You simply cannot know everything about everything if you are merely human and mortal. This is one of the axioms we often offer to fans and friends who sometimes complain that we at The BS Show® are over their heads (and sometimes “in over our own”) to encourage them to keep learning and growing. Yet there are far reaching events within life’s major categories with which most of us must be somewhat familiar (and teach to our children) in order to function more wisely.
One of those events, Kristallnacht, or Night Of Broken Glass, was part of a Nazi pogrom in Germany in 1938. On a single November night, almost 100 Jews were murdered, and 28,000 or so were arrested and confined in concentration camps as those racist thugs of Naziism went marching through the streets exacting a part of Adolph Hitler’s vile anti-Semitic policies. In an historic display of humanity’s capacity for the inhumane, Kristallnacht saw the destruction of thousands of Jewish businesses and homes as well as more than 200 synagogues.
On its 70th anniversary a colleague forwarded to us this video segment by Los Angeles area TV station KTLA. After viewing the piece I wrote the following reply to our colleague making the case that KTLA’s effort inadvertently did more harm than good. The nature of my argument will hopefully serve to provide “gettable” basic building blocks for our fans who, prior to discovering The BS Show,® might have been more or less unaccustomed to the clarity and power of no-holds-barred analysis and the pragmatic ramifications of worldview.*
Dear [name withheld]:
I was initially glad and very impressed that anyone in mainstream pop media would actually run a story on such a consequential and fundamentally wrong historical act. But KTLA’s handling of it, in the big picture, actually diminished the travesty and import of Kristallnacht. Here’s why:
I would suggest that our culture’s fanatical devotion to relativism (replete with its stealth but far-reaching practice of a very fuzzy, self-serving type of so-called “tolerance”) severely limited KTLA’s intended mission. Setting aside the hostess’ failure to even learn to pronounce Kristallnacht correctly, or consistently, I was most taken aback by Mrs. Cohen’s response as to its significance: “… it started with discriminatory measures, turned neighbor against neighbor, and it marginalized a small percentage of the population into ‘the other.’ It’s important to cherish our democracy and to really be mindful of any act of discrimination.” This nice lady is an expert? Did she say any act of discrimination?
Apparently unable, or unwilling (or unaware of how?) to parse the matter using the clarity afforded by morally clear language (i.e. mass murdering, racist genocide, evil, absolutely wrong), KTLA’s “historical expert” on the matter gave the viewership a shallow set of platitudinous and relativistic axioms which, in actual practice would, for example, incrementally make unnecessary the need for any police, judges, or jails in any age. It is an indisputable fact of life that all laws discriminate. Think about it. Most of that discrimination is very good at least in present day America, where most of us happen to show a pragmatic adherence to an understanding and acceptance of “good versus evil” simply by how we live.
For example, in a reasonably sane society convicted pedophiles are justifiably and swiftly “marginalized, and held to be ‘the other.’” Would Ms. Cohen’s worldview ask us not to deem their evil/unlawful actions bad, while we deem our abrogative actions against their behavior “good.” In a separate instance, though it might turn “neighbor against neighbor” were my wife to rightfully testify against the man on our own street for extorting 50 million dollars from the museum, the very decent will be so glad upon his conviction for a healthy (good) moral standard, which protects, serves, AND limits, that they will not even think to regret that JUSTICE started with “discriminatory measures, turned neighbor against neighbor, and it marginalized a small percentage of the population into ‘the other.’ ” Of course, other pragmatic and frightening examples would be myriad.
Moreover, Ms. Cohen’s subsequent genuflection of “democracy” without subsequent qualification should’ve at least been followed by Dennis Prager’s perennial foundational query: “Which is more important: democracy or Goodness?” That one question handled with any seriousness at all would have done much more to raise meaningful questions and discourse (not to mention recognition of inescapable moral and ethical realities) which might help prevent the next Kristallnacht, than the “cute” and fuzzy feeling, but ultimately dangerous segment KTLA offered.
None of us has all the answers but we should all wish that this race, the human race, could more often recognize a misleadingly vapid substitute. Even when it is well meant.
[ *Worldview is a word which might also be called "life philosophy," or sense of life, or convictions, or macro narrative, or even "faith." Every volitional human who's ever lived had, or has, a worldview which he or she practices (and often attempts to "sell" to others). By way of example, Bill Maher, Oprah, Rick Warren, Hilary, and Katie Couric: each of them has (and pushes) his or her own worldview. As do Peter Jennings, Rosie, Deepak, Ted Turner, James Dobson, Spike Lee, Moby, Stephen J. Gould, David Letterman, Michael Martin, Barbara Walters, Studs Terkel, Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn Manson, Al Franken, Hitler, Tom Cruise, Rikki Lake, yours truly, and, of course, you. Moreover, if humility and logic had a tongue they would assure us that "worldviews have consequences" and that individual worldviews are no more "equal" than are the abilities of individual basketball players. ]
©2008 The BS Show and TheBSshow.com
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