You and me knew life itself is
I think it was at Lunacon this weekend that I was saying to ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch that people don't think about chemical weapons being used in World War II. They are so much a part of the Tarot of World War I, especially the Western Front—Trenches, Poppies, Shells, and Gas—that just because they were not widely employed in combat between 1939 and 1945, in the popular imagination they might as well not have been part of the war at all. Which is one of those weird gaps of definition, I remember saying, because the Nazis used fucktons of chemical warfare, it just wasn't directed against Western Allied troops. It was used chiefly on non-combatants. And being thus compartmentalized off the battlefield, when people around here say "chemical weapons," for many of them I suspect Zyklon B falls into a kind of memory hole. If you have any sense of the Holocaust, however, you think for a minute and the compartmentalization collapses; the memory hole closes. It's not rocket science.
Dammit, Sean Spicer.
(My mother, by contrast, looked at Spicer's remarks and did not think the issue was an unexamined separation of World War II and Holocaust: she thought it was an older problem of definitions. Of course Hitler didn't use chemical weapons on his own people. The Jews weren't his own people. That was kind of one of the key points of National Socialism. So nothing about Spicer's initial statement was wrong, if you take Hitler's word for it. You should just never take Hitler's word for anything. Especially not if you're speaking for the White House.)
So, yeah. I spent most of today away from the internet and then I find out that happened. It does not feel to me as deliberate or as boundary-testing as this administration's earlier omission of Jews from Holocaust Remembrance Day—I think it's more likely that Spicer, who has so far manifested the approximate historical understanding of a turnip, got flustered and tried to bluster his way out of the question and instead just blurted his foot even farther into his mouth—but he's still thrown another bone of garbage to the Holocaust deniers and done nothing to improve the ignorant racist image of the current administration, though truly at this point I believe they are more or less projecting what they intend to, they just don't want to have to get called on it. I'm just amazed that apparently they want to project an image of that level of flailing incompetence.
I'm probably slandering turnips. They're older than Linear B. They're not even unique to Europe. I'm not even going to touch "Holocaust centers." It wasn't like daycare, you know?
spatch that people don't think about chemical weapons being used in World War II. They are so much a part of the Tarot of World War I, especially the Western Front—Trenches, Poppies, Shells, and Gas—that just because they were not widely employed in combat between 1939 and 1945, in the popular imagination they might as well not have been part of the war at all. Which is one of those weird gaps of definition, I remember saying, because the Nazis used fucktons of chemical warfare, it just wasn't directed against Western Allied troops. It was used chiefly on non-combatants. And being thus compartmentalized off the battlefield, when people around here say "chemical weapons," for many of them I suspect Zyklon B falls into a kind of memory hole. If you have any sense of the Holocaust, however, you think for a minute and the compartmentalization collapses; the memory hole closes. It's not rocket science.Dammit, Sean Spicer.
(My mother, by contrast, looked at Spicer's remarks and did not think the issue was an unexamined separation of World War II and Holocaust: she thought it was an older problem of definitions. Of course Hitler didn't use chemical weapons on his own people. The Jews weren't his own people. That was kind of one of the key points of National Socialism. So nothing about Spicer's initial statement was wrong, if you take Hitler's word for it. You should just never take Hitler's word for anything. Especially not if you're speaking for the White House.)
So, yeah. I spent most of today away from the internet and then I find out that happened. It does not feel to me as deliberate or as boundary-testing as this administration's earlier omission of Jews from Holocaust Remembrance Day—I think it's more likely that Spicer, who has so far manifested the approximate historical understanding of a turnip, got flustered and tried to bluster his way out of the question and instead just blurted his foot even farther into his mouth—but he's still thrown another bone of garbage to the Holocaust deniers and done nothing to improve the ignorant racist image of the current administration, though truly at this point I believe they are more or less projecting what they intend to, they just don't want to have to get called on it. I'm just amazed that apparently they want to project an image of that level of flailing incompetence.
I'm probably slandering turnips. They're older than Linear B. They're not even unique to Europe. I'm not even going to touch "Holocaust centers." It wasn't like daycare, you know?
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Scalzi had a good bit of snark on that: https://twitter.com/scalzi/status/851873047686647808
I'm still not quite sure if it was coded denialism or if he's just.....absolutely fucking moronic.
It's so hard to tell! On one hand, the flailing and worsening multiple attempts at clarification; on the other hand, the visible lack of OH SHIT INCREDIBLY SORRY.
(Also from Scalzi: https://twitter.com/scalzi/status/851878095745417217 )
(I was checking Scalzi's Twitter last night because OdysseyCon, and then went ... wait wait Sean Spicer a thing?)
My comment to a friend yesterday was:
Counting down in five (four, three ...) to WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM HIM, YOU PEOPLE ARE NEVER SATISFIED ARE YOU, ALWAYS BRINGING UP HITLER, THE HOLOCAUST WAS A LONG TIME AGO YOU KNOW.
I mean, I could honestly buy the possibility that he was thinking about using chemical weapons of the battlefield variety and had a terrible terrible brainfail for a moment. But the reaction isn't OH SHIT SO INCREDIBLY SORRY I'LL JUST CRAWL INTO A CORNER AND DIE OF SHAME, it's basically "you people are so picky, you knew what I meant, anyway yeah the Holocaust was super-bad and all that but my point still stands, which was ... something ..."
I see (this morning my time) he's finally made some kind of apology, so I anticipate that we will be proceeding rapidly to "look, he apologized, what more do you want???"
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Heh.
But the reaction isn't OH SHIT SO INCREDIBLY SORRY I'LL JUST CRAWL INTO A CORNER AND DIE OF SHAME, it's basically "you people are so picky, you knew what I meant, anyway yeah the Holocaust was super-bad and all that but my point still stands, which was ... something ..."
I don't think anyone in this administration really knows how to apologize. I think they know how to go through the most half-assed possible form of the ritual, which they understand as a sop to their ratings, but I don't think the concept of actually being sorry for having done a thing rather than having been caught doing it has any credit with them. Unsurprisingly, this tendency does not play well with continuously doing things a half-decent person would be sorry for. I look at Spicer and I genuinely don't understand existing this way in public all the time. It's not the fact that he opens his mouth and ridiculous things walk out. Depending on how you handle it and what you are otherwise like as a person, you can be a soundbite disaster and people will love you for it—I have basically just described Joe Biden's entire popular persona. It's the fact that Spicer handles it by attempting to shovel his foot even faster down his throat in the juvenile, defensive, transparently unconvincing way I think most of us hope to have blundered our way out of by college at the latest. Result, he spends most of his time in the public eye looking like a fool to the degree that I would feel sorry for him if he weren't engaged in the active process of trashing my country. Instead I have to hope he looks like enough of a fool to trash his career first and get the hell off the world stage. But accidentally tripping and falling into Holocaust denial doesn't do it? Criminy, people. How is this our political life?
I see (this morning my time) he's finally made some kind of apology, so I anticipate that we will be proceeding rapidly to "look, he apologized, what more do you want???"
Not having him as a press secretary would be a good start.
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//shrieks
Also, Rachel is best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iPQ9ZQvuns&list=PLDIVi-vBsOEyETRGoRP9y8zhyu6bHl6iK&index=3 "White House Ineptitude Shown In Its Spokesman Sean Spicer | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC"
(carefully enunciating "Turn-bull" is now a joke around the house)
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