A short story
By (The Editor)
Fresh off the Zeppelin from Dresden, I stepped onto the all-too-free soil of the Americas. I had thought about a U-boat landing but that would hardly befit me, Hanz Van Uber-Deutch, the archetypal German intellectual and part time super-villain. I had come from the fatherland to set these United States straight. It is my destiny. I had to start small. I understood that your nation had become overgrown with cancers such as drugs, illiteracy and Jews. I would start in the epicenter of American decadence and turn it into a model of Teutonic efficiency, and that place was Greenwich Village.
It turns out that you no longer maintain an immigrant processing station on Ellis Island, and, in fact, due to your inept INS I didn’t need to apply for any papers. I even signed up for flight classes without too much trouble. I wondered how young Americans picked up women without the classic pick up line “SHOW ME YOUR PAPERS, NOW!!!” For all you know, you could be dating a Slav, unless you have “Das Furors: racial chart” on you; I always have the pocket edition with me, just in case. I goose-stepped from Penn Station to 14th St. were I saw some like- minded individuals parading for Bush, carrying signs like “ Bush=Hitler” , and “Republicans are Fascists”. I was surprised to find such hardcore Fascists in what was supposed to be a communist stronghold. I couldn’t understand why they chose tie-dye shirts and hemp jackets as their uniforms, but I was inspired with their zeal and threw on my arm band and joined them. I was confused with their uneasy stares and pointing, and could only conclude they wanted a speech. I saluted and began “Fellow Socialist I fear for this nation and its Ultra-Nazi leader Bush” their cheers gave me strength” Our nation has fallen behind the zeitgeist, our destiny is trampled by the weak minded in our government!” Cheers turned into a roar. “Those who oppose Bush must be purged, the opposition must be cleansed from our ranks, the weak must be left behind.” Silence. I intensified my hand gestures. “We must all work towards the will of Bush, anticipate his will and make it our own, our dream of National Socialism will only be realized with the blood of our sacrifice”, the crowd turned on me and began to walk menacingly towards me. I quickly flipped on my Invis-O-Belt and ran.
Things had definitely changed since I had frozen myself 15 years earlier and obviously the Left’s love of Hitler analogies had progressed to such a level that they could be applied to moderates of the opposing side. I quickly fell into a nihilist funk as was my want; all I wanted to do was to make a difference for once in my life. I had spent most of my life either being laughed out of universities for my “mad “theories or plotting diabolically flawed schemes. I mean, a couple just happened to work out because of the ineptitude of most intelligence agencies, after all 007 can’t be everywhere all the time. I also wrote a best selling book about growing up in rural Kentucky, even though I grew up in Berlin. I falsely representing my life story since nobody wants to hear about prep-school, emotional repression, and Post-WWII social alienation, and that’s all my childhood was really about. In short, my life was a meaningless collection of daring and dastardly deeds. I could never have a family because I find it repugnant to yield my masculine essence to the weaker sex, and because I have a paralyzing fear of intimacy. That’s why I wanted to make a difference by helping America by ridding it of its hippie problem. Yet I wasn’t even able to convince a group of stoned, mentally-numbed counter-centralists –the people who march against WTO, and for Saddam Hussein.
I was snapped out of my reveries by something my father once told me. “In my day we had to unify many smaller states into a great European empire just to have all your work dashed in one apocalyptic war which ends in a leftist revolution, both ways in the snow”. The meaning of being German was not to leave something behind for future generations, but instead to be German was to do something important that in the end will result in nothing positive. Why else would Franz Kafka, the ethnic German, have asked that all his work be burned upon his death? Because he was German. Why would Nietzsche create a philosophy that would be easily used to justify one of the most horrific ideologies in history, which would in turn negate any positive contribution he made to society? Because he was German. Why would Freud create an intricate psychological study, then ruin it by making the grotesque assumption that everyone wants to make love to their mother, alienating everyone? Because he was German, dammit.
Reinvigorated with Teutonic zeal, I called my zeppelin, and programmed the onboard death ray to atomize those protesters who had taught me the horrifying lesson of what it meant to be German. Did I feel bad, of course not, these people wanted to change things for the better, make a fairer world, one of weakness and frivolity. Then I laughed the laugh of a vengeful German, which all Germans are, and hoisted a tankard of beer to the portrait of my hot mother, and set fire to my formula for a universal cure, all while slipping into a feeling of self loathing and general disgust, spending the rest of the day luxuriating in my German-ness.
Several weeks later I returned to my beloved Dresden and opened a cabaret specializing in meaningless symbolic eroticism, the kind that required heavy doses of alcohol and opiates to mask its human bankruptcy and allow you to sleep at night. My free time was spent trying to work out my father issues with a disinterested Frenchman whom I hate with all my being. I’ve never been happier.
