Mixed up

Mixed up

My early school years I spent in Nazi Germany. Experiences like the fire bombings of Berlin and the”Liberation”by the Red Army equipped me with an unusual perspective looking at war and politics.
A rare combination of an East German higher education moderated by the Mormon faith of my parents further accentuated and shaped my Weltanschauung.
America was my dream when I grew up. Like a young lover falling for the sensual curves and beautiful face of the object of his admiration I loved America the way one looks at a Marilyn Monroe poster.
Contradictions, diametrically opposed worldviews and exposure to all kinds of open or covert hatred were as common to me as potatoes at the dinner table.
Everybody who rubbed off on me had an edge on the truth.
The daily pronouncements of the ” Neues Deutschland”, the official voice of the communist government spewing tirades of hatred at the enemy de jour or explaining the political or economical failures in a kaleidoscopic ever changing fashion mixed with my Sunday treats in church.
Then there were these memories of the great speeches of the Fuehrer and the myriad reasons he gave for invading country after country.
After all, others wanted to built empires and we, the Germans, Gods chosen nation had to stop them and spread our own superior culture.
The wall of unlearning after the war was monumental, getting to know an entire new history from the one we had been taught before.
I didn’t question that God and Jesus had appeared to Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church, the Golden Tablets and daily revelations when instructing him to form a new religion, adding to the myriad already in existence. God was finally showing someone the new correct way he wanted to be praised.
I didn’t question my memories having witnessed rape, random murdering and pilfering by the Red Army, when teachers told us about the gentlemanly and noble ways they had behaved when taking Berlin.
I didn’t question the statements by the American High Command in Berlin that hey had bombed only Nazis during the air war over Germany in spite of the fact that virtually all-German cities looked like San Francisco after the quake and fire.
My head was full of incompatible and indigestible facts.
Was there such a thing as truth or even right or wrong?
Someone growing up in a typical small American town always had an immediate and clear answer for these doubts that plagued me during my formative years.
Of course, there is good and evil and truth. We are good, so how could we commit evil.
I managed to get out of the workers paradise like a Mexican gets across to San Diego.
Like many Mexicans I ended up behind steel bars with a view of the free world and my undeveloped logic told me that it was in my best interest not to be too rapidly exposed to the un-accustomed blessings of freedom. After having been properly interrogated by representatives of the CIA in a small town in Norway and later by the West German Bundesschutz Polizei I was found to be no immediate threat to the survival of western culture and released.
There is a big wide world out there and having owned nothing all my life and needing little I traveled through the Middle East, Africa and much of Asia.
In Algeria the French were fighting the” Insurgents”. Being on the side of the liberation fighters was a lesson in human behavior. Both sides felt they were right and justified to inflict the maximum amount of pain and damage on their enemy. Prison guards in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay, though seasoned journeymen, could have honed their skills in the cellars of the NFL.
Further east it was Egypt,Syria and Israel. I stayed out of this one .The hatred permeated the dry desert air like dust in a sand storm. Here too, both sides were right and had a perfectly sounding string of arguments defending their views.
In Kashmir it was no different, Muslims and Hindus were directly instructed by their respective deities to make their already miserable existences even more wretched.
I t was the beginning of the Vietnam War when I traveled with a dancing group through Thailand. American troops whispered about the impending conflict and explained to me the necessity for ridding the country of communist influence.
After all they said, we are good and they are evil, what better reason to start the murdering of millions of people.
I knew communism from personal experience and had always been perplexed about similarities to societies run by the religious zealots Europe had experienced throughout the middle Ages. If you substituted the names of Vladimir Iljitsch Lenin for Jesus Christ and the edicts of the Communist Manifest for Our Church or the Bible the similarities were perplexing.
Both ideas wanted to rid the world of evil, alleviate social injustice and both philosophies had at the core their desire to improve the miserable creature that man is.
Adherence to a carefully laid out plan would lead to the salvation of mankind.
Brain washing had to start at an early age. The more a child was exposed to one particular narrow world view, the more difficult it became to unscrew his thought patterns later as they would become hard wired in his developing brain.
The communist had taken over the entire spectrum of child raising activities that Christian run communities had perfected over the centuries and subjugated their offspring to.
Flag rising, praising the leader and daily pledges of allegiance substituted for praying. They had their versions of communion, like God or the pope or the current prophet in charge, the Central Committee was always right.
Yes, we had a constitution in East Germany, but it was more a guideline like in today’s America. Whenever it suited the gang in power National Security was invoked, overriding anything the document said about inalienable rights or personal liberties.
Contrary to common belief, we also had a multi party system, not unlike the Republicans and Democrats both trying to outdo each other in their subservience to the leader.
Armed guards were everywhere. Every bridge, every railroad station or industrial facility was watched. Potential saboteurs could be anywhere. Spreading fear was the favorite pass time of the news media.
Every bit of luggage could be searched wherever you used public transportation and refusing inspection would land you in confinement until you agreed to have it searched. After all this made it your choice if you stayed in the slammer, a perfectly democratic approach.
A number of points should be made in defense of the communist or socialist system.
Like many ideas in the history of civilization, if the time isn’t right- they will fail.
As a social experiment it was worth trying since all previous attempts to alleviate the suffering of the vast majority of mankind did not make the grade.
Like many Christian ideas, flawed reasoning about the true nature of men and adherence to rigid scripture to shape a society were bound to be unsuccessful.
Surrounded by a real foreign threat, a huge part of their economy had to support defense, not unlike Americas post 9-11 outlays, which in my view, may even bring America’s economy to its knees.
Many of the social achievements of the East German system were definitely a step forward for that time. Socialist medical care may not be everybody’s idea of a good health system, but it provided basic care for everybody at no additional cost for
The sick and was a giant step forward for the millions of disenfranchised.
Schooling and higher education were attainable for most persons having the intellectual capability and free.
Pay, thought modest by today’s standards was equal, both for men and woman and childcare was free. A 45 hour workweek was then in place with 3 weeks minimum vacation per year.
Unemployment- none existed.
Public transportation was cheap and adequate.
Looking at the list, even today a great number of nations have nothing similar to offer to their people.
Like a person living in Utah or North Carolina who went to the community church on Sundays, participated in the usual social rituals, went about his job and didn’t participate in anti government propaganda one could live a reasonable peaceful life in East Germany and many of my old friends did.
But freedom is always about those who don’t fit in. Revolutionaries, misfits, adventurers, people who ask too many questions.
Berlin was the gathering spot for spies from around the world then. Sorting through the waves of accusations and lies from both sides became my daily entertainment.
Initially I almost always chose the western version of a story, trying to satisfy my feelings of revenge I still felt for the behavior of the Red Army.
The Gary Powers disaster dented my bias as President Eisenhower was caught in a red-faced lie. Then, after the wall went up and president Kennedy proclaimed ”Ich bin ein Berliner”and went home, I was shaken. What spineless chicken were the Americans now facing the teeth of the Red Bear, who had always proclaimed to fight for the Four Power Agreement of keeping Berlin a unified city? My chances of getting to the west had diminished dramatically.

Contradictions between yesterday’s reasons for a given action by the East German government and today’s were not worth discussing because like the rare messages from the Christian God, whatever came from the Central Committee was the truth, at that moment.
How often I pondered the” Free Will” theme, taught in Sunday school, that God had given to humans to find an excuse for punishing men for his own shortcomings in the design.
Why were both philosophies so terrified of other beliefs if they had certainty as they claimed? Wouldn’t digging through the rubble of human ideas always expose the truth?
Truth is truth, testable, like a diamond remains a diamond no matter what muck it is surrounded by.
One unifying theme peeled itself slowly out of the fog of my observations.
Wherever I went, a sea of imaginary evil surrounded man, most frequently it consisted of his immediate neighbors or new ideas that corrupted the century old system of wisdom.
The world was a sorry place and seemingly I was unable to find a place where I could fit in.
Broke as usual I ended up in Central America. My options were few when I had exhausted the few employment possibilities. Still up north, there was America. The endless prairies, the wonders of the West, Yellowstone, all the places of my childhood dream.
Landsmen who had just come from there warned me about the blatant self-righteous materialism I would find. Americans are naïve and seem to live to consume, living in a spiral of ever-greater needs. I was not impressed with their warnings.
In all my travels all the Americans I met without exception had always been the first to help a traveler in need. I had to find out for myself.
Getting financially in a position of not having to worry about my most basic needs seemed also very attractive.
I shamelessly admit I loved America like a man loves a whore. If only a few behavioral problems could be corrected, this was the right place for me.
Knowing the victimization of most people I threw myself into the Anti-war movement during the Vietnam conflict.
The people we were killing were really no different from us, how could a seemingly civilized nation with superior power inflict so much pain on others?
Again I left America for a number of years, now married. Whenever I returned, America was at war or committing police actions as the smaller skirmishes were called.
From the “Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli” sounded not all that different from the” Maas bis an die Memel” we had sang during the Nazi time.
Not infrequently, some of the actions may have been motivated by an genuinely but somewhat naïve approach that if they could only get rid of this one specific mal de jour, the world would be a better place.
9-11 as it commonly is called revealed a new face of America, behaving with self-pity and brutality. Even now, years afterward hardly a newspaper article is written which doesn’t mention it as an excuse for the insidious destruction of the Bill of Rights which really had started earlier or of a hundred other problems facing the country.
Get over it dammit.
Look at other nations with a thousand fold greater losses who have moved on.
For a person who is constantly involved in shootouts and brawls it is reasonable to assume he has a behavioral problem. Nations are no different.
I still love America and like the analogy I used earlier of the man loving a loose woman, I know my dream was betrayed, but then, love has no base in reason.