The Going Gets Tough. The Tough Start Blogging.
This is the second of two parts.
NEW YORK, NORTH AMERICAN PROTECTORATE, GREATER GERMAN REICH—At first glance, everything looks fine. Sixty-five years after the Nazi victory at D-Day brought this North American city into the fold of the Greater German Reich, the security situation is calm. Families stroll the sidewalks. Stores that haven’t been boarded up are filled with browsers. Travelers line up to take the express elevator to the top of Manhattan’s Adolf Hitler Tower to board express zeppelin service to Germania.
But not everyone is happy. Decades after being conquered by Germany, North American subjects of the Greater Reich are growing restive. “We would greatly appreciate it if you would consider withdrawing,” reads the pointed graffiti on the side of a local SS recruiting station.
Why the anger? Six months after a new chancellor came to power amid promises of dramatic change, the Reich remains at war. Between the officially unemployed and the long-term dispossessed, 20 percent of North Americans are out of work. Auschwitz is closing and torture has been banned, but dissidents say Adolf Hitler III’s reforms are merely window-dressing.
“He still reserves the right to use ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,'” points out Seth, a 26-year-old who says he lives in the ‘still cool’ section of the Williamsburg gau of Brooklyn. “OK, so maybe he needs them. But the Auschwitz detainees are being transferred to Buchenwald and Dachau. What’s with that? And now this ‘Soviet surge.’ This isn’t the change we hoped for.”
Seth is the twisted face of the Resistance, an umbrella term for the motley mix of militant factions dedicated to the overthrow of the occupation regime. Some are liberals opposed to human rights abuses. Some are leftists who want economic equality. Others oppose the Reich’s wars, which they consider pointless and immoral. All say they’re willing to use any means necessary.
Seth is so furious that he has even started a blog, SomewhatAnnoyed.net, where he catalogues a litany of complaints against Nazism. “People are afraid to post comments but I know they’re out there, lurking. And I earn serious mid two-digits from BlogAds.”
Whether it’s Twittering, posting to Facebook pages or creating an iPhone app like iResist, such radical action against the authorities takes many forms. After her boyfriend was deported to the east, Greta vowed to write a letter to the editor to her local newspaper. “Once you commit yourself to the path of resistance against the fascist oppressor,” she said, “you must accept that you will either end up dead or in prison. I’m okay with that.” Although she hasn’t gotten around to writing the letter yet—”I’ve been super busy with my book club, not to mention transferring my files from Blogger to WordPress”—she says nothing can stop her from “ruthlessly smashing the infrastructure of dictatorship.”
Bob and Ken blame GAFTA, the Germano-Antipodes Free Trade Agreement, for the loss of their jobs when their employer moved to New Zealand. Bored and broke, they while away their afternoons plotting their revenge over chocolate-flavored caffeinated beverages at chain coffee shops with other disaffected partisans. “The German pigs have to go,” says Bob. “We’ll get them where it hurts.” He is planning to think about organizing a poetry jam.
Terrorist sabotage was on the agenda at a recent meeting of their cell. “We should totally march around holding signs and chanting slogans,” Bob suggested. “Maybe it would slow down traffic or something,” he said, fantasizing that a busload of deportation victims might then go to their deaths later than scheduled. But getting a protest permit might require filling out a form, countered Ken. “Not to mention a fee,” agreed Bob. “Anyway, protesting didn’t work in the ’60s. Did it?”
Denise, a fierce brunette in her late 30s, represents the ruling elite’s worst nightmare. First, she obtained an MBA. Then she got a job on Wall Street. “I’m infiltrating the corporate capitalists’ den, learning their methods from the inside,” she said. “Once I’ve spent 30 or 40 years allaying their suspicions by doing everything they want and then some, I’ll pose as a harmless retiree. They’ll never see it coming!”
At this writing, the Gestapo had inexplicably disbanded the American division of its counterinsurgency operations.
COPYRIGHT 2009 TED RALL
22 Comments.
This is much better than last week's Part 1.
Why was this even a two-part piece? This one stands alone, you should ditch Part 1.
OK, seriously, this is not working. Give up the alternative history genre altogether or politely refuse further contributions from your ghost writer.
Your articles work so much better when you speak your mind clearly and use satire in a straight-forward way.
Ted,have you ever seen the anime Jin-Roh? The story takes place in Japan after the Axis victory over the Allies with the Nazis having control over the Japanese. Alternate history is a riot, eh?
I could write a similar piece about msm writers like yourself if you hadn't killed Smirky and Cheney with your bare hands! Oh that's right you didn't. So you're different because?
You do understand Ted that this piece is recursive, right?
(An ineffective blog about ineffective blogging).
It's a syndicated column. So it does go to newspapers. But yes, I count myself among those who do nothing meaningful to change anything.
Why am I such a wimp? Why are all of us?
I wish I knew.
We're all such wimps because, I reckon, things just aren't bad enough.
The USA capitalists dodged armed revolution in the late 1930s and again in the late 1960s. They did it through targeted assassinations, imprisonment, subversion of their adversaries, and some just plain clever political and economic misdirection.
When we finally do get a revolution in the USA (yes, it will happen), it's going to be that much more violent and that much more bloody because of the long delay in something that should have happened almost 100 years ago.
This nation will be carved up like a tuna fish in a Japanese restaurant.
And eaten, of course.
I agree with Incitatus, but that's no big surprise to anyone I'm sure.
We can give up hope for a revolution in America. In Iran, people are (apparently) upset over a massive margin of victory in an election. In the US, people weren't upset over a far smaller margin of "victory" in a far more questionable election.
I think the reason Ted advocates for revolution in America is so that he can write about it.
Catch me if I'm missing some irony here, but the word is correctly spelled "puerile," not "purile."
I was right, this is all about the schmoon!
On a serious note, Cartoonist Derf of Derf City had to have quadruple bypass surgery less than two weeks ago. He's facing a tough recuperation now and not to steer traffic away from Ted's site, but those who like can get the story straight from Derf on his blog at the link.
While Hemlock dreams of violent revolution (a dream he probably hasn't confided to anyone of his acquaintances that to live through such an event), and contrary to Ted's earlier auspices about upcoming revolution in the Old Continent, liberal (in the European sense) parties all around the EU are making gains over their social-democrat/socialist counterparts. In the UK, even the odious BNP is doing better than Labour.
Dorme bene, veramente.
if Ted was serious about going after these guys, he'd tackle nine eleven.
The bit about the girl who 'infiltrates' to change the system from within is a riot though 😉
We don't fight back because we're not psychopaths; that is, we are reluctant to malign or injure others, as opposed to the psychopath, who easily and remorselessly lies, slanders, steals, and kills. Conspiracy theorists abound in trying times such as these, but there's no conspiracy of which to speak – it's the psychopaths versus the rest of us, the 5% against the 95%.
Unless humankind demonstrates both the ability and the will to both identify psychopaths early in life AND keep them away from all positions of power (think modern-day version of a leper colony), the species, and perhaps the planet as a whole, is doomed.
Of course, since psychopaths abound in both charm and cunning, the option offered in the prior paragraph probably has no chance of ever being realized, so sorry folks, looks like we're fucked.
Have a nice day!
Orville-third is right. He calls it exactly like it is. Except I do hold out hope for the positive effect of more anger and continued exposure to shine a light on Obama's grandiose corruption.
Someday Obamagraft will be accepted as the fetid political efficiency that it is. 'Huckster charm' will cease to win the PR war.
And Ted. your Part I was fantastic. Truly good stuff. When you hit a nerve, folks complain a little more.
Keep up the good work.
Incitatus, I'll take a Liberal (in your classical sense) European party over either of the major political parties in the United States every day. The problem with American-style neoliberalism is it puts the cart before the horse; Once you have universal health care, whether it be single payer or hybrid, and an environmentally conscious approach, liberalizing the marketplace absolutely makes the best sense.
However, in the United States we're still struggling for basic human freedoms, liberties and dignity and security. Europeans, for the most part, are happier and healthier. The American notion of "freedom" is sort of comical in comparison. Freedom and security are not inherently antithetical. At least, they don't have to be.
So once basic human rights have been established, the balance that European countries are maintaining through political pluralism is not a threat to basic human quality of life.
It is in the United States.
I also agree with you wholeheartedly (at least my assumptions reading in between your lines) that those who advocate revolution haven't lived through one, and don't understand the human cost of such things.
Aggie, I disagree with you about the US being in disadvantage compared to Western Europe. Even measured by the questionable UN Human Development Index, the US comes in front of the UK and a paragon welfare state like Germany. If we factor out the pockets of poverty in major urban areas of the US (as we should factor out, for fairness sake, East Germany) the situation gets more favourable for the US. That is to say, Minnesota is virtually indistinguishable in terms of prosperity and human development, from Scandinavia, but the booze is a lot cheaper!
Bu I agree that the US badly needs a refurbishing of its political duopoly.
Of course, it's Ironic that the US media is not only paying more attention to protests in Iran than to the large protests in the US against the Iraq War, but the world media is paying more attention to the protests in Iran than against the several MONTHS of protests against the Saakashvili regime in Georgia. (Though, in defense of the media, fewer people have died in both cases…)
Um, the media is paying more attention to any protest that doesn't put Obamagraft in the spotlight.
Expect the anti-stimulus protesters to be ignored, again, next month. The msm will suddenly have a 'Bo the dog' story to push, or something from Michelle Obama's convenient life of distractions. IYKWIM..
Incitatus, it's OK, we can disagree…I'm sure that I cherry pick empirical data as good as anybody else. What are your thoughts on New Zealand? I might have the opportunity to move their in the not-to-distant future.