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Message Subject A message to the main stream media on Sandy Hook "conspiracy theorists" MUST SEE!!!
Poster Handle Anonymous Coward
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The traditional mass-man of the past would not have accepted authority external to himself had not his surroundings violently forced him to do so. His surroundings do not violently force him to do so now and so he considers himself the lord of his own existence. This mass-man in Germany, as elsewhere - but of all continental countries, most in Germany - saw what modern life could do for him. He saw poverty banished from among many of his neighbors who were once condemned to it as a state of life. Means of transport had enabled his neighbors to move away more easily. He heard of a world of abundance that had appeared beyond his narrow frontiers. The school taught him to read. The newspaper brought him the opinions of many men and the story of the world's progress. He began to feel that his age-old poverty need not be his inevitable lot. He began to demand more from life and occasionally to taste its sweetness. He got to looking upon the government as an instrument to provide these things and, in Germany, this was a government of most limited powers. There was impatience with disorder, hunger, depression. Men turned to the government as an agent of the people to correct these ancient evils. What, actually, had happened was that the popular tolerance of poverty and crises was gone. Ortega is not talking about that kind of proletarian revolt which flamed up so many times in Europe under the pressure of unendurable oppressions. The common people had risen in England under Cromwell, the Russian serfs had poured into the streets under Catherine II as well as Nicholas to be mowed down by grapeshot. The populace of Paris had stormed palace and barricade not only under Louis XVI but in the days of the Commune. In every country and in every age the masses, goaded to desperation, have on occasion rushed upon their oppressors.

But this revolt of which Ortega speaks was of a different nature. It was a state of mind that did not necessarily involve force. It was a repudiation of an age old assumption, a new conviction of right and of power. And it took the form not of violent insurrection against the government, but of relentless demands upon the government. The most powerful organized agency of this revolt was the Socialist party. Germany, more than any other country, became the center of radical economic explorations and propaganda. Its philosophy permeated the labor movement and percolated into the thinking of all political parties. Grave questionings of the assumed permanence of the capitalist system had gotten about. While the socialists offered their own substitute system, every variety of reformer appeared with all sorts of proposals for the repair of the capitalist society itself.

As the shadows of the coming war of 1914 lengthened over Europe, Germany was feeling the effect of one of those economic depressions which then darkened the skies of all Europe and America. The problem of the creaking economic society was reaching the crisis stage. The militant radical elements at the height of their power, the complaining yet not so militant liberal elements joining socialists in halfway reform measures, the conservatives bewildered and angry were ready for an epic struggle for power. Always for the distressed and baffled government in the presence of this threat there is one door open and offering at least momentary escape—war. The imperial government rushed through that door—and to its doom.

John T. Flynn, 1944
 
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