Dear Chicago

Photographs by The Germanatrix

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A Brosef At War

By The Germanatrix


My brother is coming home from Iraq in less than a month. He, and everyone around him, cannot quite believe it, and just writing the words “my brother is coming home” feels like I’m jinxing the whole thing. In case you were wondering what it’s like to have a close family member involved in this bullshit war, it feels like your heart took human form and decided the first thing it would do is play chicken. On a NASCAR racetrack. During a race. Without a car.

It sucks.

I won’t even try to convey what my brother has been through, because I can’t even begin to imagine it. You can watch movies and read books, but how can you possibly understand what it’s like to fear for your life 24/7? What it’s like to see people die right in front of you, ripped from an existence that by all rights they were supposed to enjoy for a very long time.

My brother had to collect and identify the body parts of his friend. He doesn’t want his family to ever go through something like that. For good reason – it’s a completely fucked up thing to have to live through. And yet, how many families, how many friends have had to claim the bodies of their dead? How many soldiers do we have over there? 100,000 and counting? So many of these brave soldiers are killed or live through their friends and comrades being killed, only to return to a society that didn’t want them there in the first place, and has no real concept of the hell they’ve been through.

In many ways, this war is a private one – the only people who really feel the effects of it (in this country, anyway) are those who have someone over there. If you’re lucky enough not to know anyone in the military, this war is about as relevant to you as an episode of Lost. A bit depressing at times, compelling, infuriatingly stupid, perhaps, but you can get on with your life without really thinking about it until it pops up again on TV or in the newspaper.

Even for me, my brother’s ordeal was on the periphery of my life. During most of the year that my brother’s been at war, I was in Germany. Everything was sparkly and new and difficult, and it’s easier to ignore your worries when Prague is only 30 euros away.

That is, until you get emails like this:

4/18/06

I don't know what to say, this has been one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. That day the captain and I attended a local town council meeting. After that meeting we joked around outside for a couple minutes before he left with one of our sections and I left with the civil affairs guys. I arrived back at Taji to see our commo guy running around the squadron TOC area. Barely pausing he yelled to me, "Ghost 6 is hit."

No way, not him, I just saw him... it must have been another vehicle in the section... I'm sure it was like all the other IEDs that have blown on us, some paint chips, cracked glass, flat tires, some bullshit... well, if it was his vehicle, I'm sure he's fine, I mean it's Ghost 6, they can't hurt him, nothing can stop him... what came out was, "What?" He paused just long enough to say, "Ghost 6 is hit, he's unconscious." I don't know if he went into the building we were by or if he stood there or if a spaceship came down and snatched him up, I was running for the TOC before he finished the last word.

I was greeted with worried faces and fear. Before I knew it, I had dragged one of the TOC guys out of the chair by the radio and was sitting in it, holding the hand mic, listening to the guys on the scene react. I've never heard pure anger and rage and hate before, but it sounds like gunshots, diesel engines, and yelling. The captain’s gunner had taken some cuts to the face and a piece of shrapnel the size of your thumb had hit his throat protector, without that piece of kevlar his throat would have been ripped out.

He and the captain's driver had been dazed by the blast, but they came out of it to the sight of the captain slumped over, unconscious, bleeding out of his mouth and nose. In seconds they had gotten his 230 lb frame with 70 lbs of gear out of the vehicle. The medic arrived and provided first aid while the gunner and driver joined the rest of the section in returning fire to some guys in a nearby trash dump that shot at them after the blast. The medevac bird arrived pretty quickly, and they drove the captain to the LZ on a litter on the hood of a humvee.

He was off to the Combat Surgical Hospital with the squadron commander quicker than we had ever practiced. Talking to the medics, it seemed like the captain would be okay. He would be back, or at least be there when we got home. The section arrived back on Taji with his gunner, driver, and vehicle within two hours of the IED strike, they brought all his gear in the TOC while the gunner and driver were treated for their injuries. I spent the next three hours cleaning the blood off of his leader's book, a big binder full of important papers in document protectors, and the two pictures he carried of his 6-month old son in a zip-loc bag.

After that I went to the gym, worked out, and beat the shit out of the punching bag. Right before I was done I got a call saying there was a meeting of all COs in the SCO's office. It was then that he told us the captain had passed away. The impact of whatever had come through the Humvee and hit his kevlar had caused too much damage, even though it didn't penetrate.

I can't put into words what came next. He was my best friend here on Taji. He has a son that he really only got a month with, if that. He's got a young wife back home. He was getting out so that he could be with his son as he grew up. He had just finished a CD for his wife's birthday. He was just joking with me this morning. No way, not him.

I was CO for a couple hours. Long enough to gather all the soldiers in the troop and tell them, platoon by platoon, that their commander was dead. I've never seen men so tough cry so hard. Every heart in the troop broke that night.

We all admired him, loved him, would have done anything for him. He was all you could ever ask for and so much more. They brought in another captain from within the squadron, a good guy for sure.

The troop is pretty messed up. They're angry, sad, pissed, torn up inside, and full of rage. We all carry the cards that the captain’s wife gave us when we deployed. They have a picture of the captain holding his son and it says "something worth fighting for." Well, we're going to fight. Jonathan will never meet his father, will never know what a great person he was, all because we can't fight this war the way we need to. No more.

In the meantime, we will always carry this with us. We will randomly think we see the captain for the rest of our lives. We will suddenly become silent while others laugh and joke because something reminded us of him. We'll never be the same because we lost our friend.

How do you respond to this? I didn’t even know my brother could write this way. I’m not only mourning this man I’ve never met, but the effect his death had on so many people—some of them now dead too. How does that quote go? “The opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation?” It sounds good, but war is so varied in its influences and effects that its opposite can best be summarized as life. War is so unnatural and grotesque, so anathema to human existence, that I don’t understand how it could so often be considered the only possible solution to our problems

When it comes down to it, I don’t even care about the political ramifications of this war. I don’t care how our conduct in Iraq and on the world stage in terms of foreign policy will affect our country’s future. I just want my brother back. I want him to come home without these kinds of experiences and the trauma they have permanently inflicted in his life. He says that he doesn’t think he’s changed much, but it simply isn’t possible for him to stay the same. Even if he hadn’t been in the army, my brother would have signed up and gone to Iraq because it would have been the right thing to do. That’s just the kind of guy he is.

I could mention how fucked up it is for Bush and his passel of assholes to manipulate the post-9/11 public sentiment to wage this pointless war, but I’m trying to keep politics out of it.

The reality of the situation is this: We’ve got a whole new generation of men and women out there with a shared trauma that sooner or later is going to be dismissed just like the suffering endured by the Vietnam vets. They will most likely be told to get over it, and themselves, and to move on. Maybe some of them will.

But to this day, a lot of Vietnam veterans can’t hear fireworks without flinching because it sounds too much like gunfire. This is what life is like for a whole new group of veterans now. And it’s sad that no one will know or care but those who suffered with them.

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Veggie Tales

In Which
The Germanatrix Attempts to be a Better Vegetarian



I am the worst vegetarian ever.

I became a vegetarian in March, while vacationing in Morocco. I became a vegetarian because the way people treated their donkeys depressed me.

But I am also lazy. There are numerous examples that would amply illustrate the extent to which I will avoid making an effort, but really I can’t be bothered.

In any case, you see what I’m working with.

This is why, when I heard that New Leaf Grocery could deliver organic vegetables to my door, I jumped on it, in my own lazy way (meaning, I starred the email and discussed it with my roommate three weeks later). New Leaf has various options for content, price, and delivery. We went with three $15 boxes, mixed fruit and veg.

So far, I love it. Granted, I’m only two boxes in, but I had sautéed swiss chard for dinner last night. I am damn sure none of you can say the same.

Strawberries! Red onions! Sweet potatoes! Beets! The veggie box has forced me into experimental mode. Granted, the roommate didn’t so much enjoy the beet spaghetti from the other night (quote: “it looks like guts”), but though the beets looked like innards, they tasted really good.

These aren’t things I would buy myself, but having them on hand is nice, and while it’s taking us a while to eat our way through the box, we’ve made use of everything but the cilantro bouquet.

My friend Kate had a different experience with the veggie box. Apparantly there is a downside to vegetable delivery. Kate signed up to be part of a co-op through True Nature Foods, and bought a half-share for a box of mixed fruit and veg every other week.

True Nature operates under a different system by which the boxes are gauged by weight. This means that sometimes Kate would receive something very random that was heavy, but also basically useless (i.e. a coconut).

“I would rather they had left out the coconut and put something more useful in there, even if I was getting a less heavy box than I paid for.” she says.

More often than not, Kate received vegetables she couldn’t or simply didn’t know how to use. She was forced to do actual research on some of the items in order to determine how they could be used. And in the busy post-collegiate, pre-professional twenty-something life, who’s got time to be googling veggies?

“I joined because I believed in their mission,” says Kate. “But what ended up happening was that we had vegetables rotting on the windowsill; it fit better for me to just go to the store and buy what I need.”

Kate is still a fan of this sort of enterprise, though, and promises that if she becomes a stay-at-home mom, where cooking is more central to the way she lives, she’ll sign up again.

So if my beet spaghetti sets your stomach grumbling and you’re interested in signing up for veggie delivery, first look into how the operation works, and also make sure that you have the time (and energy) to spend cooking up a swiss chard, potato, and chick pea stew. Having a healthy curiosity doesn’t hurt, either.

In the meantime, I’m going to go home and make myself something involving a potato, romaine lettuce, and a lime. Try to contain your jealousy.

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The Little, Black Handbook: Business Writing

To Whom It May Concern:

I am a recent graduate from a Master’s program at a very prestigious university, as well as an erstwhile Fulbright Scholar. Capital “S,” since I’m that good. I wrote my Master’s thesis on a relatively obscure German film, using literary theory to interpret the use of objects in the socio-political context of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

As you can see, I am very smart. What might be less obvious is that I am also very desperate.

Don’t be afraid of my prodigious intellect—use it to your advantage! I majored in English, folks. That’s the educational equivalent of an old French whore: I really can and will do anything you want, as long as you pay up front. Update a website? Ooooh, I’m on it! Copyedit a scientific journal? Bring it on. Clear an accounting backlog on a DOS-based system? Oh….kay. Sort, alphabetize, and file pay stubs for all 3 million of Chicago’s small businesses? Fine, let me just get some lube first.

My Master’s degree has been, thus far, as useful as a fart in a mitten. I know of people who’ve lied about having a Master’s (i.e. said they didn’t have one) in order to get jobs. But I’m going to be honest. I need a job. I beg you, please help me. I cannot look at the Chicago Reader’s classifieds anymore. Why is it that all of Chicago’s businesses need telemarketers? Is that really all there is out there in the way of employment? The promise of a daily verbal castigation at the hands of people who don’t even know who Murakami is? As if I were selling herpes rather than, say, symphony tickets? I cannot stress enough the severely detrimental effect that sort of job would have on my self-esteem.

And I am not waitressing. Not because I spit on food or anything, but because I have no balance or grace whatsoever and would be fired within a week for dumping catfish and hot coffee on my customers. And I cannot do hair. At least, not anyone else’s, and really, were someone to look at my head right this minute, they’d think I couldn’t do my own, either. And that is pretty much all there is in the way of jobs on the Chicago Reader’s website. So thank you for…nothing. Nothing but the prospect of having the self-esteem of a 6’4” 150 lb. teenage D&D freak with pizza face and big hands. Thanks again. No, really.

All I’m looking for is a job where I am allowed to use my brain, even if it’s only a little bit. And not to do mathematical equations (see above, re: English major), or make my fingers type a bit faster. Is it too much to ask to be challenged intellectually, rather than sane…ally? And oh, to not be paid in chicken-flavored crackers and/or food stamps? Where in the Bible is it written that companies cannot pay a person above $28,000 for doing something remotely fun and interesting, else the entire outfit be turned into a corporate accounting firm and everyone who works there will have to wear pantyhose or ties?

Seriously, how can anyone expect a person to survive on $16,000 a year in this century? And again without benefits! I live in a frakking city! That’s Latin for death, people. I need to know that if I get hit by the 151 bus or trampled in the L, I won’t have to pay for it. Fiscally, anyway. I realize that there are trillions of people out there who’d be so happy to be paid $16,000 a year, and for far worse work. I know this. I am a bad person to want to be paid a lot of money to do something I might like. But you know, in a world where Tom Cruise can impregnate a woman, I think it’s possible that there might just be a job out there for me that doesn’t make me want to sell my soul to the devil just because there’s nothing else to do.

If you find that this cover letter speaks to you in any way, if you by some freakish chance find that you might want to even interview me, then please, call me. Email me. Send a carrier pigeon. Whatever! I will happily put my life on hold so that I may slap on a business suit in 100 degree weather, take the red line full of freaks to the Loop to then trudge the 80 blocks to your office building in high heels, and try and convince you with my perfect posture and faux eagerness that I am right for your company. I am, I swear. You just don’t know it yet.

Sincerely,
The Germanatrix

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Stupid Is As Stupid Does

A Final Missive from
The Germanatrix At the World Cup

hoo·li·gan: (h l -g n) n. A tough and aggressive or violent youth.; A thug who regularly goes to football matches and starts fights with opposing supporters; Hooligans can be distinguished from hooligans by the fact that true Hooligans have nothing to do with soccer/football, and rarely get into fights because they're too busy drinking.

Due to rather extreme security measures, the World Cup’s soccer hooligan front was pretty calm this time around—at least in Germany.

Germany’s unexpected tranquility is due to the fact that officials wisely recognized and regulated the true source of hooliganism: British fans. Germany minimized this threat to World Cup peace by banning the travel of known (read: folks with police records) hooligans, and the importing of British policemen to interact with British fans (since apparently Brits don’t respond well to the law enforcement of other countries). The few (read: 50,000 to 100,000+) British fans that made it into Germany were quiet and completely ruly (that’s the opposite of unruly, right?).

In the UK it’s an entirely different story. Due to riots and drunken violence, the BBC recently pulled the plug on its plan to broadcast all of England’s World Cup matches on big-screen televisions in Manchester, London, and Liverpool. “Frustrated fans among the 3,000-strong crowd hurled beer bottles, cans and other missiles as the game drew to a close.” Write Steven Morris and Owen Gibson of The Guardian Unlimited, “Onlookers said glass rained down on to the heads of children and elderly people.”

This happened during the first game. And I can see why, since England, despite having won all of its matches (ok, won two and drawn one, but who’s counting?), isn’t actually playing very well. And let’s not even discuss Sven-Goran Eriksson.

To many fans, soccer is a life-or-death business—a fact confirmed by the range of allusions to World War II that pervade British hooligan rituals. Apparently, at England’s games versus Germany, British fans will often sing “Ten German Bombers,” which details the shooting down of German bombers by the RAF. Tony Parsons, writing in The Daily Mirror, has stated that:

" Less than a lifetime ago the Germans inflicted untold misery on the world. If English football fans choose to deal with that a mere 60 years later by holding their arms out and pretending to be Lancaster bombers, I would suggest that the Germans are getting off quite lightly. "

I must point out that Mr. Parsons was not even alive when the Germans were going around inflicting their “untold misery.” "> I hate to break it to you, Mr. Parsons, but subsequent generations just don’t get to hold anything over the heads of folks who weren’t even sperm during the aforementioned events. As for “a mere” 60 years later—you know what happened “a mere 60 years” ago? Well, for one, the empire upon which the sun supposedly never set was only starting to crumble. So speaking of “untold misery,” how would the English like it if every black person in the stadium were to dress up like Shaka Zulu and act like they were chopping off British heads every time an African nation played a match against Beckham and his cronies? Sound tacky?

If the Germans wreaked such untold misery on the British during WWII (obligatory disclaimer: of course, they totally did), then it’s pretty bad form to make light of that during a soccer game. As if one had anything to do with the other. Are the English really getting back at the Germans for razing London to the ground (a mere 60 years ago, of course) and killing countless women and children by…singing a song and waving their arms about in the air? I think not.

I should probably admit here that I don't know much about soccer-related hooliganism. I haven't had any personal experiences involving hooligans, or acting like one myself (at least, not that I can remember, and certainly not in relation to soccer). I was as excited as the next person when the Red Sox won the Series, but I doubt I would have reacted violently if it hadn’t happened. That, you may say, is because Red Sox fans are used to losing, but those are semantics, say I. The average person wouldn’t have the energy to devote a significantly violent reaction to anything related to sports. There would be depression, and a copious amount of drinking where, certainly, anything could happen, but on the whole, people don’t kill other people when their team doesn’t make it out of the semi-finals.

It should be entirely unnecessary at this point to declare that hooligans are totally lame. Hooliganism bespeaks not just an attachment to a game or a team, but an unhealthy level of attachment that, in other cases, might be manifested as stalking. It’s just a game, folks. And that’s the key, isn’t it? Hooliganism, like it says in the definition, has absolutely nothing to do with soccer. It’s associated with soccer because some people need an excuse to be violent and soccer is as good a reason as any to bash someone’s head in.

As we smart people know, hooliganism is simply stupid people acting in a stupid manner and if you took away the soccer ball, hooligans would just find some other outlet for their aggressive tendencies. They’ll act stupid with or without the excuse of professional sports. So, hooligans, carry on if you must, but don’t expect any sympathy from us when you’re arrested for skirmishing or your eye gets poked out during a rousing rendition of “Ten German Bombers.” We smart people will be shaking our big-brained hipster heads from the sidelines.

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In Defence of Football*

JB’s Germanatrix
Brings Us a Taste of the World Cup
I didn’t realize that soccer need a defender until my pal JB brought to my attention a certain essay (tirade, more like) written by Chuck Klosterman:

(Soccer) is nothing more than an ironical death sentence; somehow, outcasts find themselves in a situation where the people normally penalized for teasing them are suddenly urged to annihilate them. That is why soccer seems like such a respite from all that mortification; it's the one aerobic activity where nothingness is expected... A normal eleven-year-old can play an entire season without placing toe to sphere and nobody would even notice, assuming he or she does a proper job of running about and avoiding major collisions.

How, may I ask, is there anything wrong with that? What would become of our great nation if we didn’t have our characteristic competitive streak? Or our fundamental idea that, in a battle between brawn and brains, brawn will always win? We wouldn’t be the top super-power of the world, that’s for sure. We’d probably be more like Sweden, which has a respectable education system, a creative definition of music and food no one else would take money to eat. America would probably be great at a few sports, but we wouldn’t necessarily bring the pain the way we do at the Olympics, the X-Games, the World Series, and pretty much every major sporting competition outside of the World Cup because soccer’s for sissies so we don’t care if we win.

That’s what I’m guessing is behind soccer’s lack of popularity with the viewing public of America. (And I suppose that it’s at this juncture that I should clarify that when I say “viewing public,” I obviously do not mean the ten trillion Latinos who are so totally into the World Cup. And God bless my people for it.) Maybe it’s that Americans can only give their hearts to one sport—by which I mean football. Could it be that loving more than one sport is un-American?

Obviously, in Mr. Klosterman’s case, soccer was a bad scene and, not to hate, but looking at his picture, one can see why. In a word: dork. And dorks have no place on a soccer field. Actually, there is no room for brains on any field of sport, anywhere. You can liken soccer to chess, or a game of cat-and-mouse, or something else cerebral. In actuality, it is a game where a bunch of men with huge thighs run up and down a field. They occasionally kick a ball they call “a pill” into a net, but this happens only rarely—unless, again, you’re from America, and then everyone’s kicking their balls into your net. So to speak.

There is artistry and grace in soccer (in spades if you’re from Brazil) but it involves very little thought. This is not a thinking person’s sport, which might be why the Chuck Klostermans of the world are so against it. The problem that thinking people have with sports in general, and soccer specifically, is precisely that there isn’t thinking: moves can be devised on the bench, but if they go haywire mid-play, you can’t stop, sit down on the field, chew a blade of grass and think it through. The ball will be stolen, the other team will score and you will look stupid. Soccer is all about instincts, about things moving so quickly you’re not allowed to think because you simply have to do. Some might throw their hands up at this “ironical death sentence.” I, who cannot multi-task to save her life much less act on pure instinct, admire that.

I really didn’t want this to be a treatise on instinct vs. whatever the opposite of instinct is. I just like soccer, and feel like everyone should give it a chance because it is, as opposed to baseball, fun to watch. If you’re used to basketball and enjoy points being scored every three seconds, it is, perhaps, insanely maddening. But if you’re at all into watching (hopefully) good defence, fun headers, and hat tricks (and if you’re watching a game where Cristiano Ronaldo is playing, a lot of freaking diving) then soccer’s your game.

The World Cup is the perfect time to get into soccer, since it’s one of the few sporting events involving the entire world. It’s exciting stuff, and who doesn’t appreciate the chance to insult entire nations with impunity?

*Which will, from this point forward, be called "soccer."

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Meet The Germanatrix

Kristina (Krisz-tee-nuh), the Germanatrix, is a post-collegiate, pre-professional twenty-something Fulbright scholar living and teaching in Germany. A graduate of Wellesley College and the University of Chicago, she is an afficianado of hipster music, Chicago thrift stores and Christian Bale films, and has a wee bit of a competitive streak.

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On White Supremacist Pop

Kristina Ogilvie responds to
A Minor Threat


The Nazis de facto abolished Prussia as a state in 1934, but the 13-year old members of the white supremacist pop band Prussian Blue must have missed that memo.

Since anything with the words Nazi or Hitler is illegal and inaccessible in Germany, I can’t access the actual Prussian Blue website. I’m not sure how that works technologically. But according to Wikipedia, the band’s name “is a reference to claims made by holocaust deniers alleging that gas chambers were not used in the holocaust because the levels of Prussian Blue found in the walls were not consistent with the use of Zyklon-B, as well as to the girls' German heritage and their eye color.” Ironic, since the color Prussian Blue is so dark blue it borders on black. But I guess no one ever accused white supremacists of being intelligent.

I hate to break it to the prepubescent members of Prussian Blue, but Prussia kind of sucks. Obviously, many parts of the former Prussian empire totally rock, among them, Dresden, Leipzig, and of course, Berlin. But let’s be honest— they rock because they are pretty much the polar opposite of what Prussia is, or ever used to be– full of young people, underground music and art scenes, international cultures, and easily obtained drugs. For the most part, however, since the Wall came down 15 years ago, the majority of the former East Germany has suffered from severe unemployment and rampant emigration to the west or to larger cities in the east. What was once Prussia is now comprised of ghost towns inhabited by disaffected and disadvantaged youths, who turn to neo-nazism the way kids stateside wind up in gangs.

On a purely aesthetic level, much of eastern Germany looks overtly communist, with large gray apartment blocks and massive concrete blocks where statues of Stalin, Lenin, and other dead Russian guys once stood. Forlorn communist chic, I believe, is the look they’re going for. Despite the insane amounts of money the government has poured into the East in the name of modernization and egalitarianism, so much has yet to change. The unemployment rate is twice as high in the East as it is in the West, and the population refuses to psychically relinquish the thirty years of Soviet control they enjoyed. That’s a different issue, but essentially, Prussia ain’t what it used to be. It probably never was. Prussian Blue (or their domineering, proselytizing mother) would most likely blame all of this on dirty commies, but the basic truth is that most Germans, east or west, would be horrified by these girls and their Hitler-happy-face t-shirts.

Most Germans (and when I say most, I don’t mean it the way one might say, “most Americans support the war on terror,” or “most Americans think George W. Bush is doing a great job.” I actually mean a good 99.9% of the German population) are the exact opposite of Nazis. Swastikas have been illegal since the end of World War II. The German publisher of Philip Roth’s Plot Against America is forced to print a plain old X on the book’s cover, rather than the swastika stamp that appears on the American version. In America, kids rebel by becoming hippies and smoking pot; here, if you really want to piss your parents off, you become a right-wing fanatic with a penchant for Doc Martens and an intensely close shave.

Germans are so damn politically correct that it’s gotten them into serious trouble with their own Turkish/Muslim population. Religious freedom has been sadly perverted by the immigrant community, resulting in complete autonomy, where children are taught the Koran in schools, most Turkish immigrants have no need to learn German, and whole communities are governed under Sharia law, modified only so that the German police won’t get involved. In an article published in the New York Times, Peter Schneider wrote about a spate of honor killings (When male members of a family kill a female relative because she is believed to have sullied her family’s honor in some way.). He asked how the slaying of 49 women could be disregarded in a country where the national murder toll barely reaches 400. “[I]t is a perversion when, out of respect for the ‘otherness’ of a different culture, Germans stand aside and accept the fact that Muslim women in Germany are being subjected to an archaic code of honor that flouts the fundamental human rights to dignity and individual freedom. This has nothing to do with Germany or the ‘guiding German culture’ that German conservatives want to put through; it has simply to do with humanity, with the protection of basic human and civil rights for all citizens of all ethnic backgrounds.” A continued reaction against the stain of Nazism, Germany’s bleeding heart liberalism has gone round the bend and is starting to look like left-wing stupidity.

But Germany’s got a ginormous monkey on its back, and his name is Hitler. Stupid Americans everywhere, when pissed off at a German for not giving them the correct change or something equally life altering, will be quick to call said Kraut a Nazi. That’s the way it is, and most Germans realize and (for the most part) accept it, though the tolerance level dips lower with each generation. Genocide is a part of the human existence, but those who turn it into a bureaucratic matter will always occupy a special ring of hell, and Hitler and his homies are there, probably saving seats for Rumsfeld, Rove, and Cheney.

Having grown up with a German mother, I find myself flinching whenever I mention the Nazis, as I had to today in order to explain the idea of “breeding something out.” (My 10th graders are watching “Rabbit Proof Fence” and learning about Australia.) I feel sorry for my kids, who are forced to bear the stigma of Nazism because of the language they speak. A lot of my students aren’t even German – there’s a large community of Russians, Poles, and Balkan refugees who are white and speak perfect German. As such, they will probably have the good fortune of being accused of Nazism just like the rest of their classmates. That’s equal opportunity for you.

I’ll have to ask my students what they think of these Olsen-twin look-alikes who worship Hitler, but I’m pretty sure they’ll be dumbfounded. After they pick their jaws up off the floor, they’ll most likely heap an acid rain of insults on the pair. One of my 6th graders, a very tall, very German looking kid named Jonas, has things like “Nazis suck!” and crossed out swastikas on his pencil case, for no reason whatsoever. He was just bored one day and that was what he drew next to his love sonnet to 50 Cent and a drawing of what I think are supposed to be breasts. Kids here get it from birth, as far as I can tell.

As a half-German, I have to admit that I can’t help but take Prussian-Blue’s neo-Nazism personally – members of both sides of my mother’s family were in the German military during both world wars (and long before, actually) and my great-uncle was a member of the SS. I’m not proud of that, but I am proud that these are the same people who welcomed my very dark-skinned father into their family, and cared for his mixed-raced children better than most of his own family did at the time. I am as German as I am because of them.

(For more news and analysis of Prussian Blue, check out The Prussian Blue Blog)

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