I'd like to ask a question I love
you and and expressed my own concerns
and I don't know if you're familiar with
this book they thought they were free by Bill Maher
Bill Maher has been dead for a while
II you know I'm I think it's been about a little over a decade I could be wrong
about it
be longer than that and
a in 1955 I should have 53 54 early fifties
because this book was published in 55 surprised to get a couple years to write
it
but in the early fifties he was
a publisher or he was a are you know one of america's more well-known
investigative reporters working at a Chicago for this should big
Chicago paper I I think it was the sometimes but um
I'm running for memory here and
he asked his publisher if he could have an assignment where he
went to Germany and I use a he was a Jew love German ancestry
if he could go to Germany and
find 10 good nazis and befriended them and find out
why they became nazis is america was still in shock
as the idealism even in the mid-fifties many the horrors of the camps and what
happened and what went on in
how it happened and who did what we're still still coming in
and he wrote this amazing book
now I'd like to preface this by
just you know a couple quick stories this is just from today's you know
today's news over Democratic Underground 951 Riverside posting
an article police shoot kill 80-year-old man in his own bed don't find the drugs
they were looking for
at the they smash in this guy's house because some cops is all it smells like
they're making out there
and the shot and killed the 80 year old guy in his bed
and there are no drugs it was a white guy by the way
black guy gets
for by a cop in Florida for plane NW is F the police on
on Thanksgiving Day cops as you really play on that song pullover
Rai 8 here's a
this over a daily close San Jose police officer on leave after posting death
threats to protesters on Twitter
ice as soon as a police officer Philip white
said threatened me on twitter: threat mana
and/or my family and I will use my god-given in law pointed right and duty
to kill you
writes a police officer
by the way if anyone feels they can't breathe air their lives matter
I'll be at the movies tonight of duty carry my gun so
my question is
and it's probably more directed
at and white people in my audience than black because I think that most
african-americans have lived with us throughout their lives although I'd
love to hear from are african-american viewers listeners about whether you
think things are getting worse or better in terms of
interactions with the police but much like
the economic circumstances that african-americans faced
thirty years ago before reaganomics where you know they're they're
unemployment rate was higher their wages were lower harder to get into college
all those other things
that's now happening to to white middle class the white middle class is becoming
the white working poor
and so therefore America in quotes which courses
white america Scott waking up in go wait a minute and one other things that will
that middle-class America are white america whatever you wanna call it
is one is waking up to is that
we are as a nation becoming more authoritarian
just the fact that the vice the former vice president states can go on
television
and defender in only were 18 a prisoners
as a legitimate form of interrogation
I you know a.m. that the murder a man
you know frozen a doubt that I ended in a jail cell as a legitimate form
interrogation
chaining people to the ceiling for hours for
for you know 22 hours the joint start disintegrating
legitimate for interrogation these are all banned by international law but
drowning people waterboarding
I doubt dick cheney would feel that these were legitimate techniques for
interrogation if they were used on one of his kids
but not his kids are at have ever or ever will join the military just like he
never joined the military
so it's the US soldiers who are facing this but back to MIL mayor
Bill Maher
a Road he got to know these ten guys one was a baker one was a college professor
and he talks about how
nazism overcame Germany this authoritarian as missus was not by
attack from without
or by subversion from within it was with the hoop and holler
it's what most germans wanted they want it they got it they liked it
he says I came home a little bit afraid for my country afraid of what I might
want and get
and like under combined pressure reality and illusion
I felt and feel it was not German man that I met but man
he happened to be in Germany under certain conditions he might be here
under certain conditions he might under certain conditions be me
if I and my countrymen ever six-hour succumbed to their Concannon asiana
conditions no constitutional laws no police
and certainly no army would be able to protect us from harm so this morning we
were talking about this and she and I was like I'm
was white guy I'm dealing with the police differently I'm
you know I woulda given him some lip five years ago I don't anymore
cuz the other all about killing people now
so how did this come about I would say it
it came about in the waco 911 in the waco you know you
you can make a joke at an airport you can make a joke anywhere that week
came a nation a frightened people maier writes
he this is a actually these are the words
love one of the 10 nazis that he got to know a German disco as a college
professor
who was a good german right never protested the nazis just
kept doing his job all through the war teaching college until finally
you know killer fell he said the separation of government from the people
this widening in the gap took place so gradually and so in sensibly each step
disguised
perhaps not even intentionally as a temporary emergency measure
or associated with true patriotic allegiance or what's real social
purposes
in all the cries and reform crises in reforms real reforms to
so occupied the people that they did not see the slow-motion
underneath the whole process have government grow in remoter
in remoter kinda reminds you of the conservative call for
less government to live in this process he says is absolutely not to be able to
notice it please try to believe me
in this one has a much greater degree a political awareness security
than most of us ever had occasion to develop each step was so small so
inconsequential so well explained
on occasion or regretted that unless one were detached from the whole process in
the beginning
was a1 understood what the whole thing was in principle what all these little
measures
no patriotic German could resent my someday lead to
on no more sought develop in from day-to-day
that a farmer's field sees the corn growing and then one day
it is over your head in
and then he goes on to talk about his experience in am
how you know how it happened
any any really this guy was not a making an excuse for not
confronting the fascists in fact he talks about that a little later on so
my question have you have you noticed
that in the last fifteen years our country has become
frankly different countries for my just project in its my just imagine this
is the Thom Hartmann program and as much as it's become a different country for
whites
I'm guessing it's also become a different country for blacks in
curious about how that its and and people have other minority
races