Sunday, May 23, 2021

Shall I Compare Thee to a Holocaust?

Some things, some people, some historical events should never be used for comparison. 


I believe it was Patton Oswalt who once observed that you just don't compare anyone else with Hitler. "There's just Hitler. That's the list."


Maybe someday someone will top Hitler. After all, we still have an entire planet left to kill. Until then, though, I think the observation stands. 


Hitler. 


That's the list.


And yes, I checked. I believe in facts; evidence, data, and well-documented wiki pages, like the "List of genocides by death toll." If anything, I underestimated the scale and span of Hitler's depravity. He isn't just #1 on that list; he also holds the #2 spot as well. And the 6.9 to 9 million deaths on that list doesn't include any of the casualties from the global war Hitler started in 1939. 


Comparing anything to the Holocaust is insensitive at best; offensive to Jews, to the veterans who fought in World War II, to anyone with a functioning heart. Any comparison only serves to diminish or dismiss the horrific scale of Hitler's evil and its impact on humanity.


The Holocaust is like having to wear a mask in Wal-Mart! 


Wal-Mart is either a hellscape (not dismissing this possibility) or the Holocaust was just a long wait at the checkout. 


Is it wrong for me to wish for someone - for one person - to die 6 million times? A bleak, desolate, horrifying, sickening, offensive to the senses, avert your eyes take on "Groundhog Day," in which our leading character (let's call her Marjorie) is gassed, shot, stabbed, hung, or beaten to death every day, only to wake up the next morning to experience a severely painful death all over again, for 16,438 years? 


Yes. Yes. Yes. Of course it's wrong and I hate myself for even thinking it. Because…


I'm not Hitler.


But there are days, every now and then, when I think maybe Patton Oswalt was wrong.


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