have allowed Native Americans citizenship under certain conditions. But, 19^th century America would then have had to respect some Native American rights. Of course, to the super-greedy, no Native American rights were better than some. You see; the super-greedy-rich don't do sharing. That's how they stay rich.

Once you really think about it, it shouldn't be any surprise at all that Hitler modeled the Nazi Concentration Camps after American Indian Reservations.

Do I think the super-greedy-rich actually planned the mass exodus of poverty and dissent and the ethnic cleansing and “Holocaust” of those who might otherwise be considered legal owners to wealth the super-greedy-rich coveted? Yes. Absolutely. They even bragged about it, like it was God's will. They called it “Manifest Destiny.” Now; think about Hitler's Aryan (master) race propaganda and his claim that it was their destiny to rule the World. If you don't see a cause and effect here, you must believe Hitler never studied history.

So, my next point is:

If we hadn't allowed the super-greedy-rich to get their way so often; we might have missed out on a history of misery, war, poverty, and oppression.

But that was all in the distant past, right? Well, not really. Just a couple of years ago, a multi-State coordinated government police action was used to force the Occupy movement off the streets.

In spite of the fact that many Americans don't want to accept it, this is how our government deals with dissent. And by the way, notice this footage was only aired on RT (Russia Today). I'll bet you never saw anything like this on Fox “News” or MSNBC. They're too busy going on and on and on about the next practically meaningless “election” of pre-picked candidates.

(Of course, no masses of Occupy people were killed or forced into concentration camps. But a number of people were unjustly spied upon, injured by police, and the U.S. has the highest incarceration per capita in the world.)

Which brings us to why the Occupy movement was there. Though I did not join the Occupy movement, I did agree with their premiss that wealth was unfairly being concentrated at the top at the expense of the poor and the middle class.

What we have been seeing for the past 30 years is the middle class being driven to poverty and the poor being economically forced into ghettos. Moreover, we see the poor without adequate health care.

Senator Alan Greyson exclaimed, during the debates on the Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare) while it was a Bill in Congress, that over 40,000 Americans die every year without adequate health care.

Now think about this; “undesirables” are being economically forced into ghettos and left to die. This is not quite Nazi Concentration Camps, but the similarities are disturbing.

Do we have fascists in our midst? The Tea Party claims to be “Libertarians.” But if they were really Libertarians, they would be threatening to shut down the Government to end things like the billions of dollars in subsidies to the super-rich oil companies. That's never going to happen, because the biggest financial backer to the Tea Party are the Koch brothers (oil men).

So... here in America; the super-greedy-rich have manipulated our Government to unfairly enrich the big monopolies at the expense of the citizens of the United States. The rich are getting richer. The poor are getting poorer. The poor have been economically forced into ghettos. And thousands of the poor die every year because they don't have adequate health care.

Mussolini is credited with claiming that it shouldn't be called “Fascism,” and that it would be more accurate to call it “Corporatism.”

I see a pattern here. No one is being forced at gun point into Reservations or Concentration Camps, but scores of people are suffering and dying unnecessarily. And astonishingly, the Tea Party is willing to shut down our Government to see that this continues. I see that Fascism is alive and well in America, and these Fascists are willing to cripple our Government to get their way. They want Obama to fail. That means they want America to fail. That is just shy of treason. At the very least, where are the recall elections?

It probably sounds by now that I thoroughly distrust the rich. No. Like every other group of people, quite a diversity of opinion exists. I'm sure many rich Americans thought the forceful expulsion of Native Americans off their own land was a serious crime. I thank them for keeping things here in America from getting as bad as Nazi Germany.

However, I suspect most of the rich never really thought much about the consequences of these unfair monopolistic proto-fascist actions. If you choose to view greed as an addiction to money, it's easy to see that the super-greedy only pay attention to the money. Sure, they knew about the horrific treatment of Native Americans, but they didn't care. Sure, they know about the horrific health care issues of today. But they don't think that's their problem. They only care about their profits and their losses. It's like they're in a casino. 

Ironically enough, one can go to any Indian Casino these days and see essentially what I'm talking about. The addicted gamblers there only care about winning and losing. While they're playing the games, nothing else matters.

When we see this compulsively focused behavior in casinos, we recognize it as an issue – or even a mental illness. But we resist the comparison to the super-greedy-rich allowing others to suffer so that they can profit. We've been convinced that somehow the rich are better than us. We've been convinced that the rich are smarter than us. In fact, most of us would accept the richest 1% running the world – if they were benevolent. But that is so obviously not the case – and addiction to money is the key issue here. The super-greedy-rich are treating our economy like a Ponzi scheme casino. Collectively, they simply don't care about anything or anyone else.

The super-greedy have the power to pillage, to subvert democracies, and to eventually create a Hell on Earth. But they just don't seem to have the power to fix things. The reality is they only care about money.

We need to figure out a way to make them care about what really matters... before the consequences of their actions come back to hurt (or even kill) us all.

We need to figure out a better system.

What would that system look like?

• It would still have the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution.
• It would include provisions of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
• It would include provisions of the Declaration on Principles of International Law Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
• It would have much more direct democracy.
• It would have to have at least one public news outlet not controlled by the wealthy.
• Its economy would be more focused on sustainability than growth.
• Its most powerful people would be more focused on personal happiness than oppressing others.
• And there would likely be an additional reward system that gives people status outside of the monetary system.

And if we don't fix things?

America will continue to become more and more of a banana republic.

There will still be the super-greedy-rich, but they will be hiding away behind walled and gated communities so that they won't be attacked or kidnapped. Their air will be polluted. Their food will be tainted. Their travel will be restricted to only other walled communities. They will see hate in the eyes of everyone who isn't rich. And their happiness will be far from maximized. But they'll still be maximizing their profits at the expense of others – and life on Earth. Of course, this will only be a temporary situation.

Sooner or later, the cost of taking things is higher than the value of what you want to take.

...This is what eventually happened to Adolph Hitler. 
         the cost of taking over the Soviet Union wasn't worth the loss of Nazi troops. 
...This is what eventually will happen to the Tea Party.
         the cost of shutting down the government isn't worth the loss of our economy. 

...This is what is now happening to our Environment. 
         the cost of looting the Earth isn't worth living in a wasted dump.