the emperor's new Jews

Running around in my mind after watching "United States of Secrets" (II) last night is a bit of associative, bitter and fairy-tale whimsy. It won't shut up at the moment, so I guess I will give it rein and perhaps it will run itself out, imperfections and all:

THE EMPEROR'S NEW JEWS

During World War II, the German chancellor, Adolf Hitler, and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, wove a self-aggrandizing net of German superiority. The links in the net included, but were not limited to, the proposition that the German race, referred to as "Aryans," was supreme and deserved to rule the land and, from that, the world.

Like any supremacist doctrine, the notion that white speakers of Indo-European languages deserved to rule was constantly bolstered by pointing out other groupings that did NOT fill the bill and were inimical to this pure and untainted vision -- Jews, gypsies, communists, the infirm, and, when pressed, black and brown people. Anyone who was not an Aryan was a threat to Aryans and deserved to be suppressed if not eradicated.

Well, at least the Nazis took a swing at defining their one true faith.

In Washington these days, the newest Aryan outlook might be summed up in the word "safety." Vast agencies like the Department of Homeland Security have been created and sustained by the notion that the American people want (as they do) to be kept safe and that such agencies are doing their damnedest to assure that safety.

Non-Aryan forces of evil are everywhere. Sacrifices will need to be made if the new Aryan safety is to be preserved. Personal privacy, unrestricted mobility, an open court system, and freedom of speech all pose potential dangers to an Aryan safety, and the National Security Agency, FBI, CIA and Department of Homeland Security are on the job. Street corner cameras, data collection, and increasingly militarized police departments all seek to preserve the Aryan safety.

But where the Nazis were foolish enough to define the Shangri-La purity they espoused, Washington is not quite that stupid.

The human paradox works in their favor: Everyone would like to be "safe" and yet anyone who has two brain cells to rub together knows that life does not offer the option of a perfect safety. No one can see into or predict the future ... and yet the desire for safety remains and anything -- any non-Aryan threat to that safety needs to be parried -- with luck before it can lower its vindictive boom.

Washington does not define the Aryan safety it implies and posits. It simply builds up scenarios of most-often unnamed forces that threaten that saftety ... the latter-day Jews and other 'impure' elements. And the particulars of the dangers are generally kept secret: Sacrifices must be made, but the goal for which those sacrifices need to be made is kept veiled and amorphous ... for "security" reasons. No one can know the future and yet vast sums of money and personal sacrifice are demanded in support of the new Aryan vision. Fear becomes reason enough and never mind what, precisely, is feared.

Another World Trade Towers demolition will keep the fearful in line. Another unspecified "terrorist" plot ... another threat to national "safety" will be cited. And yet with enough accumulation of such tactics, it is hard not to think that I would rather face my enemies than be supported by my Aryan friends.

Sure, I want to be "safe." But safe at any price? Safe when no one can guarantee safety? Safe at the expense of those jailed without due process? Safe at the expense of the "collateral damage" that litters the new Aryan outlook? Safe because these new Aryans heap on dangers without tangible reference to the safety they are providing?

My enemies are looking better and better -- or at least honest -- as the new imperial Aryans with their new inimical Jews advance.