If you have ever seen the movie, Conspiracy, about the Wannsee Conference where high ranking Nazi and German officials, many of whom were Christians, met to discuss "the final solution of the Jewish question," and Margin Call, about the financial meltdown of 2008, you may notice that the movies are about basically the very same thing.
White men (mostly, although Demi Moore is present in Margin Call, but she is white), sitting around a table, discussing who they are willing to sacrifice in order to triumph.
True, one is talking about the Jews and the other is talking about money, but it is precisely this difference in the language we use to describe our conventions - for both the term "Jew" and the term "money" are mere human conventions, for the most part - that allows the second one to result in a far greater loss of life, and without a single person going to jail for it. In another sense, both are simply making soylent green.
And if you've ever seen Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb," you may realize that that movie is likewise a comedy about what Eisenhower described as the military industrial complex. It's a comedy because it cost far more lives than both of those movies combined. And the only reason we laugh is because far too many of us depend on it to protect us of that convention we call "the enemy," and even more depend upon it for a job.
It's basically the Last Supper for countless people, in other words, in absentia, with the people at the table all being Walder Frey, and all the Starks being hidden behind the convention of labels or money, reduced to numbers, and applauded as they pile up. The difference is that one had to use paper while the other does it more efficiently with computers, software, and complete deniability.
And both were reassured using the same language that Heinrich Himmler used to reassure SS leaders, and Goldman Sachs VP Lord Griffths, used to defend bonuses being given to Goldman Sachs employees in 2008, that they were all "decent" people "who were serving the greater good"
Such is the nature of power, however, that it “always thinks is has a great soul and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak,” as John Quincy Adams once wrote, “and that it is doing God’s service while it is violating all of his laws." I mean, if we are all called to "be like God," then what greater way to do that then by treating all those who "blaspheme" his holy name the same way God treated Sodom and Gomorrah. (That would certainly explain the ovens, anyway.)
It's the difference between treating the former like Albert Speer, in other words, and treating all the others like Araki Eikichi; and by the very same people, both times!*
But as Justin K. McFarlane Beau once wrote, "A stark truth, is seldom met with open arms."
Just ask Walder Frey.
____________________________________________________________________________
* see: Princes of the Yen
White men (mostly, although Demi Moore is present in Margin Call, but she is white), sitting around a table, discussing who they are willing to sacrifice in order to triumph.
True, one is talking about the Jews and the other is talking about money, but it is precisely this difference in the language we use to describe our conventions - for both the term "Jew" and the term "money" are mere human conventions, for the most part - that allows the second one to result in a far greater loss of life, and without a single person going to jail for it. In another sense, both are simply making soylent green.
And if you've ever seen Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb," you may realize that that movie is likewise a comedy about what Eisenhower described as the military industrial complex. It's a comedy because it cost far more lives than both of those movies combined. And the only reason we laugh is because far too many of us depend on it to protect us of that convention we call "the enemy," and even more depend upon it for a job.
It's basically the Last Supper for countless people, in other words, in absentia, with the people at the table all being Walder Frey, and all the Starks being hidden behind the convention of labels or money, reduced to numbers, and applauded as they pile up. The difference is that one had to use paper while the other does it more efficiently with computers, software, and complete deniability.
And both were reassured using the same language that Heinrich Himmler used to reassure SS leaders, and Goldman Sachs VP Lord Griffths, used to defend bonuses being given to Goldman Sachs employees in 2008, that they were all "decent" people "who were serving the greater good"
Such is the nature of power, however, that it “always thinks is has a great soul and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak,” as John Quincy Adams once wrote, “and that it is doing God’s service while it is violating all of his laws." I mean, if we are all called to "be like God," then what greater way to do that then by treating all those who "blaspheme" his holy name the same way God treated Sodom and Gomorrah. (That would certainly explain the ovens, anyway.)
It's the difference between treating the former like Albert Speer, in other words, and treating all the others like Araki Eikichi; and by the very same people, both times!*
But as Justin K. McFarlane Beau once wrote, "A stark truth, is seldom met with open arms."
Just ask Walder Frey.
____________________________________________________________________________
* see: Princes of the Yen
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