Letters to the Editor
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@ Ann1960
Another thing your question brings up is the Olympics under Hitler. 1933, was it?
Have you ever seen Triumph of the Will?
It's one of my favorite films. It's a masterpiece of cinematography and secular ritual.
It's stunning, really.
And profoundly disturbing.
I find the Germans' sense of "patriotism" awesome to behold. It's hard for me not to get chills watching it, chills both of just how beautiful the whole thing is, as well as how sinister the whole thing is, given that such sentiments were harnessed to exterminate millions of people.
So to me, I do find that sort of mass patriotism scary.
And I think that without it we'd never have gone into Iraq.
Our country suffers from not having been torn apart by war in the twentieth century.
It seems to me that Europe, having born the brunt of its own mindless nationalism, has learned its lesson and is far more skeptical of that sort of culture. They've learned their lessons, to a large extent.
I don't know.
It's not patriotism per se, but mass hysteria that frightens me.