Second self- examination

This weekend I was in a peculiar mood. Very oppressive news. I am not such a big fan of Woody Allen as I was when I watched Annie Hall for the first time. Normally on Saturdays I prefer to watch or read or write something lighter, not to brood all the time on the same topics. However, last Saturday I decided to follow the cultural ritual depicted in that film, and I watched ,for the fourth time, Kenneth Branagh's et alii Conspiracy, a vey good film not only on the facts of history but on the pragmatics of discourse, universal and particular. I hope of course that the dialogues follow closely what was trascribed in Eichmann's dossier of which only one copy -like Beowulf- is kept- and that belonging to Martin Luther's! I don't mean to be humorous here, but coincidences are coincidences. I cannot watch this film often because I get excited and I begin to start working on the language and establishing some comparisons. I have to say that this film on the final Jewish solution -after successful preliminary tests on the mentally deficient and other defective people- is something that I hope will never be applied to any race, group of people, nation on the basis of religion, history, capacity, politics or genetics, of course. My reasoning is this one: if language and thought are universal and all humans have to follow the same conventions to communicate, this also applies to all realms of human activity positive or negative, such as work, social life and, of course, war. Any crime, abuse, act of violence, cruelty has to be prosecuted. If not whom are we to trust? There are conventions, tribunals, agreements and treaties. Let's respect them! It would be monstrous to think that nowadays some countries have adopted supranational legislations that jeopardize the free world. I tend to remember all too often nowadays, the gradual glide towards totalitarism in Europe between the first and second world war always under the pretext of the foreign threat (communism) and the weaknesses of the liberals. It's not that difficult to mystify democratic laws by apparently legal means based on exceptionality, new international conditions and so on. Secret services as multinationals independent of the control of the national securities? Legitimacy to act everywhere in the world? All this is very serious, of course. If you believe in democracy you know that you're limited and controlled by the law, but this is the apparent weakness that establishes the difference between freedom and totalitarism. A war abuse, once proved is a war abuse, in all possible worlds! I repeat, whom are we to trust?

I'd like to transcribe two brief passages of this superb, moving film. Nowadays, year 2009 -and I know that each case is different and that the Holocaust is different from other attempts of segregation and elimination- I was not thinking of the Jews only, but of humankind, and I dread that this kind of meetings -ideas, vocabulary and policies- may have actually taken place to approve "final solutions" not only in the Wansee House, but in some other Houses of different colours and ideologies. In my case, I'm much more concerned about Health and Medical Classifications -categories of people-rather than about the race or the colour, but it worries me to dilapidate the ideals of democracy like this.

The two brief passages -incomplete and a very brief- that I'd like to comment:

....They are sublimely clever, and they are intelligent as well. My indictment... They are arrogant, and self-obsessed and calculating.... they reject the Christ....

An Inquisitor? A Medieval authority? Meaning precisely what and about whom? ClassificationS based on the purity of blood. Slaves in the times of the Spaniards, Portuguese, British and French: "mulato," "cuarterón" "mestizo," "zambo...." ? Blood, religion, ideals, typology. What about Africa, Asia? What about nowadays typologies?

.... Death is the most reliable form of sterilization....

Absolute truth, and scientific, but not strategic in my view!

Why all this today? Because I believe in language to analyze and solve problems, to denounce cases of injustice and abuse in its proper terms, to heal if possible, to transmit love and affection. We're living moments of uncertainty and, hopefully the beginning of a period of regeneration. Maybe I have not expressed myself very clearly or convincingly. However as Miguel de Unamuno said once -approximate idea out of memory from something I read when I was 16: I am sincere even when I contradict myself.

Let's hope the best for the US and for us all starting tomorrow. Freedom equality, pursuit of happiness.... peace and new prosperity!