Tag: meadows

Hitler The Humane

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Hitler was an interesting character. Strange opening statement I admit but I got your attention. I imagine he was quite the complex chap. I was thinking about him today, not nostalgically just thinking. We learn about Hitler in school and then in regular programmes or cultural references. Ultimately we alway learn about him as being evil personified. This isn’t me about to defend the man, he was responsible for the suffering of millions, but beyond him being a vegetarian and nature lover we never hear much else about his character than he was evil. We’ve created this monster who we hear had no redeemable qualities, even the vegetarian nature lover doesn’t get talked about because it would conflict with the desired narrative.

It’s strange, I feel that I can’t say anything except for bad things about him otherwise I must be an apologist for all his atrocities. And why would I feel the need to defend such a man. I’m not though because to do such a thing would be an attempt to humanise him and this is exactly what people aim not to do. I don’t know what good things he did in his life or what kind of person he was before whatever series of traumatic events happened that led him on this path, but i doubt he wasn’t born evil. We have dehumanised him to such an extent that he is seen as offering nothing positive but he was followed and loved by a nation, they weren’t all just scared of him or manipulated. People wanted to follow him and did. There is a very powerful narrative we follow surrounding him.

This could go for countless despots, I’m sure Stalin loved and cared for his grandchildren. I’m sure Pol Pot once held a woman in his arms that he loved and who loved him back. I’m sure even Pinochet laughed at a joke once. And let’s not forget Hitler taking a walk in a meadow, picking flowers, watching deer romp and coming home to a tofu steak. The point is not one of defence because these were abhorrent men but more of the complex nature of narratives and the human condition. It’s strange to think of people who have committed such crimes as having humanity but they weren’t total evil one hundred percent of the time. These are extremes but it’s always interesting to step back from an idea and see the long formation of a particular narrative surrounding it.

A New Normal Sunday

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

The Prime Minister still has his most special adviser standing next to him and holding his hand. Apparently he is a man of integrity who did the right thing. I must say the newspapers really played a blinder on this one. Release the first part of the story, let the politicians defend him and lie, before releasing the second even more damning information. It shows how powerful he is that he’s still here and hasn’t walked, he’s hardly going to push himself. It also shows how powerful he is that he’s clearly a marked man, the other side have gone into overdrive to take him down. It’s always much less obvious when it’s your own side getting excited and calling for someones head. When the others do it it feels exaggerated and wrong, like you witnessing another injustice. It’s remarkable how easy it is to get carried away with the baying mob. He’s still a total c**t though and I hope he gets thrown to the wolves.

I hope Sunday was enjoyable for most of us. Is life coming back to normal to the point that it feels like a Sunday again? Certainly there would have been a time when Sunday and Tuesday were indistinguishable but that can now be resigned to the past. Do we want normal to return? All that talk of a new normal sounds great if the new version was meadows and liberty but seeing as it’s the same mob responsible for turning all the meadows into suburban housing estates in the first place I’m a little concerned. We know it as shifting baseline syndrome or something, I may have just made that up, probably did actually, but it’s why people view Scotland’s rolling Glens as open and beautiful when they should be all dense forest, not the wet deserts they now are. Ireland will be the same. It’s partly the sheep and partly the industrial revolution. Now whatever woods there are are just monocrops poisoning the soil. There are some organisations trying to plant native forests again and they’re doing well with what they can but as trees are it’s slow going.

That’s it then on that note. I bid you adieu for another week. They keep on coming and they keep on passing by, each one a microfraction faster than the other. It’s a shame I don’t manage to write each of these a microfraction faster than the previous though.