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2020-

2020-02-13
Beware the Ides of February

Today, we mark the 75th anniversary of the firebombing of Dresden. It was a beautiful city, the 'Florence on the Elbe' and, till then, largely intact. It was the home of women, children, the elderly, American and British POWs, and their guards. Germany was on its knees. The war was concluding. Where is the glory in further demoralizing a vanquished people? Why rain hell on innocents and captives?

To answer questions, especially those that pierce the soul, I go to the beginning. Your answers are incomplete if you do not understand the roots. Always go deep if you seek truly satisfying answers or, at least, plausible conjectures.

Knowing you are busy, I'll abbreviate this chronology. We'll begin late in the last glacial epoch when what is now Britain was a peninsula. It was so because so much water was locked in the ice sheets. The northwest outpost of the Eurasian landmass was peopled by Neolithic subsistence gatherers and herders, the Britons. As the ice that had accumulated since the previous interglacial, the Eemian, melted, sea level rose. Far away, in what is now the Black Sea, but was then dry, the progenitors of the Celts, lived in that huge bowl of a valley. It had been their home for millennia. As the ice sheets melted, the sea reached the crest in the Bosporus and the Mediterranean poured in. It was a cataclysmic cataract. The valley, the glacial refuge of the Celts, was flooded in less than two years. The Celts migrated west by northwest, fleeing the flood, and stopped when they reached the Atlantic. They remain in Galicia, the Celtic corner of Spain, in Normandy and Brittany, and in Ireland and Scotland. Understand this, the weak, the lame and the halt among them did not reach the western shores. The fierce ones made it, and they reproduced.

The Celts generally occupied the fringes and the uplands. They left the native Britons alone because they were poor and plundering them was unproductive.

Next (skipping quite a bit) Angles and Saxons, with some Danes and Friesians, crossed the English Channel and replaced the male Britons who had been there for so long. They themselves had fled westward because the Goths were restive and harrying the eastern fringes of the Germanic lands. Again, it was the strong ones who invaded the now insular Britain. They advanced their 'Y' chromosomes at the point of a spear. Spear, in Old English is, gar. We still use it as the name of a fish. Gar is the third word in the epic of Beowulf.

Then came the Vikings, but they generally settled in the north, where Danelaw held sway afterwards. Following them, the Normans (Norsemen) exploited the prevailing weaknesses and corruption of Harold's kingdom, and William became the Conqueror mostly through luck. William's top warlords were rewarded with fiefdoms and baronies. Their surnames are still over-represented at Oxford and Cambridge. They remain the Elite and they still plunder the planet, now with spooks and operatives in Her Majesty's service and through the venerable banking houses in the City. Though they have included fops and dandies, they are descended from warriors. Bloodlust defines them. They are the products of the survival of the fittest.

We now reach Queen Victoria, of the house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and her descendants. Specifically three grandsons, the cousins King George V, Kaiser Wilhelm, and Tsar Nicholas. Basically, they had a spat, a royal spat. They say that blood is thicker than water, until it isn't. The assassination of an Archduke in Sarajevo was of no ultimate consequence. World War I would have happened anyway.

After the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the warrior race of Unfair Albion, with French collaborators, drafted a punitive Treaty of Versailles that devastated Germany. By 1933, it is estimated that 90% of Germans were below the poverty line. An Austrian socialist with a funny mustache promised them salvation. They believed him and his unhinged rants about the usurers in their midst. They excused his Enabling Act. They excused his excesses. They were starved by The Treaty of Versailles and desperately needed a savior.

Wash, rinse and repeat. Wash, rinse and repeat.

Why did Britain come to the defense of the idiots (Generals) in Warsaw? Was World War II needed to save their sorry asses? Ultimately, I believe the Brits did it because it is in their genes. The bloody westward marches of their ancestors, and the continual culling of the weak among them on those treks, have left their mark.

Their westward migrations were not in response to past Horace Greeleys, throughout the centuries, whispering to them, "Go west, young man." They were fleeing flood, famine and foreign invaders.

Digression #1 - The Ides falls on the 15th in March, May, July, and October. The Ides falls on the 13th in the other eight months.

Digression #2 - If you haven't, please read Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. His Harrison Bergeron (1961) is also worth reading. It begins thus:
"THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General."

Digression #3 - Cold Turkey, also by Kurt Vonnegut, is available online. It begins thus:
"Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.

But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America’s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas."

Digression #4 - George V was basically a pleasant chap who had an uncanny ability to see others as they really are. (His son did not inherit that trait.) George tended to his stamp collection while a generation of British youth was wiped out in the trenches. His General Staff and the amoral and perfidious Lloyd George were running the gory show. I imagine they while away the endless night playing snooker with Satan.

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