corrente

Bear with me. It's a short read, and as far as I know only Corrente brings you things like this to chew on:

Then There's Only One Thing To (Dann Gibt Es Nur Eins!)

You. Man at the machine and man in the workshop. If they order you tomorrow to stop making water pipes and cook pots - and start making helmets and machine guns, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO!

You. Girl behind the counter and girl at the office. If they order you tomorrow to fill hand grenades and mount scopes on sniper rifles, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO!

You. Factory owner. If they order you tomorrow, to sell gun powder instead of talcum powder and cocoa, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO!

You. Researcher in the laboratory. If they order you tomorrow, to invent a new death to do away with old life, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO!

You. Poet in your room. If they order you tomorrow not to sing love songs, but songs of hate, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO!

You. Doctor at the sick bed. If they order you tomorrow to certify men as fit for war, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO!

You. Minister in the pulpit. If they order you tomorrow to bless murder and praise war as holy, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO!

You. Captain on the steamer. If they order you tomorrow not to transport wheat - but cannons and tanks, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO!

You. Pilot at the airfield. If they order you tomorrow to carry bombs and incendiaries over cities, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO!

You. Tailor at your table. If they order you tomorrow to start sewing uniforms, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO!

You. Judge in your robe. If they order you tomorrow to report to the military court, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO!

You. Man at the train station. If tomorrow they order you to give the signal for the ammunition and the troop trains to depart, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO!

You. Man in the village and man in the city. If they come for you tomorrow and with your induction papers, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO!

You. Mother in Normandy and mother in the Ukraine, you, mother in Frisco and London, you, on the banks of the Huang Ho and the Mississippi, you, mother in Nepal and Hamburg and Cairo and Oslo - mothers in all regions on earth, mothers all over the world, if they order you tomorrow to bear children - nurses for military hospitals and new soldiers for new battles, mothers all over the world, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! Mothers, say NO!

Because if you don't say NO, if YOU don't say no, mothers, then, then:

In the noisy port cities, hazy with steam, the large groaning ships will grow silent, and like titanic, mammoth corpses, filled with water, they will lethargically totter against the lifeless, lonely, algae-, seaweed-, and shell-covered walls of the docks, the body that previously appeared so gleaming and threatening now reeking like a foul fish cemetery, rotten, sickly and dead—the streetcars will be senselessly bent and dented like dull, glass-eyed birdcages and lie like petals beside the confused, steel skeletons of the wires and tracks, behind rotten sheds with holes in their roofs, in lost, crater-strewn streets—a mud-gray, heavy, leaden silence will roll in, voracious and growing in size, will establish itself in the schools and universities and theaters, on sport fields and children's playgrounds, horrible and greedy and unstoppable—the sunny, juicy grapes will spoil on the neglected slopes, the rice will dry up in the desolate earth, the potatoes will freeze in the plowed fields and the cows will stretch their dead, rigid legs into the sky like upturned milking stools—in the institutions, the ingenious inventions of the great physicians will become sour, rot, mold into fungus—the last sacks of flour, the last jars of strawberries, the pumpkins and the cherry juice will spoil in the kitchens, chambers and cellars, in the cold storage lockers and storage areas - the bread under the upturned tables and on splintered plates will become green and the melted butter will smell like soft soap, the grain on the fields will have bent down to the earth alongside rusty plows like a defeated army, and the smoking, brick chimneys, the food and smokestacks of the stamping factories, covered by eternal grass, will crumble, crumble, crumble—then the last human being, clueless with slashed intestines and polluted lungs, will wander alone under the poisonous, glowing sun and vacillating constellations, wander lonely among immense mass graves and cold idols of the gigantic, concrete-block, deserted cities, the last human being, scrawny, mad, blasphemous, complaining—and his terrible complaint: WHY? will trickle away unheard into the steppe, waft through the burst ruins and die out in the rubble of churches, slap against impenetrable bunkers, fall into pools of blood, unheard, answerless, the last animal-like cry of the last animal human being—all of this will come about, tomorrow, tomorrow perhaps, perhaps already tonight, if— if-if— you don’t say NO.

Yeah, I’ve been reading again. All of the above was written by Wolfgang Borchert, a conscript in the German Army in WWII, who did time twice for speaking his mind, was sent twice to the Eastern Front, and died of war-related illness at a young age shortly after the war was over after only writing for two years.

There’s a lesson in his words somewhere for Free America. As Marcuse was supposed to have said, "Zee only proper response to zee one-dimensional machine of destruction is complete rrrrrefusal!" No?