Pledge Alegiance and The Triumph of the Will

Just watched about an hour of ""The Triumph of The Will. It's the Leni Reifenstein documentary done at a Nuremberg rally about 1934. 

What a wonderful age we live in; I go on Netflix instant Q and can choose from 200 documentaries, and there I am, transported back to 1934. Germany.

Just about the time this film was made my father was getting out of college in New York City, sharing jobs with friends as theater ushers,  shoe salesmen, whatever they could get. The United States was still deep into the Depression, and on the other side of the world, well it was another world entirely. 

My father understood German. I don't know if he ever saw the movie. But I know what he would have thought about it.

I'm not sure what to think about it, or rather, how to think about it. 

It's not a movie made to be thought about.

You react to it.

The wierd thing is, it's sort of thrilling at first. 

It starts out in the clouds, seen from Hitler's airplane, flying into Nuremberg, which looks really magical, with it's steep pitched roofs and towers and church steeples. And then you notice the ranks of marching people in the streets, and then the banners which look so much like banners from castles lufting in the wind.  Banners in black and white, but you know they are red, black and gold because they are the German colors, and the banners which you know are the red of a Marchino cherry, bright red, because they have swastikas in white circles. 

And then the people. Very clean looking blondes, grinning, overjoyed, estatic, raising their arms in the salute. You see them from behind as they crane their necks and try to get a sight line through the crowds along the streets. And like a crowd at a baseball stadium doing a wave, they raise their arms along the line, and you know it's Hitler's car passing by, although all the bodies block your view. But you can see from the excitement, all the people going up on their toes, he's passing by. 

And you see children doing the stiff arm salute. And people all dressed up in some sort of German Black Forest peasant costume doing the stiff arm. 

And you listen to Hitler talk about wanting peace, but wanting the youth of Germany to be hard and courageous whether in peace or adversity. He never says the word, "War."

And there are speeches by all his friends: Goebels, Hess, Ley, Rosenberg, all of them. 

And Hilter speaks to young men who shoulder shovels. They are some sort of forestry or agriculture workers. And they build dams, too. And Hitler talks about how there will be no more classes, and physical labor will be revered and every citizen will do physical labor first, before he moves off in whatever other direction he may desire.  He is talking about respecting everyone in society, value to everyone. (He never mentions Jews, gypsies or other undesirables.)

And you feel yourself getting swept along. Everyone is so estatic.

All the flags and happy people.

And I thought of Ronald Reagan standing in front of the Statue of Liberty, with a hundred American flags waving behind him, with his hand over his heart as they played the Star Spangled Banner.

Very creepy.

I know we must be different. We are different. 

And I thought, there but for the Grace of God, go you and I.

Or maybe it's not only God, but the power to say no. To recognize when you are being swept along by emotion, by a crowd, and you say to yourself. No. Not me. 

Let others run like lemmings.

I will think where it all leads.