This is getting sick.
The Holocaust was a horrific atrocity and watershed event in human history. The meaning of the word is being distorted and demeaned in political rhetoric and casual comparisons.
Over the last few years, U.S. political discourse has been saturated with opponents accusing each other of Nazi-like policies or behavior. Most recently, it was California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown who likened the attack ads of Meg Whitman, his Republican opponent in the race for governor, to the tactics employed by Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels.
Brown later called me to say he regretted citing Goebbels. But most of the comparisons are made without apology.
Its quite sad how people can use the Holocaust as a metaphor for their measly political gain.
Last week, Sarah Palin criticized President Obama’s handling of the BP crisis in a tweet to followers recommending they read an article by Thomas Sowell that compared Adolph Hitler’s use of a financial crisis to give himself dictatorial powers to Obama’s role in creating the BP escrow fund.
Its disgusting. That’s all.
The continued misuse and trivialization of the word prompted Elie Wiesel, Nobel laureate and chronicler of the Holocaust, to discontinue using it. “Whatever mishap occurs now, they call it ‘holocaust,’” Wiesel said. “I have seen it myself in television in the country in which I live. A commentator describing the defeat of a sports team, somewhere, called it a ‘holocaust.’”
Wiesel is right. There are many injustices and manifestations of evil in our world, even in our own country, the greatest of democracies. Standing up to them is not only our right but our obligation. But that obligation does not include distorting and demeaning the word that has come to stand for the great evil that was the Holocaust.
Distorting the meaning of anything solely for your own political aspirations is lame enough as is. Let alone, the Holocaust.
EDIT: I posted this yesterday and didn’t have much to say about it. It sort of left me speechless. Some in my family are very conservative and are likely back up Palin. This notion crushes me. Especially since others on the opposite side of my family have died and survived through the Holocaust. I was speechless yesterday but not today. How do people like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck not only get away with such awfully irresponsible accusations but enable it to be encouraged? From Palin’s Hitler and nazi references to Beck using MLK to support his agenda, its disgusting and unfair. The fact that there any blacks and/or Jews left in that party is baffling; allowing themselves to be used in this way for the cheap political gain or approval of some white Christian who clearly does not understand actual facts, history, or the plight of said groups. This is at least true of those who continue to defend perpetrators of such inapt metaphors. Of course, that alone may not be enough to leave a party or its philosophy.
