Friday Ephemera

Because I haven’t mentioned the French lately:

WTP:
William Shirer, on his experiences in Germany during the early Nazi era:

“I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state. Though unlike most Germans I had daily access to foreign newspapers, especially those of London, Paris and Zurich, which arrived the day after publication, and though I listened regularly to the BBC and other foreign broadcasts, my job necessitated the spending of many hours a day in combing the German press, checking the German radio, conferring with Nazi officials and going to party meetings. It was surprising and sometimes consternating to find that notwithstanding the opportunities I had to learn the facts and despite one’s inherent distrust of what one learned from Nazi sources, a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one’s mind and often misled it. No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime’s calculated and incessant propaganda….”

And it worked, too.
I would next satirically offer a homeopathic COVID vaccine, delivered over the internet from my computer to yours, except that some officious internet Nazi would try to have me charged with felonious marketing of a fake medicine. (Have you seen any of the old “homeopathic cure delivered by ethernet” scams? Hilarious.)