The Pirate Review

Didn't your mama ever teach you what that word means, kid?

Since about 2003, the shrillest and most tenuously lucid elements of the American left have adopted a thoroughly incomprehensible tactic: referring to our current president in the same terms as a mass-murdering socialist thug. There is a reason why conservatives usually do not respond to this accusation, and it has nothing to do with our being unable to refute it—doing so would be trivially simple—but it has much to do with the subject being unworthy of refutation, because making the attempt to refute it suggests that the subject has even a grain of merit. We do not respond for the same reason our mothers taught us not to stare at that one man on the street corner—you know, the guy who pulled strange faces and drooled and occasionally screamed obscenities at the top of his lungs. We might not have known precisely what caused him to do these things, but we knew that Something Was Wrong With Him—and that even making eye contact might set him off. Likewise, we have avoided lefties who scream BUSHITLER and who claim the American president was "the real terrorist" in the 9/11 attacks. We have nothing against you personally, but your method of self-expression has led us to believe it might be better just to back away... slowly...

When wild-eyed leftists refer to the President of the United States of America as "Bushitler," they are not trying to create an environment for reasoned discussion of the differences between Americans on the left and those on the right. In many cases, they are not even expressing their frustration with the current administration in an emotionally-charged way. Use of this particular word in protest marches and incoherent Internet diatribes is much closer kin to the small child who, having discovered his first four-letter word, blurts it out in front of Mommy and is delighted to see what a horrified reaction he can create in a normally unflappable authority figure. If Mom gets particularly worked up, he is likely to say it over and over again simply to enjoy her reaction.

Interestingly enough, it appears that in both cases, the user of the objectionable word—whether a two-year-old or a mental midget—has no idea what the word means or why it would be considered objectionable. To them, it is only recognizably useful as a handle to yank authority figures around.

Here's an interesting bit of information, dated 2 Dec 2004: "Nearly Half of Britons Unaware of Auschwitz" by Jeffrey Goldfarb. I'll let it speak for itself.

LONDON (Reuters) - Nearly half of Britons in a poll said they had never heard of Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp in southern Poland that became a symbol of the Holocaust and the attempted genocide of the Jews ....

"We were amazed by the results of our audience research," said Laurence Rees, a producer on the series, "Auschwitz: The Nazis & the 'Final Solution.'"

"It's easy to presume that the horrors of Auschwitz are engrained in the nation’s collective memory, but obviously this is not the case," Rees said.

.... Among women and people younger than 35, 60 percent had never heard of Auschwitz, despite the recent popularity of films such as "Schindler's List," "Life is Beautiful" and "The Pianist," which depict the atrocities of the Holocaust.

If this information bothers you, be sure to read the followup article about the percentage of Americans who recognized Auschwitz: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/1/prwebxml192453.php.

Even before I saw the follow-up poll in the USA, I suspected that similar numbers of young Americans would have no clue about the historical significance of the word Auschwitz. I thought this because I have noticed some ideas that are again rising to prominence on both the Right and the Left—revisionist historians claiming that the Holocaust was exaggerated or non-existent, re-imagining of the Nazis as a right-wing Christian group instead of the godless socialists they truly were, and resurrection of the slanderous old conspiracy theory that the Jews secretly run everything—none of which could hold any water if people studied history and knew about what truly occurred under the Third Reich.

The young do not study history; many are taught—by their professors, no less—that history is unimportant. They are no longer taught about the significance of what happened at Auschwitz, or Dachau, or Treblinka, which is why they have no problem comparing these sites of horror and carnage with, say, Guantanamo Bay. Likewise, they have no clear concept of who Hitler was or what he did or why that would be a bad thing, but they like how people respond when they compare Bush to Hitler. It's a great attention-getter—and what the Left craves, more than anything else, is attention.

The key to the idea that this is no longer a discussion—that the Left has finally resorted to Tourette-like screaming and feces-flinging for attention—is that there is no rational argument which favorably or accurately compares George W. Bush with Adolf Hitler. About the only things the two have in common are that they are both male, air-breathing invertebrates in positions of power.

You want comparisons? Fine. Here you go.

George W. Bush is a quietly determined man with good beliefs which he often has trouble articulating in public. Adolf Hitler was a loudly determined man with horrible beliefs and the ability to articulate them, frequently and at the top of his lungs.
Bush believes in rewarding personal excellence with no regard to race, color or religion, and has chosen his Cabinet accordingly. Hitler believed in the doctrine of Aryan purity (despite not being an Aryan himself).
Bush believes in the sanctity of human life. Hitler believed in eugenics and euthanasia.
Bush has ties to oil corporations. Hitler had ties to gas chambers.
Bush has consistently backed the right of the state of Israel to exist. Hitler used the Jews as a German scapegoat and tried to exterminate European Jewry.
Bush's typical parting words: "God bless America." Hitler's typical parting words: "Sieg heil!"
Bush—like it or not—is a God-fearing, red-meat-eating, brass-balled, all-American cowboy. Hitler—like it or not—was a godless vegetarian effete who, according to tradition and legend, had only one testicle.

Satirical jabs aside, comparing mainstream political figures in this nation, whether on the left or the right, to Hitler or the Nazis is to trivialize the pathological evil of the Nazis and the horrors they inflicted on anyone who stood in their way. I cannot properly express my horror and disgust at discovering that political lefties of a certain stripe are even willing to raise the specter of the German National Socialists as a way of scoring political points against a president they hate. Leftists: millions of Jews and other "undesirables" did not die merely to give you the name of a boogieman, a tool with which to hurt your political opponents.

I am not saying that what happened in Germany could not happen here. As much as I love the United States and believe it to be a choice and blessed nation, I also know—because I do study history—that Germany was considered a wise, cultured, sane country before the rise of the Nazis. It is because I love the United States and understand its vulnerability to evil that I believe this comparison of our leaders to Hitler must stop. Today's Leftists function much like the boy who cried wolf; they enjoy the attention they have received from the media because of their sensationalistic bleating of "Bushitler" and "He's the real terrorist!" They do not seem to understand—or perhaps their hatred of President Bush truly runs so deep that they simply do not care—that if in some terrible future day a wolf should rise to power, there would be no alarmist rhetoric left unused—no siren to raise the people to arms. Much like a thief breaking into a car in a bad neighborhood after dark, people will hear the alarm and will do nothing about it—after all, it's gone off so many times before. I don't ever want this to happen.

That is why I suggest treating the crazies who cry "Bushitler!" at the top of their lungs just the way a wise mother would treat a child who kept gleefully repeating a dirty word. First, ignore the child. If that fails, explain briefly why the word is offensive and should not be used again. If, after two tries, the child keeps mindlessly repeating filth, give him a good hard spanking and send him to bed without supper. Lefties, we've tried ignoring you without success; now I've explained. If I still haven't convinced you to stop with the insane rhetoric—well, from now on, it's fair game to send out National Guardsmen with firehoses. Your choice.