I liked the book for reasons other than its writing quality or character development or advocacy. I like that it had motivated me to research more primary materials on many events.
As for hope, read this and tell me if this differs from what you expect to happen in America:
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"All in Day's Work"
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I walk slowly, dragging my feet from fatigue. Fine drops of the cold drizzle fall behind my collar, collect on my glasses. They drip through the shroud of my Schmeisser and boil, hissing, on the hot barrel. My ears are still ringing, and my head is pounding a from headache. I always get allergy migraines in the spring.
The bolt of my gun is still locked back. I remove the half-empty magazine, my last, and ease the bolt forward. My wristwatch shows four in the afternoon. Has it only taken twenty minutes? It felt much, much longer.
We were helping some people relocate to their own district, keepm them moving along orderly, you know. Almost all of them were out in the street when the trouble started. This crazy Yid boy - he couldn't have been any more than fourteen - attacked one of my men. Emil had just looked into the apartment to see if everyone had left when this little bastard hit him with an iron rod. We figured that something was wrong when the kid shot at us from his kitchen window with Emil's pistol.
I don't think he ever fired a gun before. He came closer to hitting the Jews in the street than any of us, but we hit the cobblestones and crawled for cover all the same. The boy took his time shooting off the second clip. By then, we'd brought my machine pistol from the van and made him keep his head down.
We dashed in when we judged that he'd used up his ammunition. Seems we counted wrong, or maybe Emil had more on him than just two clips. The little creep met us in the hallway and shot the local policeman that came up with us through the leg. I let him have it there and then.
We found Emil's body after that, badly mauled, one floor above. His head was twisted backward, and the missing teeth gave his face an expression of crazy mirth. When I tell his wife, I better leave out the details. Got to think of something encouraging to say. Some fun! I suppose, we could look at the bright side. Of the sixty thousand we have already moved this week, only one gave us any trouble.
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Trouble is, we will lose over time if we limit ourselves to reacting to others' attacks. And no one in their "right mind" would initiate moves that would mess up their own lives. Most "normal, reasonable" people, me included, will keep hoping that things will get better w/o bloodshed.
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Cornered Rat
ddb.com/RKBA Updated March 20
"Disarm, then past the barbed wire, into the oven and out of the smoke-stack..."
[This message has been edited by cornered rat (edited May 21, 1999).]
