allen-No doubt the current political establishment took some notes from Goebbels.
“Reichssicherheitshauptamt
Department of Homeland Security
The Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) was the main division of the Nazi SS, and the parent organization of the Gestapo. The German word “Reich” is untranslatable, but you couldn’t come closer in contemporary English than the emotionally-laden Bush-era term “homeland.” “Sicherheit” is always translated as “security,” and “Hauptamt” literally means “main office,” which could be reasonably translated as “department.”
“As the enemy drew nearer Moscow, instead of the Muscovites’ view of their situation growing more serious, it became more frivolous, as is always the case with people who see a great danger approaching. At the threat of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal power in the human soul: one quite reasonably tells a man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of averting it; the other still more reasonably, says that it is too depressing and painful to think of the danger, since it is not in man’s power to foresee everything and escape from the general march of events, and it is therefore better to disregard what is painful till it comes, and think about what is pleasant”
–Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
“Reality is a thin line between denial and paranoia.”
