Wednesday, January 4, 2012

2012 - Day 3 - Politics

"One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic."


Stalin said that not me. I am after watching, finally, the film about Hitler called Downfall. In it the director and script writers portray a powerful but disillusioned man who lived in his own dynamic reality. Hitler was in my opinion an idiot. But ultimately he came to be known for his career as a politician. Not as a soldier, a politician. In fact, the film says alot about World War II but not that many films point to the fact that the 50 million that died, did so because of politicians. 
Do his eyes look extra evil in this picture?


But that was world war 2! That was 60 years ago. How are our politicians doing things differently today? What have we learnt? The governments that Ireland have had up to today encourages death, family violence, poverty and ignorance when it sooner gives money to a bank than to a hospital, or sooner gives itself a pay rise rather than providing more money for schools, or builds a stupid motorway instead of providing nursing homes for the elderly. Poverty and homelessness could have been eradicated in Ireland by now. It could have - can you truly say "it was more important to have a motorway from Dublin to Galway that it was to end homelessness in Dublin and Galway". 


My point is this... of course we need roads, of course we need banks. I am not a fool, believe me I understand. It is just sometimes I see a film, or read a book about the past and I realize how much we have learnt.


We have learnt nothing. 


But we are all to blame, just like the Germans stood by and did not as a whole stand up against Hitler. Of course they did not know how bad the situation was... nor did/do we. Politicians are people - politics is human nature.  

2 comments:

  1. You say "they did not know how bad the situation was ... nor did/do we". I don't entirely buy that, I don't know how much was known about Germanys atrocities in the 40s (I just don't know enough about history), but I DO know whats going on in Africa right now, as does the rest of the world. But you don't see anyone doing much about that. Or to use a more almost identical example, ethnic cleansing went on in Kosovo for ages and the world chose to whistle casually and look the other way. I think they intervened eventually, but too late for many. And this type of thing will happen over and over again, i guess because somewhere deep down, its just human nature.

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