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The Lie Piebrary is a collection of factually inaccurate viral emails that are currently in circulation. Rest assured, if you find it in the Lie Piebrary, it is demonstrably false. But don't take our word for it--check it yourself!
| "History Unfolding" by Dr. David Kaiser |
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Lie Pie Title: "History Unfolding" by Dr. David Kaiser Editor's Note: I'm sorry to disappoint you, but Dr. David Kaiser had nothing to do with the load of B.S. attributed to him below. Neither did Dr. Timothy Wood. You can read up on it at Snopes.com and TruthorFiction.com. It looks like someone operating under the moniker "TPS" posted it on a blog back in February of 2009. This viral email is thematically similar to many others I've received, so I'm thinking about adding a new category to the "Lie Pie Classification System" in order to keep track of them all. I'm not sure if I should label them "Hitler Pie" or "Apocalypse Pie." Any viral email predicting the end of life as we know it would fall into this new category. These viral emails predicting global doom have become nothing short of a cottage industry, honey. For close to 4 years now I've been assured by apocalyptic viral emails that Obama is the anti-christ, Hitler, a socialist, Marxist, communist, Maoist, Islamo-terrorist, Manchurian president. He wants nothing more than to throw little old ladies into ovens right alongside the U.S. Constitution so he can then witch-doctor-paint himself with the ashes. Every bill that has been passed by the Democrats since January 20, 2009 has been the end of America. I'm starting to grow a little skeptical of these viral emails because the sky hasn't fallen as promised. Obama and the Democrats haven't wreaked the kind of havoc I was bracing myself for. Frankly, it's been a letdown. I haven't had to feast on anyone's carcass or fend off roving bands of armed looters the way I had hoped. I'm not even going to bother watching Man vs. Wild any more. When I find myself tunneling out of a FEMA camp I might regret my decision, but at this point I've got to lower my expectations for Obama. I'll just file all these apocalyptic Hitler emails away until Obama steps it up on the slaughter and I finally see some blood running in the streets. I'll post a retraction when I'm sheltering inside a dead cow and sustaining myself by eating ants. --Granny, 7/29/2010 WATCH YOUR STEP: STEAMING VIRAL EMAIL B.S. STARTS HERE Subject: HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF? This is what Glenn Beck has been telling us about for months. Now a credible historian shares the same concern and for the first time - he is afraid. Too many of us simply suck up another latte and hope things go away. Watch out America - we are on a very slippery slope and we must start talking about this w. our friends asap. David Kaiser is a respected historian whose published works have covered a broad range of topics, from European Warfare to American League Baseball. Born in 1947, the son of a diplomat, Kaiser spent his childhood in three capital cities: Washington, D.C. Albany, New York, and Dakar, Senegal. He attended Harvard University, graduating there in 1969 with a B.A. in history. He then spent several years more at Harvard, gaining a PhD in history, which he obtained in 1976. He served in the Army Reserve from 1970 to 1976. He is a professor in the Strategy and Policy Department of the United States Naval War College. He has previously taught at Carnegie Mellon, Williams College, and Harvard University. Kaiser's latest book, The Road to Dallas, about the Kennedy assassination, was just published by Harvard University Press. Dr. David Kaiser History Unfolding I am a student of history. Professionally, I have written 15 books on history that have been published in six languages, and I have studied history all my life. I have come to think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is simply a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes these exist, but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus. Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about ten to fifteen years...The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two. We demand and then codify into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people we know they can never pay back? Why? We learned just days ago that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has "loaned" two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the $700 billion we all argued about so strenuously just this past September. Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of "we the people," who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not. We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy...Why? We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity...Why? We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it simply wants marriage to remain defined as between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?) We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose? Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, Social Security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare and our entire government. Our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and I know precisely what I am talking about) - the list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth. It is potentially 1929 x ten...and we are at war with an enemy we cannot even name for fear of offending people of the same religion, who, in turn, cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so. And finally, we have elected a man that no one really knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla, Alaska. All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary. (Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe are more important.) Mr. Obama's winning platform can be boiled down to one word: CHANGE…Why? I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now. This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again. And that is only the beginning. As a serious student of history, I thought I would never come to experience what the ordinary, moral German must have felt in the mid-1930s. In those times, the "savior" was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they should have known was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory. Conservative "losers" read it right now. And there were the promises. Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and frowned and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his "brown shirts" would bully and beat them into submission. Which they did - regularly. And then, he was duly elected to office, while a full-throttled economic crisis bloomed at hand - the Great Depression. Slowly, but surely he seized the controls of government power, person by person, department by department, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The children of German citizens were at first, encouraged to join a Youth Movement in his name where they were taught exactly what to think. Later, they were required to do so. No Jews of course, How did he get people on his side? He did it by promising jobs to the jobless, money to the money-less, and rewards for the military-industrial complex... He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across Europe, and across the world. He did it with a compliant media - did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and . . . CHANGE and the people surely got what they voted for. If you think I am exaggerating, look it up. It's all there in the history books. So read your history books. Many people of conscience objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and ridiculed. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though. And the world came to regret that he was not listened to. Do not forget that Germany was the most educated, the most cultured country in Europe. It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And yet, in less than six years (a shorter time span than just two terms of the U.S. presidency) it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors. All with the best of intentions, of course. The road to Hell is paved with them. As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong by closing my eyes, having another latte, and ignoring what is transpiring around me... I choose to believe the evidence. No doubt some people will scoff at me, others laugh, or think I am foolish, naive, or both. To some degree, perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe - and why I believe it. I pray I am wrong. I do not think I am. Perhaps the only hope is our vote in the next elections. David Kaiser Jamestown, Rhode Island United States
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