Scars Are the Art of Chaos

jewish people driving german cars
what the cock is that shit?
but maybe it's like take back the night
maybe it's like how bleeding hearts grow old and swing to the right...
maybe it's like patty hearst siding with her kidnappers
maybe it's like south african miner killing diamond wearing gangster rappers

Sarah Silverman (from Jesus is Magic)

I do not understand the public outcry against Günter Grass. The depth of my disgust when I read that people were demanding that he return his Pulitzer and revoke his citizenship for Gdansk (Danzig) was immeasurable. He'd admitted (years ago) to being a member of the Hitler Youth and he has written extensively about the stupidity in which he and his countrymen participated in World War II. Obviously, being drafted is a far cry from actively seeking a position with the Waffen SS. However, we're talking about a 15 year old kid living in the heyday of the Nazi propaganda machine. We're not talking about a guy like say, James Frey who got famous and then infamous in the span of a year through an elaborate hoax. Grass joined the army when he was little more than a child and was later forced to march through a concentration camp, which freaked him out badly enough to change into a person who fought to prevent the kind of behavior that leads to things like concentration camps.

If we do not accept that people can improve themselves, we must simply accept that genocide, wars, and racism are a part of human nature. This is, to me, absolute bullshit and just an excuse for being a bunch of lid flipping entitlement whores.

Nice going, assholes. Why don't you go ahead and shake the hand of the nearest Nazi for sticking with his guns.

I like his scars and I like that he bares them to a world that obviously hates itself enough to disenfranchise him simply for admitting that he is human. He leads by example and I have to stand back and applaud that. Of course, not everyone agrees with me.

Charlotte Knobloch has decided that Grass' admission negates his work or that he's just working our tits to try to sell more books. The first scenario is pretty fucking stupid. Anyone who reads Grass knows how he feels about the war and it's not going to change a fucking thing just because he busted a few more balls. The second scenario actually makes sense at first until you realize that if being a Nazi was a selling point, we'd have fewer crosses and a lot more swastikas.

Most importantly (I'm going to catch all kinds of hell for this) Jewish Halocaust outrage is becoming a boring cliché. Stop whipping the horse, bitches. I can't sit through movies about it and barely got through "Night" because the idea that people do this kind of shit to each other tears me the fuck apart inside; the very fucking idea of hearing people complain about the mass genocide of their own while simultaneously bombing the shit out of civilians in Lebanon makes me want to puke all over them. Of all the people in all the world who could be setting an example, all I see is a constant barrage of "...the world owes me something". Somehow, concentration camp pain (unless it's Japanese "internment camp" pain or "trail of tears" pain; then it's pretty easily forgotten) is somehow more sacred than that of others. Unlike Günter Grass and say, Viktor Frankl, you've failed to set any kind of example of experiential based empathy for other human beings.

Oh that's right, genocide is ok when you're doing it.

P.S. bite my ass