Doing What We're Told
In the book
'Financial Reckoning Day' by William Bonner and Addison Wiggin, they recount an event that took place in the Polish town of Bilgoraj on the 13th July 1942. In short, the commander of the 101st battalion police reserve, a man know affectionately as 'Papa Trapp', told his men that they had been given an order by the German government to eliminate all able bodied Jews and all other Jews were to be dispatched to the labour camps. If any of the men felt unable to fulfil the order they could be excused. One man said he would take no part in the murder of women and children and was reassigned. These men were family men, police reservists and by no means Nazi zealots. Papa Trapp was so emotionally distraught by the order that he was in tears. The order was carried out and afterwards Trapp was never the same. Witnesses say he was seen crying like a child. "May God have mercy on us Germans", he said.
But he, and most of his men, still carried out the order. There is (or at least was) a German characteristic that made them very obedient. Of course, we are not susceptible to such orders are we? After all, we are all reasoning people.
On two quite separate occasions I talked to girls about their left-wing views.
Both of them made the same response: "I'm only 18 and can't possibly know enough
about this but I trust the leadership". One girl told me that McDonalds franchise
holders were responsible for the destruction of the rain forests and that drug
pushers were simply poor people trying to make a living. This is what she had
been told and was incapable of questioning it. I doubt if under present circumstances
she would have killed if she was told to do so, but the daily papers recount
numerous instances of mob rule. Recently in Wales the home of a pediatrician
was attacked by an angry mob when it was reported that pedophiles had moved
into the area. This defies any logic, not only because a pediatrician is obviously
not a pedophile, but also what pedophile would put a notice on their door announcing
the fact? If you don't question rationally then logic doesn't matter - we are
reduced to mob mentality.
There is another element to this. People will assume that something is acceptable if they have been given permission. After the war many German commanders attempted to justify their actions by saying that they were only obeying orders. This is particularly true of young people who have no other mechanism for ascertaining whether a course of action is constructive or destructive. So when young people are told that having sex is OK, either directly or indirectly, for example by supplying condoms at school, they see this as license. What they are doing must be acceptable because their elders have given it approval. Some people then argue that it's going to happen anyway so we may as well condone it. It's a circular argument that leads to a spiral downwards into a destructive chaos.
