I suddenly had this REALLY derogatory thought. I'll keep it to myself.

I'm shocked! Shocked I tell you!

I find it strange that the only other two toothbrush moustaches known in 20th century pop culture, at least in the U.S. were from comedians, Chaplin and Oliver Hardy. Although our own Gov. Clarence Martin (pictured here) sported one as well during the New Deal era. When I was a kid, the name "Adolf" was not hard to find in the older generation (such as the owner of the grocery store on the NW corner of 4th and Columbia), but, like the image of the moustache, that name became synonymous with "Single-testicled-genocidal-psychopaths-who-have-serious-self-esteem-issues." OK, actually, when I was a kid, which wasn't all that long after WWII, Hitler was another word for "evil." Since my childhood, I now realize that little Schicklgruber had a rival for the honor of being the most evil world leader in the 20th century-- Stalin. Both of them had very similar upbringings, and in fact could've met in Vienna at some point in their early past, when Stalin was an agitator handing out leaflets and Hitler was a jobless bum. But there is a difference between the two. If Stalin had died young, another generic Soviet tyrant would taken his place and probably pretty much run things in the same boring and predictable way despots operate. But if Hitler had been killed, history would've been much different. His regime was much more personality driven than Stalin's. Also, the idea of Hitler frightens Americans more than Stalin. The Soviet Union (how many OlyBloggers actually remember that country, or the Cold War?) was a very alien concept to the USA, but Germany was close enough to really scare the bejeezus out of us. And Hitler took power through a democratic process.

I worked in California for 20 years and had many immigrant friends, including some who left in the 1980's when they could. The stories were awful. My guess is Stalin was responsible for as many or more deaths than Hitler. The Russians endured unbelievable hardships. I had an older woman friend who had just one daughter, while I was pregnant with my second child. She said many Russian women chose abortion because they had little or no access to birth control. And even grocery shopping was at least an hour and a half in line. It took both parents working fulltime to afford a tiny apartment, and they worked long hours too. She and her husband had college degrees in Engineering and Programming.

What I found most inexplicable was the US put up strong immigration barrier to prevent and influx of the Russian Jews when they were let out. They went to the one place they were welcome, Israel, and ended up in the outllaying kibbutz, the same land that was won in an earlier and traded for peace later. But there is no peace in the middle east yet, is there? When the UN allowed the formation of Israel, they kind of overlooked the Palestinian inhabitants, who ended up in refugee camps themselves and bitter and angry.

It's a generational legacy of racism and violence. WWI and its harsh reparations gave Hitler a chance. He overflowed his borders more than Stalin so he got more notice. He became a threat to the rest of the Western world, but someone must have wondered about those smoke stacks and the rumors coming out of Germany. Then when the allies discovered the camps and the survivors, they ended up giving them someone else's land. Oh that's right. Many of the Arab sheiks sided with the Nazis. So displace the poorest of the Arabs and hope they don't object. Do it to give refuge to a population degraded throughout the world and not helped until our own borders were threatened.

China had a similar story to Russia, but again, within its own borders. I read that twice the number of Chinese were murdered during their revolution as all the numbers that died in the holocaust, including the Romani, who are shoved into homeless encampments still in Hungary, and deprived of education for their children. Fewer Romani died in total, but as a percentage of the original population, more were murdered. Romani don't follow a central leader and never have. It made them a tremendous threat to Hitler and they had to go.

Really, if you look to most wars, you find they are started for gain or in revenge. And the cycle of revenge doesn't end for generations to come, nor does the bitterness.

I hope at some point this nation can get back to the legacy of the UN and participate in agendas of human rights for everyone. Our recent conduct is baffling. We justify our own abuses by pointing fingers at our opponents. Two wrongs don't make a right. And we won't participate because everyone is allowed to participate. Duh? How can we talk out our planetary differences if the nations we don't agree with aren't there? Conflict resolution brings both sides to the table. We have a table in the UN that we aren't using. We are too busy being enforcers for human rights we overlook ourselves. It makes perfect sense if you're a smurf I guess.

Everyone needs to get out and see An Inconvenient Truth and take a look at the consequences of our wars and lack of concern for the environment. Our planet is shrinking and heating up by the day. We better make room for refugees and learn to get along with each other, because many people are going to end up without solid ground underneath them. And the storms will get bigger and the weather more unpredictable. What will that look like? Remember Katrina. And look to the aftermath too. The rich get richer on the spoils of government contracts, and the poor and renters get shoved somewhere else and subjected to NIMBY whereever they go. Who says we get to pick our neighbors? Is that human rights, or is it a legacy of human wrongs and indifference?

I read too much Steven haha. I lived a lot but I also read a lot. Not much to do in Pullman except read. Through my grandmother, I met her German friends. One was a widow whose father and husband were machine gunned by the Nazis for their standagainst them, right in front of her and her mother. They raised her baby through the war and the Russian occupation before they immigrated here. Her brother made it here too, after 10 years in a Russian camp for Germans. He was huge and ate so fast he wore food on his lapels like little flowers. Poor man. He starved for a long time. I read right through everything I could find about that period and all the challenges. Leon Uris was a particular favorite of mine. Armageddon, Mila 18, Exodus, and many more. Historical fiction was really popular in the 1950's and 1960's. I wish we had more of it now. Nothing like a good yarn with a historical perspective to put the past in focus and defuse the bitterness. This was wrong, but why, how did it happen? What fueled the hatred? OK, what fueled that hatred, and the one before it. Its a never ending cycle until we really embrace human rights and planetary causes and more important than borders and profits and NIMBY.^@^