Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Broken News: Everyone and Everything a Nazi

THE FOURTH REICH—In a bombshell study soon to be released by the United States Argumentative Society, nearly all of Americans as well as their thoughts, words, deeds, and beliefs are as bad as the Nazis. Furthermore, thousands are equivalent to many high ranking members of the Third Reich including Hermann Goering, Henrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, and Adolph Hitler himself.

Perhaps the most shocking revelation of the study is that large chunks of the country are in fact worse than the Nazis and many Americans worse than Hitler.

“It is with heavy hearts that we reveal these results,” said a pale Dr. Helen Rourke, leader of the USAS research team. “We once we believed that America was a land of the free and a place of opportunity filled with decent, hard-working people trying to make an honest living. However, through close observation of American behavior, particularly that related to political issues, we have found that they view nearly everything and everyone as equal to, or worse than, members of Germany's National Socialist Party circa 1930.”

“Imagine my shock to learn that I was one of these people. I have recently found out that due to the rigorous standards I applied to this study and the strict manner in which I conducted it, some colleagues referred to me as a "Nazi." Even in my own home I am not free of these allegations. After I recently grounded my daughter and refused to let her go out with her friends following poor grades on her report card, I was deemed by her to be ‘worse than Hitler’.”

“I thought I was a good person… I thought this was a good country,” she said, weeping. “I had no idea… no idea.”

Indeed the revelation that everything in America is equivalent to one of the indisputable black marks in human history has come as a shock to the country, with most scarcely able to believe the new state of affairs. Still some are valiantly fighting against the concept that everyone in the country is a Nazi.

“The other day, someone called me a socialist Nazi just because I wanted better health care in this country. Can you believe that?” asked Jim Dale, a Ham Chaser at the Mobile Alabama Sugardale Hog Farm. “As if the one thing that defined the Nazis was cheap access to quality health care. They’re the ones who are the Nazis for calling me a Nazi, what with their free speech squashing and fear mongering. I ain’t no Nazi. Everyone who doesn’t agree with me is a Nazi.”

Mr. Dale highlights the singular contradiction that accompanies this revelation: that all people everywhere, on all sides of all debates, espousing ideas ranging across the ideological spectrum, are all simultaneously Nazis. From those who want cheap health care to those who want to keep the status quo, to those who want better bus access, a salary cap in Major League Baseball, the Edmonton Oilers to win the Stanley Cup, dollar drinks at their local bar, or to go watch their kids at the school play; all of these people are Nazis for one reason or another.

But why? One sociologist thinks he knows.

“It’s changing social mores,” said Dr. Herbert Hume, a sociologist and professional Naziologist at MIT. “Americans have placed such tight moral and ethical standards on their daily life and beliefs that they view any departure from that standard as equivalent to the ideals espoused by a group of people that perpetrated some of the greatest atrocities in all of human history.”

He added, “It’s certainly not because we’re a nation of hyperbolic children! Anyone who says otherwise is worse than twelve Adolf Eichmanns! TWELVE!”

While many scholars agree that America is a terminally insufficient nation full of monstrous, Hitler-like individuals, others feel that sometimes these comparisons go too far.

“Sure, most people are just like the Nazis and just like Joeseph Goebbels,” conceded Harvard historian Jane Williams. “But what about the others who are merely as bad as the Red Chinese or Stalin? Pol Pot was an asshole and many people are exactly like him. Let us not forget Nero, Genghis Khan, Caligula or various roving bands of horse thieves, rapists and horse-rapers. The point is, if Americans would broaden their historical horizons they might find that most of the people and ideas they so loathe have a different, more accurate, grotesque historical mirror.”

With scientists disagreeing when, if ever, Americans might be credited with anything approaching a comprehensive knowledge of world history, the nation must come to grips with the fact that it is chock full of people who are the same as the Nazis.

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