Yearning to Find That Special Thing and Place

Everybody comes from somewhere special, a farm, a lake, an island, the desert, a faraway mountain, a town, a hamlet, a large city, a foreign country, or a place no one else has heard of. And each person has a story, real or fantasized.

If you ask each person, their place is the best in the world, the most beautiful, most bountiful, most colorful, and so special that tomes had been written about it, yet here they are. They are so far away and yearning to get back to that amazing place they identify with – a place of wonder, love, friends, cherished memories, and family, with all the things they perceive as missing in the present.

People adorn their cars with flags and bumper stickers, names of the places they miss, and photos of deceased loved ones. They wear memorabilia on their sleeves or place things in their yards and homes that remind them of their homes. The yearning is so raw and powerful, exposed to the world to see, that you can’t help but wonder why they left in the first place.

But they can never go back home again or to that unique place for many reasons. The most profound is that home and everything around it they remembered has moved on and changed. Whatever one is searching for, it is no longer there. Landscapes change, natural disasters remodel the earth, buildings are demolished to make room for parks, new areas develop, high rises are built, streets are redrawn, regimes change, people get old and move on, and people die. The obsession, the place, the person, the unidentifiable “je ne sais quois,” is no longer there.

The new home overwhelms life here and now; time robs everything and everyone; people try to adjust to the new place, the new reality, and time continues to fly, hour by hour. Humans make new friends, build families, bring old ones with them, but that something special from long ago is missing – a certain food, a smell, a custom, a song, a mysterious perfume, flowers, a lilac bush, or grandma’s garden with scented roses in full bloom.

The smell of machine oil brings back memories of my grandfather. His repair shop with a myriad of old tools, under the lean-to by the adobe house, had been torn long ago by his grandson who inherited the house. It was personally sad to see it gone. But his cellar was still there, and I did not have to go down the steps to smell the cool and earthen damp air, the potatoes, the onions, the garlic strung up on braided stalks, and the fresh apple scent, it was all in my olfactory memory.

The fragrance of the white mulberry tree I found one day in Virginia, and the sweet aroma of its fruits brought back memories of my childhood adventures to the corn field and the lone and majestic walnut tree behind grandma’s house. I wished to go back to see those trees one more time and, when I did, they were gone. One succumbed to disease and the walnut tree had been cut down because it got so massive that it was shading the rows of corn too much. The delicious walnuts of my memory were no longer there but I could still recall my stained hands from picking walnuts when the green shells were falling off, but it had plenty of dye left in the pulp.

As we age and become wiser and more in touch with our purpose on earth, we yearn to return to our roots in the never-ending circle of life, but the roots are no longer there either any more than the memories of those with whom we shared a common trunk and branches – they have all scattered into the winds to set roots elsewhere or to enrich the earth.

NOTE: What is that special thing and place you want to return to?

Politically Correct the Marxist Way

The Marxist left is so triggered by everything that they look for an insult in every gesture, word, or action. And academics are eager to provide euphemistic words and expressions that they deem non-threatening in order to pacify the insecure and the mentally ill.

Words no longer mean what the dictionary and overt reality described. They are changed to express the abject insecurity of the communist left. You are not supposed to "judge." 

Decades of Marxist political correctness driven by schools and academia was the beginning of the down spiral of our society.

If you are starving or unable to buy enough food in the highly inflationary economy that President Biden has been working very hard to achieve, you are “food insecure.”

Criminals who break the law and should be punished swiftly, are coddled by psychologists who work overtime, trying to find a reason why the said criminals did what they did – they were “misguided victims” of society.

This “sanitized babble” extends to those who are experiencing poverty, they have “bank account malnutrition.” Politicians spend more time redefining poverty than actually solving it.

The political correctness insanity started decades ago. As a teacher, I was told not to use red pens because it was an “aggressive” color, and it frightened the failing students.

And don’t tell students that they are wrong, just coddle them and say, yes, you are right, but don’t you think that this answer [the correct one] might be better?

Teachers were not allowed to teach the Holocaust or the Crusades because it offended the Muslim students. Crosses were not allowed to be worn by Christian teachers because it offended Muslim students and colleagues.

In 2005 the NCAA decided to ban any team whose name they deemed “hostile or abusive.” And the professional sports organizations followed suit. Names were changed and mascots were gone. Then the anti-American knee bending came during the playing of the National Anthem.

Our ever more sissified students receive an education which “sanitizes life” to such an extent so as not to offend them or trigger them in any way. Universities have become the “safe spaces” for the most cowardly generations that America has raised. Never mind that real life and the world of work are harsh.

Schools in Fairfax County, Virginia, are getting rid of their scoring system because failing grades are making students feel bad about themselves. Children must be constantly praised and are given participation trophies for walking across the stage without tripping.

It is no surprise that we raised several generations of Americans who are “addicted” to undeserved praise. They are now the “reality-challenged” Americans. They whine and work as paid protesters in the organized mobs of the BLM and Antifa.

In the crazy political correctness environment, illegal aliens are “undocumented citizens” and “temporary citizens,” terrorists are “malcontents” and “warriors.” If you have some handicap, you are “differently abled.” If you have a form of “slow learning,” you are a “selective learner.”

Who was the inspiration for this political correctness madness that infiltrated our schools slowly but surely for a long time? Marxists of course, like Georg Lukacs, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Felix Weil were the fathers of the PC that is suffocating our society. Lukacs waged war on our Western culture which he called “cultural terrorism.” Sexual promiscuity was at the top of the list to help Marxists win the war against Christianity and freedom.

The culture war started with the help of Germany’s Institute for Social Research which escaped Hitler’s Germany and moved to New York City at Columbia University in 1933. Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse promoted the now infamous “inclusion” and “multiculturalism” which includes everyone except white people and conservatives.

The current slate of Marxists whines non-stop via their corporate and police state media that we are not diverse enough in America, so “diversity” and “inclusion” comprise their non-stop agenda, after  man-made “climate change” and manufactured “racism.” Accusing every one of the very racisms they are engaging in, the left is nauseating half of the country and the world with their absurd claims.

The war on Christmas, Christianity, traditional family, reality, and sexual biology completes their offensive against western culture. The communist left is now removing and destroying statues, monuments, tombs, street names, military base names, and everything else in history they disagree with and find offensive. Confused children are “transgendered” without their parents’ consent, with the blessing of the medical field and schools.

Books are banned, characters in books and plays are rewritten to fit the leftist agenda, deceased authors’ words are changed to be acceptable to the Marxist left; commercials and movies are almost exclusively representing the black and brown population, and Hollywood is remaking classics to reflect the obsessive Marxist “diversity.” Never mind that Snow White, as the name implies, is a fairy tale written for a Nordic character who is white, not black or brown, and the seven dwarfs were just that, dwarfs, not “little people,” and they were not black, brown, gay, Asian, or transgender as recently depicted.

It is urgent that we take back our freedom of speech, the First Amendment slowly being disappeared by the Marxist political correctness. It is important to take our language back. The Marxists succeeded in controlling our language and are thus controlling the argument and us.

Political correctness was never about “diversity,” it was about Marxist control, about replacing our culture with “cultural Marxism.” You are not “intolerant” or “racist” if you reclaim your First Amendment right to free speech. The Marxist version of “diversity” actually stifles diverse opinions.

Political correctness is a very bad communist idea and is twisting reality and destroying our formerly free capitalist society. People must reclaim their right to free speech as outlined in the First Amendment of the Constitution. People have been silenced enough and have given the communist left so much power that they are now cancelling the professional existence and the people’s ability to make a living in their respective fields.

 

 

 

 

Nazi Environmentalism

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2014

Mark Musser describes how “God granted Adam and Eve a substantial amount of autonomy over the natural world.” Some environmentalists believe that this Biblical command is one of the reasons why the planet is in ecological distress, coupled with the population explosion, the industrial revolution, the unrestrained pollution, our obscene wealth, and western living standards. (Musser, R. Mark, Nazi Oaks, pp. 10-11)

Musser explores in his book the philosophical and practical roots of environmentalism and its potential connection to the modern version of the Green movement.

Environmental bureaucratic regulations and taxation will force humanity to make such personal sacrifices that there will be no personal behavior left that will not be regulated in some way, including taking videos and pictures in our federal parks. The permit is $1,500 and the fine for non-compliance is $1,000. Would we eventually have to obtain permits from animals to photograph them? Would PETA represent them in a court of law?

According to Musser, the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment are responsible for the “utilitarian view of nature” which facilitated the Industrial Revolution and free market capitalism, the main culprits of ecological destruction as viewed by environmentalists. (Ibid, p. 13)

The predecessor of the infamous Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), is considered the father of “deep ecology.” Western man cannot rise above the circle of life; he must be “humble” with nature. Leopold promoted this view strongly after returning from Nazi Germany in 1935, the most nature-obsessed regime at the time, not unlike the current fixation with environmental pristine conditions, devoid of humans.  His influence left a mark on environmental existentialism. Man should “think like a mountain,” just exist. The Judeo-Christian God could not rule over nature and the universe. (Ibid, p. 14)

Musser wonders if the “greens” could eventually turn into a “much darker shade of green” like the ancient nature worshippers who sacrificed thousands of human beings to appease the nature gods in exchange for good weather. (Ibid, p. 16)

Nazi leaders were concerned about the capitalist mechanization of farms because they saw it as a way to destroy the soil and the landscape of the Vaterland. The SS, the “greenest faction of National Socialism,” was the “green praetorian guard.” (Ibid, pp. 18-19)

The disturbingly anti-Semitic Nazis like Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and Rudolf Hoess, who committed unspeakable atrocities, found solace in nature.  Hoess rode his horse or walked through stables to chase away the demons and the pictures of horror.  “This is precisely how the authentic natural men of Nazi Germany walked down the barbaric road to Auschwitz,” said Musser.  (Ibid, p. 22)

Hitler was personally obsessed with wolves for their predatory lifestyle. A lot of elements in his life revolved around the wolf.

National Socialism fixation with nature and the environment bears a striking resemblance to modern environmentalism. The similarities between Nazi yesteryear and today’s environmental movement are “troubling,” said Musser. (p. 26)

The Nazis created corporate welfare between the state and big business, state sponsored corporatism, squeezing out the middle class as bourgeois, and forcing consumers into rationing in order to build the war machine. Hitler himself believed that Germans would run out of food and thus needed more Lebensraum, space to live. The Greens have adopted the Malthusian overpopulation theory (which was proven incorrect) when evaluating scarce natural resources such as land, forests, and water. Malthus “believed in long term population control measures, including birth control and economic protectionism.” (Ibid, p. 33)

The communist side of Hitler found it unjust that one group of people could have so much land compared to another, an affront to the “eternal justice of Nature.” (Ibid, p. 35)

The Nazi version of sustainable development (SD) was a mixture of environmentalism and racism. Musser said that “the ‘dialectical’ relationship between racism, Malthusian math, environmentalism, existentialism, naturalistic science, and biology would help give birth to the modern ecological cult of sustainable development.” (Ibid, p. 37)

In 1935 an environmental planning office was formed called “The Work of the Reich Office for Spatial Planning,” the first official social engineering of private property, the trademark of the modern conservationists today. Even Hitler’s four year economic plan was to be achieved by environmental friendly sustainable development measures.  “The Nazi war machine was developed under the green hue of sustainable development,” said Musser. (Ibid, pp. 38-39)

Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl (1823-1897) co-mingled socialism, nationalism, protecting nature, and anti-Semitism in his view of life which influenced early German environmentalism.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), a favorite philosopher of Hitler, discussed animal rights, blaming Judaism for the barbaric treatment of animals in Europe and in the West. “It might truly be said that men are the devils of this earth and animals the tortured souls.”  (Ibid, p. 93)

It is no surprise that leading Nazis were vegetarians.  (Ibid, p. 101)

Schopenhauer even accused Christians of treating animals with cruelty. “The morality of Christians has not consideration for animals.” (Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality, p. 178)

Then there were the “Volk” (villagers and farmers) adherents who believed in the simple life on the land, a return to nature. What stood in their way? It was their perennial foe, the Jewish people, because they owned businesses, banks, and ran the cities, all things threatening the ”volkisch” return to nature. (Musser, R. Mark, Nazi Oaks, p. 103)

German zoologist Ernst Haeckel wrote about the adulation of nature and introduced the “ecological cult worship.” Haeckel and his followers pushed racial eugenics in Germany. The German Monist League proposed several eugenic programs before World War I. It is no surprise that eugenic-environmentalism became the stepping stone to a natural world dictatorship. Haeckel even advocated the replacement of Christian humanities in school with a nature based curriculum. (Ibid, pp. 108-109)

“In the school of the future nature will be the chief object of study; man shall learn a correct view of the world he lives in, he will not be made to stand outside of and opposed to nature.” (Haeckel und Allmers, p. 363, quoted by Musser, Nazi Oaks, pp. 109-110)

Maryland passed a law, No Child Left Inside, advocating that every high school graduate must be a diligent and knowledgeable steward of the environment as a condition of graduation, even though math, science, and reading scores were lacking.

Modern German Greens have dropped racism from their environmental creed but Ernst Haeckel is still their mentor. Monists believed that all organisms, from the simplest to the most complex, including human beings, are similar and equal to each other because they are “blood brothers.” This explains the fixation of some of the modern environmentalists with legal representation of animals in a court of law.

In 1933 Hitler signed the Tierschutzrecht, the right (law) of animal protection. Schopenhauer had criticized animal cruelty and experimentation.  He said, …”the animal is absolutely identical with us and that the difference lies merely in the accident, the intellect, not in the substance which is the will.” (p. 184)

The law was updated to include animal transportation, how much space they could have and how much food and water they should have. Considering how inhumane the transportation of the Jews to the concentration camps was in overcrowded cattle trains, the regulation for the transportation of animals seems obscene.

Hitler hated hunting, the killing of innocent animals, but had no compunction in torturing and killing six million Jews. Even though there were no wolves left in Germany, Hitler placed them under protection. There were wolves in Poland and the neighboring countries. (p. 196)

But the love and appreciation of animals did not extend to humans. “Nature was king over man.” Himmler went a bit further and proclaimed in a 1942 speech that “Man is nothing special.” This dehumanization of man made possible the atrocities committed against the Jewish people.  (p. 141)

Hitler believed that capitalism and communism were disobedient to nature and Jews were guilty of financing it and Christianity of spreading it. The “blood and soil” propaganda was used to promote moving back to the countryside, to preserve nature, and for environmental sustainability.

Musser said, because the original Bolsheviks, including Karl Marx, were Jewish, Hitler concluded, “The world of Judeo-Bolshevism must collapse.” (Hitler’s Table Talk, February 27, 1942, p. 260, quoted by Musser, R. Mark, Nazi Oaks, p. 122)

Musser describes the giant oak trees at the entrance to Auschwitz, the doors of the crematorium made of massive oak, Adolf Eichmann’s (Man of the Oak) placement in charge of the Holocaust, and the possible symbolism of pagan rites of sacrifice under the oak tree. (p. 144)

The oak became such a symbol of nationalism that Hitler directed that oak trees be planted all around the Reich. (p. 150)

Goering, an avid hunter, declared in front of his hunting buddies in 1936, “For us, the forest is God’s cathedral.” (p. 202)

Such was the respect for plants and animals that Himmler “established experimental organic farms,” including one located at the Dachau concentration camp where herbs were grown for SS medicines.

Dr. Todt, who built the German interstate system (Autobahnen), was careful to protect forests, rivers, and wetlands.  The Autobahn was declared a “magnificent example of landscape design.” (p. 164 and p. 239)

Hitler was in love with his alpine retreat in Obersalzberg but somewhat embarrassed by the lavish and expensive Eagle’s Nest above the mountain landscape.

The Reich Conservation Agency legalized environmental and totalitarian social engineering. This is a model that socialist bureaucrats have used to set aside federal lands for preservation and conservation, lands that were not inhabited. However, regulating private property and turning it into state parks is another matter. (p. 209)

Nazis developed spatial planning, a precursor to today’s sustainable development and green building. (p. 216)

In common core education style, “knowledge” was replaced by “will” with a focus on life, vitality, and nature. (p. 233)

Hitler had grandiose plans to depopulate 30 million Slavs in order to make room for the Germans. The East was going to become Germany’s sustainable development mass project – transforming the Russian steppe into a German garden park through environmental planning.  Human settlements would be surrounded by pristine areas. This sounds eerily familiar to Dr. Coffman’s Biodiversity Map. (pp. 259-260)

As Musser explains, “Environmental imperialism was one of the primary reasons why Nazi Germany decided to conquer the eastern territories,” an extension of the German “blood and soil” beyond Germany’s borders. (p. 263)

The planners were given carte blanche to “re-sculpt the eastern territories in their totality, even if it meant the suppression, exploitation, and extermination of the people who lived there.” (Wolschke-Buhlman, How Green Were the Nazis?, p. 247, quoted by Musser, R. Mark, Nazi Oaks, p. 268)

Hitler wanted to build wind mills all over Ukraine to supply its needs of electricity and to export only the wheat demanded. Colonizing the East would solve their overpopulation problem and his fear of running out of natural resources . He was sure that the “future belongs, surely, to water - to the wind and the tides.” What gave him the right to destroy so many millions of people, Jews, Russians, and Poles? They were not properly in synch with nature.

Walter Christaller, a former SS spatial planner, developed his Central Place Theory on regional and urban planning. His plan is considered by some the model for sustainable development and the Green movement today. Some environmentalists deny any connection between Nazism and going green. (p. 289 and p. 293)

How green were the Nazis? Probably as green and as controversial as our renewables are today.

© ILEANA JOHNSON 2014