Monday, December 24, 2007

This man wants to be president


In a heartwarming Christmas story, Will Smith, an actor (and therefore someone on whose every word we should hang, especially as he has said he wants to be president one day) says that Hitler was essentially a good person. In other news, the Pope suggests that Lucifer wasn't such a bad guy really, and George Bush says maybe he never did get the hang of this politics thing...

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, actually he did not say Hitler was good. The reporter says he did but that isn't really quite right. What he said was that Hitler convinced himself by twisted logic that what he was doing was good, and I'm sure that is true. I don't suppose for a moment that Hitler thought he was doing evil. Mad twisted crazy people do believe what they are doing is right, but that does not mean we have to agree with them.

Anonymous said...

And a happy Christmas to you too!

Rob said...

Hmmm... I suppose so: I don't have your generosity of spirit, Harrriet - to me, it still seems a really dumb thing to say.

harriet said...

I hate to be arguing with you here, Rob -- I know this is a really contentious issue -- but I certainly don't want to go down to posterity as a supporter of Adolf Hitler! He was clearly a psychopath but to me that makes him all the more terrifying -- that he could convince himself, and indeed an entire nation, that these appalling acts were in some way justified does not make him less evil. I just don't think he really got up every morning saying to himself Evil be thou my good. But perhaps we must agree to differ here.

Rob said...

Sorry, Harriet, I certainly didn't mean to suggest that you had any sympathies in that direction. I'd still say Mr Smith wasn't really engaging his brain when he made the comment, and I can see that AH probably didn't think he was doing evil- though I think some of his henchmen did.

Anonymous said...

The Mail online today reports Smith vehemently denying that he made these comments. Hope this link works:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=5047:

Rob said...

Thanks, anon. My views on AH were much clarified by Clive James (see new post) who describes him as a "pitiless hoodlum" and implies that he was, simply, evil.

hesitant scribe said...

Late to the debate (as per) but agree with Harriet on this one! I think Hitler probably did think he was doing what he thought was good (which I hasten to add wasn't good at all) - I reckon it's all about the 'pack' mentality we humans are so succeptible to. The 'them and us' thing that lets people like Hitler fall into the trap of thinking other people outside of their own group are not people... which is simply awful. You can see this mentality in war all the time, in gang fights, in any human situation where one group feels threatened in any way.

See - we need to live together in harmony and eradicate the 'them and us' perspective! Problem of heinous dictators and murderers solved!

P.S. Hope you're well :)

Unknown said...

Hitler suffered from syphilis and there is a strong indication that it affected his brains as well.

Rob said...

Yes, I think his brain was affected by something, clearly. Difficult to know if it had a physical source though.