German professor after World War II describing the rise of Nazism to a journalist:
“What happened was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to be governed by surprise, to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security…
To live in the process is absolutely not to notice it — please try to believe me — unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, regretted.
Believe me this is true. Each act, each occasion is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow.
Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we did nothing) … You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.”
Video: Cindy Sheehan – Freedom and Faith
This is a must watch brief video with footage from Crawford and Cindy’s appearances around the country at Freedom AND Faith events.
Cindy’s courageous Crawford stand is galvanizing opposition to the war and awakening America to the senseless tragedy that is Iraq.
I am award-winning journalist with a project, Ruminations on America (www.ruminationsonamerica.blogspot.com). I have called for essays from coast to coast on true core values and the current state of the union and I would like to invite you and your readers to participate. The last few essays might interest you greatly as well (including the essay Camilo Mejia wrote for Iraq Veterans Against the War about Sergeant Benderman and an essay from a Veterans for Peace member who rode to Crawford with Cindy Sheehan).