Hitler in a Mercedes Benz, 1938.‘Mercedes Benz Makes a Corporate Decision’ and Other Poetry by Brian Yapko The Society August 7, 2023 Culture, Poetry 39 Comments . Mercedes Benz Makes a Corporate Decision Good morning, fellow members of the board. I’ve summoned you because your vote’s required To update social policies. We’ve fired Conservative dissenters and we’ve hired Smart men who find our leaders in accord. The polling numbers show cooperation Is clearly the most efficacious way To keep our profits up. We’ll shy away From costly moral stands. Let’s proudly say We’re allies to this great administration! We must seem modern and show no remissness. We’ll loudly add our voices to a song That fuels a social movement which grows strong. The public’s on our side. What could go wrong When business is the business of our business? We have a wealth of governmental contacts To whom a kindness offered is no sin; (Not bribes, just gifts which help our bids to win.) Thus as we build our presence in Berlin The Reichsführer will offer favored contracts. Our Nazis may be on the up-and-up. Perhaps Jews are too greedy and unfair. Let’s show the German people that we care And show support like Volkswagen and Bayer Allianz, Audi, Merck, Shell, Ford, and Krupp. It’s commerce! Let’s not target or belabor The ethics of how Darwin’s theories win. In Hitler’s Reich we loudly sell and spin. Our shareholders judge profits, not the sin Of helping craft mass death with free slave labor. . Poet’s note: Companies who were involved in, and profited from, the Holocaust include Mercedes Benz, Volkswagen, Bayer, Hugo Boss, Allianz Insurance, Audi, Merck, Porsche, Shell, Ford, Krupp and the Associated Press. See source here. . . Entropy The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that there is a natural tendency of any isolated system to degenerate into a more disordered state. In simple terms: entropy. When order is allowed to drift away, Hard science says disorder must keep growing. If you want chaos to be kept at bay You must spend energy and keep it flowing. Destruction, devolution and erosion Are nature’s way of leveling all things. Construction is much harder than corrosion. One cannot stop the aging that Time brings. This principle applies throughout creation As forests gladly take back fallow fields, While ancient hills decrease in elevation And rust makes crumbling dust of swords and shields. But action can delay disorder’s win! Restore, repaint, clear out dead branches, pray! Don’t join the herd that thinks that work’s a sin. Your strength is needed to arrest decay! Does entropy apply to social order? Is this why women have stopped wearing hats And men no longer think they need to shave? Why people just wear sweatpants to the store? Why everyone prefers Zoom to real life? Why churches can no longer fill their pews? Why marriage has become irrelevant? Why works of art have given up on form? Why poetry no longer needs to rhyme? The world is crumbling under its own weight. Too many are unwilling to invest The energy an ordered world requires. It’s neither empathy nor apathy It’s not misanthropy. It’s bankrupt souls Allowing things to melt into disorder; To let things go, to treat society As if the world were just their living room. A careless end approaches. Entropy. . . Brian Yapko is a lawyer who also writes poetry. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. NOTE TO READERS: If you enjoyed this poem or other content, please consider making a donation to the Society of Classical Poets. The Society of Classical Poets does not endorse any views expressed in individual poems or commentary. ***Read Our Comments Policy Here*** 39 Responses James A. Tweedie August 7, 2023 Brian, you’ve taken on two related subjects with aplomb: How the sin of avarice contributes to moral decay and to the rise of evil; and entropic social decay that arises when the required daily effort to build up and maintain the physical, moral, and social order is neglected or entirely abandoned in favor of either sloth or the pursuit of woke power over service and sacrifice. I fear it will take a hundred years of firm national resolve just to repair the entropic social and infrastructural damage we have seen in these latter-days of my eye-blink lifetime. As for a national return to a unifying moral foundation, I have even less hope. Small, rural communities (such as are found in the area where I live)—which are energized by personal relationships based on mutual trust and accountability—are still functioning remarkably well across our nation. Your two poems offer a painful and unsettling commentary on the decline of world civilization in general, the West in particular, and in our urban cities most of all. Reply Brian A. Yapko August 8, 2023 Thank you very much indeed, James, for this generous and insightful comment. I agree with you fully regarding the improbability of seeing a repair to entropic damage and a return to strong moral clarity. Thank God for the rural and small-town areas you describe. I would once have counted Santa Fe among them, but that is no longer the case (which is why I’m moving to Florida.) Have you heard of a country singer James Aldean who has courted great controversy and woke cancellation because of his hit song “Try That in a Small Town”? It’s worth a listen because it makes very stark the difference between the destructiveness of our big cities and our still functional smaller towns. As for that “painful and unsettling commentary…” I truly fear for the future when literally everything seems to be unraveling. Reply Julian D. Woodruff August 7, 2023 These are both arresting statements, Brian. How corporate behavior today repeats or continues that seen in Nazi Gemany is your obvious unspoken concern in the 1st, and is expressed most effectively, especially in the last 2 stanzas. In “Entropy,” you suggest that even minor behavioral changes (e.g., the abandonment of hats–by men as well as women?) may be part of a great downward slide glaringly noticeable in so many other ways. And all this while maintaining a strict, rhetorical, end-stopped meter, allowing only a switch to blank verse from regular rhyme to symbolize the development you decry. Reply Brian A. Yapko August 8, 2023 Thank you very much, Julian. I’m especially glad that you have focused on corporate behavior. What may not be clear to some readers here is that this poem was meant to be my response to companies like Target, Budlight and Disney which have decided to join the herd and loudly promote a woke agenda. I frankly think they are doing so for the most cynical and venal of motives — it is pure brand-marketing for the sake of seeming like they care about social justice on issues that they clearly know nothing about. I find it loathsome. Disney in particular revolts me and will be the subject of two forthcoming poems that I am working on. They have crossed a line from being “imagineers” directly into social engineering. The corporations that followed the Nazis into the black pit of moral bankruptcy did the same thing as modern corporations and for the same reasons. The only difference in my view is one of degree both in level of corruption and the horrifying nature of the consequences. Reply David Whippman August 22, 2023 The ironic thing is that many “woke” films are falling flat. And I find it heartening that people like Ricky Gervais and JK Rowling are basically giving the finger to the cancellation culture bullies. I think people are getting sick of the propaganda barrage. Carey Jobe August 7, 2023 Brian, you offered two trenchant, timely (and timeless) moral admonitions. Aside from the warnings against an amoral society, I found the rhyme scheme interesting too. In “Entropy,” I noticed the shift midway through from rhymed 8-line stanzas to 9-line blank verse. It’s as if the structure of the poem is breaking down as the world it describes crumbles. For me, that reinforced the theme. And in “Mercedes Benz” congrats on fitting so many German names into smooth iambic pentameter. Both poems were great mind-openers on a Monday morning over coffee. Reply Brian A. Yapko August 8, 2023 Thank you very much, Carey. Both rhyme schemes are a bit unusual. “Mercedes Benz” has a rhyme pattern of a-b-b-b-a. My point here was to suggest only two choices A or B — good or bad. And the return to the a rhyme at the end of the stanza was to suggest a sort of circular reasoning which never quite holds up to scrutiny but well be good business. I also appreciate your mention of the breakdown of structure is “Entropy” which you interpret exactly as I had hoped. I could have gone even further with a complete break from iambic lines to further represent chaos but I found the idea distasteful and hopeless. The retention of iambic pentameter allows for a sliver of hope — at least in the future of poetry! As for those German companies — thank you for noticing the care that went into those two lines. It required quite a bit of poetic finagling! Reply Roy Eugene Peterson August 7, 2023 Brian, these are two outstanding poems. The Mercedes Benz poem is brilliant in its conception and rhyme scheme. “Arbeit Macht Frei,” was one of those great lies at the gates of slave labor camps, not that work makes one free as in the translation, but that physical freedom would be the result. Only you could come up with ladies no longer wearing hats and men no longer shaving as representing the decline of western civilization as you do in you poem, “Entropy.” On the other hand, such changes in cultural behavior are a great representative observation, as our civilization has been suffering from abundance and entropy associated therewith for a long time. Both poems are of the highest order and are at once creative and intriguing. Reply Brian A. Yapko August 8, 2023 Thank you so much, Roy, for these generous words. Your mention of “Arbeit Macht Frei” made me shudder as I recall seeing these chilling and ironic words at the entrance to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp outside Berlin. This demonic irony would itself be a worthy subject for a poem. As for the little details of daily life noted in “Entropy” there are just so many things about modern life that are slovenly and inelegant. I wondered about men shaving and thought about the fact that once men no longer feel they have to, they simply won’t. It’s not the aesthetic, it’s the laziness. The same with a hundred other things ranging from parents who refuse to hire babysitters but instead taking noisy toddlers to the theater, to outrageous cell-phone manners, to women no longer wearing pantyhose. I couldn’t help making the connections and wondering what the deeper implications are. Reply Cheryl Corey August 7, 2023 What, if anything, have any of these companies done to make amends for their past criminality? Reply Brian A. Yapko August 8, 2023 Thanks for reading, Cheryl, and thank you for the extremely important question. I don’t know about all of these corporations… I doubt that Ford or the Associated Press suffered any consequences, but I know that many of the other companies did. Industrialists — especially the Krupp family — were tried in the Nuremberg trials and assets sold to help cover reparations. I know that I.G. Farben which manufactured all of the poison gas for the Concentration Camps was broken up, with one of its subsidiaries being Bayer (yes, the aspirin company.) Since this poem is specifically about Mercedes Benz, I did look it up and here’s what I learned: According to Mercedes-Benz website’s description of its corporate history, Daimler Benz — the predecessor to Mercedes-Benz — “after the war, Daimler-Benz admitted its links with the Nazi regime, and also became involved in the German Industry Foundation’s initiative “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”, whose work included the provision of humanitarian aid for former forced labourers.” As a result of the Germans losing the War, the company lost all of its overseas assets and was reduced to four factories in the now-occupied German territories. “Under the Potsdam Agreement all German assets abroad were confiscated and used for the payment of reparations. Daimler-Benz lost all foreign subsidiaries, affiliates and branches as well as all assets in the Soviet-occupied areas.” Apparently as recently as 1988 Mercedes Benz was still being pressured to compensate its War victims for being used as slave labor. I’ll link to a Los Angeles Times article from June, 1988: “BONN — The industrial giant Daimler-Benz, which forced thousands of people into work programs to fuel the Nazi war effort, will pay nearly $12 million to the laborers and their families, the West German Red Cross said in a statement prepared for release today. Heinz Galinski, chairman of the West German Jewish Council, on Saturday welcomed news of the payment but said the company should have made reparations years ago. “To wait this long is a horrible betrayal of all those who suffered,” Galinski said. “It comes too late for the thousands who have died. . . . “ The Red Cross said a total of 20 million marks, or $11.7 million, would be distributed to forced labor victims from the company. It was not immediately clear if the compensation would cover survivors. Daimler-Benz, the largest industrial conglomerate in West Germany, joins other major German companies that have paid such reparations. It manufactures trucks, buses and Mercedes-Benz luxury automobiles. The announcement followed a lengthy study commissioned by Daimler-Benz to determine the extent to which forced laborers were used in its plants during World War II.” Here are the links and thanks again for asking, Cheryl. As I discover more information, I’ll let you know. https://group.mercedes-benz.com/company/tradition/company-history/1933-1945.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-06-12-mn-7400-story.html Reply Brian A. Yapko August 7, 2023 A quick note to share the moral that was omitted from my poet’s notes: Just because corporations get involved in “social justice” doesn’t make them nice. Reply Joseph S. Salemi August 7, 2023 Brian, I’m not sure if you’re trying to give hints of decay in the second poem, as a sly dig at the corruption of correct grammar. In the first stanza, shouldn’t “If you wants” be “If you want”? And in the final stanza’s first line, shouldn’t “it’s own weight” be “its own weight,” without the apostrophe? If these are just ironic touches, forgive my failure to see. The companies that you mention in the first poem are not unique in their utter lack of concern about what they support or a whom they deal with. Big business is out to make money — nothing else. Corporations (world-wide!) have no interest in ethics, philosophy, religion, literature, art, human freedom, or anything else that is unconnected with the goal of increasing profits. Supporting Hitler, or supporting woke-ism, is a matter of utter indifference to them. Today, all the companies that you list in your note are perfectly in sync with the politically correct dictates of the E.U. and all the NGOs and the mindless left-liberalism of modern Germany. Ideologies come and go, but money is money. Reply James A. Tweedie August 7, 2023 Joe, I have to add a caveat to your generally true statement by saying that for the past several years three of the largest investment groups, Vanguard (with which I have a number of accounts), Blackrock and State Street Advisors joined in partnership with Net Zero to use their investment power to influence the US energy market as guided by ESG (environmental, social, governmental) principles. Among other things, the three groups purchased large shares of major energy companies for the express purpose of using their shareholding leverage to pressure corporate boards to adopt various Green strategies that would not otherwise have been implemented. The fact that they were manipulating the energy market using investment funds not designated for that purpose (and which, apparently, did not always yield the level of income that a less agenda-driven investment strategy would have gained) led 13 state attorney generals to file a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to investigate this abuse of investment funds. Soon after the filing, Vanguard pulled out of Net Zero and stepped back from ESG investing (except through investment funds specifically designated as being social/environmental/justice focused). So, it seems that investment groups are not always averse to using other people’s mutual fund investments to pursue partisan social agendas without letting investors in on what they are doing with their money. I understand that there are several class-action lawsuits being considered to recover investment income that may have been lost due to ESG/Net Zero investment strategies. Reply Lannie David Brockstein August 8, 2023 James, thank you for having mentioned ESG and Net Zero. Anybody who rightfully so criticizes woke WEFtism should be aware of what those are. Previously on June 8th, 2023, I mentioned ESG, which as you already know is the woke WEFtist’s social credit system for corporations, when having posted that comment and a few additional comments as my replies to Susan Jarvis Bryant’s “Advice for Budweiser” poem. It is almost unbelievable that the same way the full title of Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” is actually “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”, the full name of “Net Zero” is “Net-Zero Insurance Alliance (NZIA)”. https://www.unepfi.org/net-zero-insurance/ It is doubtful that those creeps are oblivious to how much their acronym of NZIA looks like NAZI. It seems they are being blatantly obvious in their support for what Chuck De Nomolos, I mean Klaus Schwab calls “The Fourth Industrial Revolution” actually being “The Fourth Reich”. What is next for the woke WEFtists who evidently want to ruin the world in order to fully implement their “Great Regret”, I mean “Great Reset” agenda? Are they going to start wearing swastikas whilst telling everybody there is no need to be concerned because those are vaccinated-swastikas? Joseph S. Salemi August 8, 2023 James, I must second what Lannie has said above. Big investment firms are playing around with the money of other people, and they will get their brokerage and advising fees regardless of what the actual return of investment is for the client. The real motive for the decisions of Vanguard and those other firms was also PURE PROFIT, as they knew that if they took this ESG virtue-signalling posture, a lot of brain-dead liberals and woke institutions would move their money into their Net-Zero group. With a commodity-producing and commodity-selling corporation, the rules are somewhat different. They want to appeal to a wide customer base, and are consciously checking customer demand and market specs. That explains the recent Bud-Lite fiasco. Some stupid mid-level administrators decided that Bud-Light wasn’t “cool enough” for its desired customer base of trendy millennial jackasses, so they hired a repulsive trannie freak to start a new publicity campaign. It backfired spectacularly, as its traditional customer base simply stopped buying Bud-Light. And, of course, the makers of Bud-Light immediately backtracked, fired the stupid administrators, and are now desperately trying to recapture their traditional customer base. Again, both the mistake and the attempted correction were purely for PROFIT, and nothing else. Any big business concern will wear a swastika if it has to, or a hammer-and-sickle, or a rainbow flag, or the royal arms of Lower Slobbovia. Whatever brings in the money. Brian A. Yapko August 8, 2023 James, this is very interesting additional information. I too have some investments with Vanguard and had no idea that it was using my money to try to influence U.S. environmental/social policy. This is something which should be disclosed and voted upon. I resent having my assets used in an unauthorized way, but I’ve come to accept that — like buying products from China — there’s no way to exist in the 21st Century without having to engage economically with those whose views are inimical to many of the values that you and I share. Boycotts are almost meaningless. Better Vanguard than having to deal with a demon like George Soros. But every movie made, every item we buy, everything we invest in now has socio-political ramifications. It’s exhausting and unavoidable. Brian A. Yapko August 8, 2023 Lannie, thank you also for chiming in and providing even more useful information about the corruption and venality of corporations — information I, at least, was unaware of. NetZero in particular sounds despicable. Is there a list of companies somewhere whom one can do business with and still maintain a clear conscience? Margaret Coats August 9, 2023 Brian, when Lannie previously opened the topic of environmental, social, and governmental acts by investment firms, I mentioned Strive Asset Management, a new firm that rejects ESG policy. Lannie agreed that Strive seems like a promising enterprise. I have heard an interview of one of its founders, who believes that other investment firms will follow its lead and focus on excellence in products and services. “Excellence” is Strive’s key word for implying that profit is not the only thing that counts. As well, they maintain proper concern for ethics in the traditional sense (not the ESG sense). That’s the reason their emerging markets fund does not invest in China. Strive Asset Management is easy to find online. Brian A. Yapko August 10, 2023 Thank you for this important information, Margaret. Per your suggestion, I’ve looked up Strive Asset Management on the internet and it looks like a promising and non-woke way to manage assets. I may well do business with them as it would be pleasure to actually invest with a company with values I actually respect. Brian A. Yapko August 8, 2023 Joe, I very much appreciate your discerning eye. Thank you! I’d love to say those grammatical snafus were intentional but nope — garden variety typos and a reminder that I must be more careful when I submit work to Evan! I’ve asked Mike to correct them and he has in fact done so. As for the point regarding the companies I mention in “Mercedes Benz”… They are most definitely NOT unique. In fact, the litany of names I tried to squeeze into those two lines show how common they were — and are. The point of the poem may have been somewhat sidelined by the focus on Nazi Germany… In this poem I was very much trying to show that modern corporations such as Target and Disney and many others (including my own bank) fit into a long and venal tradition by trying to manipulatively trying to burnish and advertise their woke credentials. George Floyd Riots and Black Lives Matter? No problem! We’ll throw a few million dollars at their social organizations, add some African Americans to our advertisements and prove what elevated, kind people we are! We’ll make a fortune! Transgenderism is all the rage! No problem! We’ll invest a few million to create and market LGBTQIRSFBIXYZLOL crotch-tucked swimwear and put some trans people on our catalogue. The gullible fools on the street will love it — and us! As far as I can see, corporations dive into these marketing campaigns and product alteration for grossly cynical motives which have nothing to do with authentic social justice — motives which are no different now than they were 80 to 90 years ago in the Third Reich. Business is the business of their business. Or, as you point out, money is money. Reply Margaret Coats August 7, 2023 Brian, the Mercedes poem can be read in several ways, and thus it is difficult to make a clear response. It presents the company as fully understanding the moral evil they support, and doing so because a moral stand would be costly. This could be timely–except that companies supporting evil today can and do argue very hard that the evil they support is good. Both sides claim the moral high ground. Thus, if your poem supports taking a moral stand despite possible economic loss, it supports practically every company’s claims at present. In fact, it is today a tiny minority view among investment firms that companies should focus on business as business, and do what they do without concern for politics. This to me seems a refreshing attitude. Your poem criticizes Mercedes for political involvement and for moral depravity in doing business as business. Damned whether they do or don’t. Furthermore, reading the source material in your reference suggests that not a single German living during the Hitler era avoids guilt, not even those who opposed evil policies. They lived where national and local governments enjoyed tax revenue from guilty companies. Even the many executives acquitted of war crimes when companies went on trial must be guilty, because their employment income was tainted. And Cheryl Corey has already brought up the reparations question. Did companies do anything to make amends? Some executives were convicted of war crimes and served prison terms, but is that amends? And if it is not, Germany and German companies and all Germans still owe reparations for wrongs done in the time of their grandparents and great-grandparents. As do the American companies involved. You, Brian, actually do a great thing to suggest what we will all certainly see at the General Judgment of the human race. All the evil consequences of our tiniest imperfections! Thank God for His mercy in forgiving the repentant and allowing us to see also how good passes from generation to generation! Reply Brian A. Yapko August 8, 2023 Margaret, this is a rich, detailed and complex comment which may dig more deeply than I would ever have expected. As I’ve noted in a couple of replies above, my true motive in writing this poem was to present the idea that corporations today are as cynical, venal and manipulative as they were ever were and that there is little difference between what a “social justice warrior” corporation does now and what German (and some American!) corporations did before and during World War II. I was writing about Target, Bud-Lite and Disney as much as Mercedes Benz and Volkswagen. With that preliminary point out of the way, I think you are troubled by the fact that the board of directors I present has confused logic concerning the circumstances of its cooperating with the Nazis (or the Leftists, or BLM or the Transgender Hegemony.) And that is precisely the point!! I don’t think such corporations even understand (or care) what it is they are getting into. They see a social movement, they see dollar signs (or Reichsmark signs) and they jump on the bandwagon. Then they create rationalizations for why they do it. A company like I.G. Farben is asked to manufacture Zyklon-B — the deadly poison used to kill millions in the death camps. They are presented with a contract. They are going to say yes because the desire for wealth and power demand it. Then they are going to come up with justifications as to why they say yes. It’s about the money, yes, but they can’t ever actually say that. Otherwise they would be forced to recognize that they are not industrialists, they are monsters. They then are forced by their own twisted consciences and venality to join the Nazi song of “social justice.” Thus the reasoning process in my “Mercedes Benz” poem absolutely must be a compromised one. Illogic must win (we’ll avoid taking a moral stand because we must take a moral stand!) if the company is to prosper let alone survive. Intentional blindness. Otherwise, as you note, “damned if they do, damned if they don’t.” Were all German people complicit in the Holocaust? That is a frighteningly deep question which I would like to answer “no” since my mother was German, raised under Hitler, and her father, my grandfather, fought for the Germans in both World War I and World War II. Can I say “no” with certainty however? I think I can. I shy away from the concept of collective responsibility. It’s wrong in attacks on the Jewish people (my father’s side of the family) , it’s wrong in attacks on Americans for slavery and I think it’s wrong in attacks on Germans. At a certain point, liability must be concentrated on the centers where different policies and actions could have resulted. Did all Germans receive benefits from heinous national policies? Sure. In the same sense that all Americans received benefits from slaves picking cotton and adding to the GDP. But how far back is it reasonable to go and how tightly should the net be woven? As for the issue of reparations, I did provide a partial answer to Cheryl Corey’s question, specifically about Mercedes Benz. But know that Germany has been making reparations directly to Jews and other victims of the Holocaust ever since the end of the War. When does it end? I’m not sure. But I know that Holocaust survivors still exist. In the U.S. alone there are still around 50,000. So I’m not sure if the German obligation should end when the last victims are gone or when the grandfathers and great-grandfathers who engaged in atrocities are gone. Putting on my lawyer hat and addressing the way debts are handled, debts do not die with the person who owed them. The obligations are taken over by the estate so I believe the reparations should continue so long as victims still breathe. There is a marked difference here between debts owed to living persons who were in fact victims during living memory, versus talk of reparations for slavery in the U.S. which ended in 1865. When neither direct victims nor those deemed culpable are alive and are generations removed it makes no sense to me to create a financial obligation which is nothing but a race-based redistribution of wealth to appease the mob and unrealistically guilty consciences. Reply Margaret Coats August 10, 2023 Brian, thank you for your detailed response to my comments on the Mercedes poem. What you were trying to say in the poem is simpler than my reading, and far less complex than my implied questions. Therefore my first reply in return is that the issues themselves bring up complicated thought and questions. Writing on these matters will always lead some readers to consider deeper issues about guilt and reparation. I did not find compromised logic in your Mercedes board meeting. It says straightforwardly that bribes will be given and death camp business undertaken. Wordplay is outlined in case board members need to know agreed-upon talking points, but the company is knowingly guilty. That’s how I find your picture different from what probably happens in board meetings today. I suspect that hospital boards never call gender-affirming surgery mutilation; honestly or dishonestly, they consider it care that is needed to prevent suicide. You are right that there is a process of rationalization, but this is done only by thinking individuals who need it. Many do not. In your German board, individuals who might object have been fired before the meeting begins. The then-and-now difference arises because consciences now are more tender, thanks to Nuremburg and innumerable lawsuits. You do give profit as a main motive for Mercedes, but nationalism and progressivism (moving with the times) come in as well. I would say the same things operate in contemporary boards, with dominant left-liberalism replacing nationalism per se. This is my view, but you make it possible for a reader to find the confused logic you intend to be seen. You also make possible the view that money alone matters. And you allow an interpretation where the desire for profit and the need for rationalization coalesce. As a lawyer, you must see how this complexity goes into deciding the guilt of individuals. I looked at the IG Farben trials and found that only half the defendants were convicted of war crimes. What each knew and thought about what he did contributed to his defense and the decision of judges who had been his country’s enemies. Notably, not a single one was convicted of the number one indictment for preparing and waging war! Don’t have time now to go on to corporate and collective responsibility, but I will say you have some intriguing views on this kind of guilt and how long it lasts. Reply Brian A. Yapko August 10, 2023 Thanks for these additional thoughts, Margaret. My feeling about the compromised logic in the board meeting was that a) this is a good decision because the public likes it; and b) Our (the possessive was important here) Nazis may be on the up and up…” The board is trying to convince itself of something that is blatantly false — which, I think, is frighteningly familiar. Perhaps this is mere rationalization, but that too is faulty logic. Or at least fluid logic which changes with whichever way the wind is blowing. Which is also frighteningly modern as the Bud-lite fiasco shows. I am impressed that you looked up the I.G. Farben trials and I’m dismayed to hear that only half of the defendants were convicted. And this would have been by American judges in Nuremberg! But the problem with justice after WWII in occupied Germany was the beginning of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. We did not want to alienate West Germany too much lest it fall into the wrong hands. They were needed! This is rather similar to the U.S. import of German physicists, many of whom had war-crime culpability but who the U.S. wanted anyway. Think Wernher Von Braun who ended up doing great work for NASA, even though he was single-handedly responsible for so many deaths in London from his V-2 rockets. As you point out, the guilt of individuals and corporate and collective responsibility are complicated things. And sometimes political necessity encourages the powers that be to put a finger or two on Justice’s scale Joseph S. Salemi August 12, 2023 Margaret, preparing for war and waging war are not crimes. That is why the IG Farben defendants were acquitted of those charges. Every sane nation prepares for war, and wages it when necessary. You can be convicted of using slave labor, or committing atrocities against civilians, or killing POWs, or starving and working captives to death. The United States is now fighting a proxy war against Russia in the Ukraine, and preparing for the eventuality of a direct conflict if our Ukrainian puppets are routed. Those plans are stupid and probably suicidal, but not subject to criminal charges. Margaret Coats August 12, 2023 Joe, I know as well as you do that preparing for war and waging war are not crimes–and even if they were, individual persons ought not to be charged with them. But that was the first item on the indictment of all individuals charged in the IG Farben trial! It did specify “war of aggression or invasion.” Brian A. Yapko August 12, 2023 Joe, I agree and I disagree. To elaborate, I agree that a nation has the right to prepare for and wage war. There will be abuse and there will be collateral damage and civilians will get killed. However, I consider I.G. Farben a special case because of its connection to the mass murder of over a million unarmed innocent civilians held captive in concentration camps in the Holocaust. As summarized in Wikipedia: “Described as the most notorious German industrial concern during the Third Reich” in the 1940s the company relied on slave labour from concentration camps, including 30,000 from Auschwitz, and was involved in medical experiments on inmates at both Auschwitz and the Mauthausen concentration camp. One of its subsidiaries supplied the poison gas, Zyklon B, that killed over one million people in gas chambers during the Holocaust.” To me, the medical experiments on captive human beings (we’re not talking drug trials here… we’re talking vivisection and worse) and the creation of poison to kill humans on an industrial scale goes beyond normal war-preparation into genocidal war-crimes territory. Margaret Coats August 8, 2023 “Entropy” is easier to deal with because my living room is in better shape than society, and my hats have stayed in order since I cleared out my closet months ago. Still, I have a great deal to do elsewhere that calls for work. The problem with work is that you can exert enormous amounts of energy and do zero work when you try to move something that resists. Or you do no net work if it falls back into its original position. Physics is fun, isn’t it? Seriously, I’m glad you put “pray!” in the poem. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are said to nullify entropy in the spiritual realm. Human virtue rows the boat, but after a while the supernatural gifts enable a diligent rower to sail. We can surpass ourselves, although I think James Tweedie speaks well to praise personal relationships based on mutual trust and accountability. These provide so much help in motivating the quest for order. And, Brian, your call in the poem puts the desire for beautiful order into metered words of inspiration that are good to hear. Reply Brian A. Yapko August 8, 2023 Thank you, Margaret, for this most enjoyable comment. I’ve thought of Physics in many ways but rarely has “fun” come into the picture. I did not know that about the Holy Spirit but the idea of attacking disorder with prayer was intuitive to me. In addition to entropy in the physical world and the social world, I believe entropy is a phenomenon which exists in the spiritual lives of many people and cultures. That is why I also made the passing reference to the difficulty of filling the pews in Church. Prayer, to me, seems to be a proper method of fighting back at the devolution of congregations being whittled down to a faithful few and of churches diluting Scripture, message and discipline. Covid did much damage and amplified a trend to stay home that had already gained much traction. Is this not also entropy? Reply Mia August 8, 2023 Thank you for these extremely interesting poems that tackle some universal themes. And thank you for the interesting comments that always help me to learn so much. I must say that the second poem is my favourite. But is there a reason they are together? The Nazi’s were definitely keen on order weren’t they! May I just share an insight I had whilst pondering all about the above and then reading the news where three girls on the subway in New York were filmed being vile to an Asian family? I wondered why they picked on them and of course racism was mentioned. But as I pondered on the lives of those young girls it struck me that it was envy. Envy for family and not just because they were Asian. Asian’s share this strong trait with Jews. And Muslims of course but they can have more than one wife and they are not such an easy target! Here in the west there are more single parent families, divorce is easier and abortions etc abound. Whoever thought to attack mothers/fathers , parenting and family knew they were attacking the foundations of strong societies. Without family entropy ensues? It would seem that there are many ways to declare war. Thank you again, what I love about the SCP is that it is populated with people who are knowledgable and who care and even if disagreements occur it is because people put themselves out there for what they believe in. Reply Brian A. Yapko August 8, 2023 Thank you very much for your comment and inquiry, Mia. The pairing of the poems has much less to do with “order” than an exploration of the erosion of morality and values in the modern world. As I’ve mentioned in some other comments, the real subject of the “Mercedes Benz” poem is not the wickedness of the Nazis (a subject worthy of filling many a library) but the venality of corporations who answer not to God or morality but to the bottom line of profits and who accordingly use manipulative marketing to appear as if they are social justice warriors on the right side of history but who, in reality, simply reveal how vilely cynical they are. This corruption and lack of ethics is very much tied to the erosion of value and discipline in the “Entropy” poem. Now, this erosion of values fits in very neatly with the compelling point you raise about the destruction of the family (including the violent envy of some at seeing a strong family unit.) I touch on the devolution of the family a bit with my line about how people no longer think marriage is relevant. But it’s much, much deeper and you really nail it when you talk about those who attack the family as attacking the foundation of strong society. I remember in a comment a long time ago (my “Birthing Person” poem) when Dr. Salemi talked about how even the words “mother” and “father” are now disfavored by leftists and how they try to manipulate language into degrading the family unit. It’s hard for me to believe that the attempt to eliminate gender in physiology, culture and language itself is not a direct attack on the family unit. Thank you, Mia, for your kind words and perceptive insights which now have me thinking deeply. Reply Susan Jarvis Bryant August 8, 2023 Brian, as ever your poems are beautifully conceived and thoroughly engaging. Although very different in form (the first one could have been lifted straight from a musical, and the second exudes creative flair with its spot-on-rhyme-to-blank-verse decision) they both speak to me of today’s society with entertaining and chilling accuracy. In ‘Mercedes Benz Makes a Corporate Decision’ these lines leapt out at me: The public’s on our side. What could go wrong When business is the business of our business? It’s huge fun and has aesthetic appeal on the creative flair level. I especially like the the repetition of the word ‘business’ – how very clever! It also has a glimmer of hope. What if the public wasn’t on their side? We have more power than we imagine… if only ‘Entropy’ was kept at bay. I love your analogy… this scientific term applied to the degradation of society works perfectly. I truly believe if we don’t pay attention to the importance of the little things – starting with personal appearance and attitude, all else will slide into chaos and ruin. If we can’t get our own backyard in order, there’s no hope for us making a difference on a global scale. My favorite lines are all those in stanza 2… not only do they sing to me, they’re full of hope and complement my favorite lines in the first poem beautifully. Great stuff!! Reply Brian A. Yapko August 8, 2023 Susan, thank you very much indeed for your generous comment and your fine eye on the details of the poems. You’ve gleaned exactly what I hoped in terms of the content of both and I’m particularly delighted by the phrase “entertaining and chilling accuracy.” I do strive to tell the truth as I see it, but I also strive to do it in a way that does not bore the reader. I’m pleased that my somewhat strange structural forms have helped to serve this purpose. And the “business” line made me laugh when I wrote it so I’m glad it amused you as well. I also appreciate your analysis of the message in “Entropy.” It’s true that all the little details in life matter. This is something — if you can believe it — that I learned from St. Therese of Lisieux and her “Little Way.” Maybe I can’t do great things, but every little thing that I do can be infused with sanctity. How I spend my time matters. How I dress and groom matters. And yes, if we can’t get our own backyard in order (a very tall order for me!) then how do we make a difference? Well, I really do think the accumulation of little things in the end has the potential to make a huge difference. Mustard seeds, after all. Attitude matters. Let’s begin by banishing the slovenly. Let’s go out into the world with respect rather than treating stores, restaurants, schools and other places as our living room. Let’s treat our bodies with respect rather than turning them into pincushions and walls of graffiti to be eventually composted. Let us reverse entropy. Restoring dignity to society would be a good start. Reply Joshua C. Frank August 9, 2023 Wow, I didn’t know all those companies were involved in and profited from the Holocaust! It reminds me of all the companies today that have a similar relationship with the Abortion Holocaust and with China, to the point where you can’t buy anything without a lot of it going to Planned Parenthood or Chinese concentration camps. You’ve articulated the thought process well. As for “Entropy,” yes, that’s exactly what’s going on. A society can no more last forever than a person can live forever. People think Rome was an anomaly, but all societies eventually reach this point—science-fiction alternate histories that imagine Rome surviving to this day are just that. You’ve seen my poems about Western culture dying, so you know you won’t see any disagreement from me. I especially love how you switched from rhyming to blank verse in the middle! Not only does it show the entropy, but it shows how the speaker is sick of having to control himself around it and is ready to say what he really thinks without regard to any consequences. Great poems! Reply Brian A, Yapko August 9, 2023 Thank you very much, Josh! I always appreciate the insights you bring to your comments. You reminded that I recently bought a religious item here in Santa Fe which I was drawn to. Then I brought it home and — guess what? — “Made in China.” Is anything NOT made in China? Your point about every culture reaching a turning point and an inevitable slide is compelling. Rome, Byzantium, etc. I can’t help feeling that this time it’s different. Before now, the people of every culture had to work and they had a system of beliefs — even after the fall, people were engaged in activities and thought that assured some type of vigor — even if it was the vigor of their conquerors. Vigor has now been replaced by faithlessness, narcissism and sloth. Technology allows anyone to be their own media star and to sit on their butt doing nothing, and the abolition of faith and even objectivity lead me to believe this decline is far more destructive and permanent than those of the past. Entropy, to me, is the long, drawn-out subtle story of how civilization dies. Reply Shaun C. Duncan August 11, 2023 These are both extremely effective poems, Brian. I was convinced the Mercedes Benz poem was a response to some silly woke initiative they’d undertaken (who can keep up with these things – the last campaign I saw from Mercedes was encouraging Australian men to “have a conversation” about masculinity) so the sudden appearance of the word “Reichsführer” in the fourth stanza was like a cold shower. “Entropy” likewise demonstrates similar skill with form and narrative as the rhyme scheme subtly decays and I enjoyed the irony of asking why poetry no longer needs to rhyme in the blank verse section. As Joshua rightly points out above, civilizations have a life cycle. From reading Jacques Barzun’s “From Dawn To Decadence” I am convinced the seeds of our society’s decay were planted as far back as the Renaissance, that period commonly regarded as the apotheosis of Western culture. Reply Brian A. Yapko August 11, 2023 Thank you, Shaun, for this extremely gratifying comment. The reaction you describe in “Mercedes Benz” to the late introduction of Nazi elements in the poem is EXACTLY what I was hoping for! I appreciate your kind words regarding “Entropy” as well. Yes, while discussing the devolution of modern society I simply had to make that poetry point! I do agree that civilizations have a life cycle, though I wonder if at some point there is that final civilization that encounters Armageddon. And I wonder if that civilization is us… I must read this Barzun book. Thank you again for the comment and for the book referral. Reply Joseph S. Salemi August 11, 2023 Shaun, whenever I hear someone say “Let’s have a conversation about…” I know that I am being scammed by a left-liberal proselytizer. This particular approach to discourse is now a red flag, indicating that the speaker wants to lecture and browbeat you into surrendering your values and opinions and accepting his. It’s not an invitation to dialogue or honest debate. It basically means “Please shut up and listen as I tell you what the truth is, and why you must accept it.” And if you attempt to make a cogent and lucid argument against what he’s promoting, you are immediately accused of hate speech, and cancelled. Mercedes-Benz wants to have a conversation about masculinity? Screw them. The only conversation they deserve is a smack in the face with a two-by-four. Reply Leave a Reply Cancel ReplyYour email address will not be published.CommentName* Email* Website Δ This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
James A. Tweedie August 7, 2023 Brian, you’ve taken on two related subjects with aplomb: How the sin of avarice contributes to moral decay and to the rise of evil; and entropic social decay that arises when the required daily effort to build up and maintain the physical, moral, and social order is neglected or entirely abandoned in favor of either sloth or the pursuit of woke power over service and sacrifice. I fear it will take a hundred years of firm national resolve just to repair the entropic social and infrastructural damage we have seen in these latter-days of my eye-blink lifetime. As for a national return to a unifying moral foundation, I have even less hope. Small, rural communities (such as are found in the area where I live)—which are energized by personal relationships based on mutual trust and accountability—are still functioning remarkably well across our nation. Your two poems offer a painful and unsettling commentary on the decline of world civilization in general, the West in particular, and in our urban cities most of all. Reply
Brian A. Yapko August 8, 2023 Thank you very much indeed, James, for this generous and insightful comment. I agree with you fully regarding the improbability of seeing a repair to entropic damage and a return to strong moral clarity. Thank God for the rural and small-town areas you describe. I would once have counted Santa Fe among them, but that is no longer the case (which is why I’m moving to Florida.) Have you heard of a country singer James Aldean who has courted great controversy and woke cancellation because of his hit song “Try That in a Small Town”? It’s worth a listen because it makes very stark the difference between the destructiveness of our big cities and our still functional smaller towns. As for that “painful and unsettling commentary…” I truly fear for the future when literally everything seems to be unraveling. Reply
Julian D. Woodruff August 7, 2023 These are both arresting statements, Brian. How corporate behavior today repeats or continues that seen in Nazi Gemany is your obvious unspoken concern in the 1st, and is expressed most effectively, especially in the last 2 stanzas. In “Entropy,” you suggest that even minor behavioral changes (e.g., the abandonment of hats–by men as well as women?) may be part of a great downward slide glaringly noticeable in so many other ways. And all this while maintaining a strict, rhetorical, end-stopped meter, allowing only a switch to blank verse from regular rhyme to symbolize the development you decry. Reply
Brian A. Yapko August 8, 2023 Thank you very much, Julian. I’m especially glad that you have focused on corporate behavior. What may not be clear to some readers here is that this poem was meant to be my response to companies like Target, Budlight and Disney which have decided to join the herd and loudly promote a woke agenda. I frankly think they are doing so for the most cynical and venal of motives — it is pure brand-marketing for the sake of seeming like they care about social justice on issues that they clearly know nothing about. I find it loathsome. Disney in particular revolts me and will be the subject of two forthcoming poems that I am working on. They have crossed a line from being “imagineers” directly into social engineering. The corporations that followed the Nazis into the black pit of moral bankruptcy did the same thing as modern corporations and for the same reasons. The only difference in my view is one of degree both in level of corruption and the horrifying nature of the consequences. Reply
David Whippman August 22, 2023 The ironic thing is that many “woke” films are falling flat. And I find it heartening that people like Ricky Gervais and JK Rowling are basically giving the finger to the cancellation culture bullies. I think people are getting sick of the propaganda barrage.
Carey Jobe August 7, 2023 Brian, you offered two trenchant, timely (and timeless) moral admonitions. Aside from the warnings against an amoral society, I found the rhyme scheme interesting too. In “Entropy,” I noticed the shift midway through from rhymed 8-line stanzas to 9-line blank verse. It’s as if the structure of the poem is breaking down as the world it describes crumbles. For me, that reinforced the theme. And in “Mercedes Benz” congrats on fitting so many German names into smooth iambic pentameter. Both poems were great mind-openers on a Monday morning over coffee. Reply
Brian A. Yapko August 8, 2023 Thank you very much, Carey. Both rhyme schemes are a bit unusual. “Mercedes Benz” has a rhyme pattern of a-b-b-b-a. My point here was to suggest only two choices A or B — good or bad. And the return to the a rhyme at the end of the stanza was to suggest a sort of circular reasoning which never quite holds up to scrutiny but well be good business. I also appreciate your mention of the breakdown of structure is “Entropy” which you interpret exactly as I had hoped. I could have gone even further with a complete break from iambic lines to further represent chaos but I found the idea distasteful and hopeless. The retention of iambic pentameter allows for a sliver of hope — at least in the future of poetry! As for those German companies — thank you for noticing the care that went into those two lines. It required quite a bit of poetic finagling! Reply
Roy Eugene Peterson August 7, 2023 Brian, these are two outstanding poems. The Mercedes Benz poem is brilliant in its conception and rhyme scheme. “Arbeit Macht Frei,” was one of those great lies at the gates of slave labor camps, not that work makes one free as in the translation, but that physical freedom would be the result. Only you could come up with ladies no longer wearing hats and men no longer shaving as representing the decline of western civilization as you do in you poem, “Entropy.” On the other hand, such changes in cultural behavior are a great representative observation, as our civilization has been suffering from abundance and entropy associated therewith for a long time. Both poems are of the highest order and are at once creative and intriguing. Reply
Brian A. Yapko August 8, 2023 Thank you so much, Roy, for these generous words. Your mention of “Arbeit Macht Frei” made me shudder as I recall seeing these chilling and ironic words at the entrance to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp outside Berlin. This demonic irony would itself be a worthy subject for a poem. As for the little details of daily life noted in “Entropy” there are just so many things about modern life that are slovenly and inelegant. I wondered about men shaving and thought about the fact that once men no longer feel they have to, they simply won’t. It’s not the aesthetic, it’s the laziness. The same with a hundred other things ranging from parents who refuse to hire babysitters but instead taking noisy toddlers to the theater, to outrageous cell-phone manners, to women no longer wearing pantyhose. I couldn’t help making the connections and wondering what the deeper implications are. Reply
Cheryl Corey August 7, 2023 What, if anything, have any of these companies done to make amends for their past criminality? Reply
Brian A. Yapko August 8, 2023 Thanks for reading, Cheryl, and thank you for the extremely important question. I don’t know about all of these corporations… I doubt that Ford or the Associated Press suffered any consequences, but I know that many of the other companies did. Industrialists — especially the Krupp family — were tried in the Nuremberg trials and assets sold to help cover reparations. I know that I.G. Farben which manufactured all of the poison gas for the Concentration Camps was broken up, with one of its subsidiaries being Bayer (yes, the aspirin company.) Since this poem is specifically about Mercedes Benz, I did look it up and here’s what I learned: According to Mercedes-Benz website’s description of its corporate history, Daimler Benz — the predecessor to Mercedes-Benz — “after the war, Daimler-Benz admitted its links with the Nazi regime, and also became involved in the German Industry Foundation’s initiative “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”, whose work included the provision of humanitarian aid for former forced labourers.” As a result of the Germans losing the War, the company lost all of its overseas assets and was reduced to four factories in the now-occupied German territories. “Under the Potsdam Agreement all German assets abroad were confiscated and used for the payment of reparations. Daimler-Benz lost all foreign subsidiaries, affiliates and branches as well as all assets in the Soviet-occupied areas.” Apparently as recently as 1988 Mercedes Benz was still being pressured to compensate its War victims for being used as slave labor. I’ll link to a Los Angeles Times article from June, 1988: “BONN — The industrial giant Daimler-Benz, which forced thousands of people into work programs to fuel the Nazi war effort, will pay nearly $12 million to the laborers and their families, the West German Red Cross said in a statement prepared for release today. Heinz Galinski, chairman of the West German Jewish Council, on Saturday welcomed news of the payment but said the company should have made reparations years ago. “To wait this long is a horrible betrayal of all those who suffered,” Galinski said. “It comes too late for the thousands who have died. . . . “ The Red Cross said a total of 20 million marks, or $11.7 million, would be distributed to forced labor victims from the company. It was not immediately clear if the compensation would cover survivors. Daimler-Benz, the largest industrial conglomerate in West Germany, joins other major German companies that have paid such reparations. It manufactures trucks, buses and Mercedes-Benz luxury automobiles. The announcement followed a lengthy study commissioned by Daimler-Benz to determine the extent to which forced laborers were used in its plants during World War II.” Here are the links and thanks again for asking, Cheryl. As I discover more information, I’ll let you know. https://group.mercedes-benz.com/company/tradition/company-history/1933-1945.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-06-12-mn-7400-story.html Reply
Brian A. Yapko August 7, 2023 A quick note to share the moral that was omitted from my poet’s notes: Just because corporations get involved in “social justice” doesn’t make them nice. Reply
Joseph S. Salemi August 7, 2023 Brian, I’m not sure if you’re trying to give hints of decay in the second poem, as a sly dig at the corruption of correct grammar. In the first stanza, shouldn’t “If you wants” be “If you want”? And in the final stanza’s first line, shouldn’t “it’s own weight” be “its own weight,” without the apostrophe? If these are just ironic touches, forgive my failure to see. The companies that you mention in the first poem are not unique in their utter lack of concern about what they support or a whom they deal with. Big business is out to make money — nothing else. Corporations (world-wide!) have no interest in ethics, philosophy, religion, literature, art, human freedom, or anything else that is unconnected with the goal of increasing profits. Supporting Hitler, or supporting woke-ism, is a matter of utter indifference to them. Today, all the companies that you list in your note are perfectly in sync with the politically correct dictates of the E.U. and all the NGOs and the mindless left-liberalism of modern Germany. Ideologies come and go, but money is money. Reply
James A. Tweedie August 7, 2023 Joe, I have to add a caveat to your generally true statement by saying that for the past several years three of the largest investment groups, Vanguard (with which I have a number of accounts), Blackrock and State Street Advisors joined in partnership with Net Zero to use their investment power to influence the US energy market as guided by ESG (environmental, social, governmental) principles. Among other things, the three groups purchased large shares of major energy companies for the express purpose of using their shareholding leverage to pressure corporate boards to adopt various Green strategies that would not otherwise have been implemented. The fact that they were manipulating the energy market using investment funds not designated for that purpose (and which, apparently, did not always yield the level of income that a less agenda-driven investment strategy would have gained) led 13 state attorney generals to file a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to investigate this abuse of investment funds. Soon after the filing, Vanguard pulled out of Net Zero and stepped back from ESG investing (except through investment funds specifically designated as being social/environmental/justice focused). So, it seems that investment groups are not always averse to using other people’s mutual fund investments to pursue partisan social agendas without letting investors in on what they are doing with their money. I understand that there are several class-action lawsuits being considered to recover investment income that may have been lost due to ESG/Net Zero investment strategies. Reply
Lannie David Brockstein August 8, 2023 James, thank you for having mentioned ESG and Net Zero. Anybody who rightfully so criticizes woke WEFtism should be aware of what those are. Previously on June 8th, 2023, I mentioned ESG, which as you already know is the woke WEFtist’s social credit system for corporations, when having posted that comment and a few additional comments as my replies to Susan Jarvis Bryant’s “Advice for Budweiser” poem. It is almost unbelievable that the same way the full title of Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” is actually “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”, the full name of “Net Zero” is “Net-Zero Insurance Alliance (NZIA)”. https://www.unepfi.org/net-zero-insurance/ It is doubtful that those creeps are oblivious to how much their acronym of NZIA looks like NAZI. It seems they are being blatantly obvious in their support for what Chuck De Nomolos, I mean Klaus Schwab calls “The Fourth Industrial Revolution” actually being “The Fourth Reich”. What is next for the woke WEFtists who evidently want to ruin the world in order to fully implement their “Great Regret”, I mean “Great Reset” agenda? Are they going to start wearing swastikas whilst telling everybody there is no need to be concerned because those are vaccinated-swastikas?
Joseph S. Salemi August 8, 2023 James, I must second what Lannie has said above. Big investment firms are playing around with the money of other people, and they will get their brokerage and advising fees regardless of what the actual return of investment is for the client. The real motive for the decisions of Vanguard and those other firms was also PURE PROFIT, as they knew that if they took this ESG virtue-signalling posture, a lot of brain-dead liberals and woke institutions would move their money into their Net-Zero group. With a commodity-producing and commodity-selling corporation, the rules are somewhat different. They want to appeal to a wide customer base, and are consciously checking customer demand and market specs. That explains the recent Bud-Lite fiasco. Some stupid mid-level administrators decided that Bud-Light wasn’t “cool enough” for its desired customer base of trendy millennial jackasses, so they hired a repulsive trannie freak to start a new publicity campaign. It backfired spectacularly, as its traditional customer base simply stopped buying Bud-Light. And, of course, the makers of Bud-Light immediately backtracked, fired the stupid administrators, and are now desperately trying to recapture their traditional customer base. Again, both the mistake and the attempted correction were purely for PROFIT, and nothing else. Any big business concern will wear a swastika if it has to, or a hammer-and-sickle, or a rainbow flag, or the royal arms of Lower Slobbovia. Whatever brings in the money.
Brian A. Yapko August 8, 2023 James, this is very interesting additional information. I too have some investments with Vanguard and had no idea that it was using my money to try to influence U.S. environmental/social policy. This is something which should be disclosed and voted upon. I resent having my assets used in an unauthorized way, but I’ve come to accept that — like buying products from China — there’s no way to exist in the 21st Century without having to engage economically with those whose views are inimical to many of the values that you and I share. Boycotts are almost meaningless. Better Vanguard than having to deal with a demon like George Soros. But every movie made, every item we buy, everything we invest in now has socio-political ramifications. It’s exhausting and unavoidable.
Brian A. Yapko August 8, 2023 Lannie, thank you also for chiming in and providing even more useful information about the corruption and venality of corporations — information I, at least, was unaware of. NetZero in particular sounds despicable. Is there a list of companies somewhere whom one can do business with and still maintain a clear conscience?
Margaret Coats August 9, 2023 Brian, when Lannie previously opened the topic of environmental, social, and governmental acts by investment firms, I mentioned Strive Asset Management, a new firm that rejects ESG policy. Lannie agreed that Strive seems like a promising enterprise. I have heard an interview of one of its founders, who believes that other investment firms will follow its lead and focus on excellence in products and services. “Excellence” is Strive’s key word for implying that profit is not the only thing that counts. As well, they maintain proper concern for ethics in the traditional sense (not the ESG sense). That’s the reason their emerging markets fund does not invest in China. Strive Asset Management is easy to find online.
Brian A. Yapko August 10, 2023 Thank you for this important information, Margaret. Per your suggestion, I’ve looked up Strive Asset Management on the internet and it looks like a promising and non-woke way to manage assets. I may well do business with them as it would be pleasure to actually invest with a company with values I actually respect.
Brian A. Yapko August 8, 2023 Joe, I very much appreciate your discerning eye. Thank you! I’d love to say those grammatical snafus were intentional but nope — garden variety typos and a reminder that I must be more careful when I submit work to Evan! I’ve asked Mike to correct them and he has in fact done so. As for the point regarding the companies I mention in “Mercedes Benz”… They are most definitely NOT unique. In fact, the litany of names I tried to squeeze into those two lines show how common they were — and are. The point of the poem may have been somewhat sidelined by the focus on Nazi Germany… In this poem I was very much trying to show that modern corporations such as Target and Disney and many others (including my own bank) fit into a long and venal tradition by trying to manipulatively trying to burnish and advertise their woke credentials. George Floyd Riots and Black Lives Matter? No problem! We’ll throw a few million dollars at their social organizations, add some African Americans to our advertisements and prove what elevated, kind people we are! We’ll make a fortune! Transgenderism is all the rage! No problem! We’ll invest a few million to create and market LGBTQIRSFBIXYZLOL crotch-tucked swimwear and put some trans people on our catalogue. The gullible fools on the street will love it — and us! As far as I can see, corporations dive into these marketing campaigns and product alteration for grossly cynical motives which have nothing to do with authentic social justice — motives which are no different now than they were 80 to 90 years ago in the Third Reich. Business is the business of their business. Or, as you point out, money is money. Reply
Margaret Coats August 7, 2023 Brian, the Mercedes poem can be read in several ways, and thus it is difficult to make a clear response. It presents the company as fully understanding the moral evil they support, and doing so because a moral stand would be costly. This could be timely–except that companies supporting evil today can and do argue very hard that the evil they support is good. Both sides claim the moral high ground. Thus, if your poem supports taking a moral stand despite possible economic loss, it supports practically every company’s claims at present. In fact, it is today a tiny minority view among investment firms that companies should focus on business as business, and do what they do without concern for politics. This to me seems a refreshing attitude. Your poem criticizes Mercedes for political involvement and for moral depravity in doing business as business. Damned whether they do or don’t. Furthermore, reading the source material in your reference suggests that not a single German living during the Hitler era avoids guilt, not even those who opposed evil policies. They lived where national and local governments enjoyed tax revenue from guilty companies. Even the many executives acquitted of war crimes when companies went on trial must be guilty, because their employment income was tainted. And Cheryl Corey has already brought up the reparations question. Did companies do anything to make amends? Some executives were convicted of war crimes and served prison terms, but is that amends? And if it is not, Germany and German companies and all Germans still owe reparations for wrongs done in the time of their grandparents and great-grandparents. As do the American companies involved. You, Brian, actually do a great thing to suggest what we will all certainly see at the General Judgment of the human race. All the evil consequences of our tiniest imperfections! Thank God for His mercy in forgiving the repentant and allowing us to see also how good passes from generation to generation! Reply
Brian A. Yapko August 8, 2023 Margaret, this is a rich, detailed and complex comment which may dig more deeply than I would ever have expected. As I’ve noted in a couple of replies above, my true motive in writing this poem was to present the idea that corporations today are as cynical, venal and manipulative as they were ever were and that there is little difference between what a “social justice warrior” corporation does now and what German (and some American!) corporations did before and during World War II. I was writing about Target, Bud-Lite and Disney as much as Mercedes Benz and Volkswagen. With that preliminary point out of the way, I think you are troubled by the fact that the board of directors I present has confused logic concerning the circumstances of its cooperating with the Nazis (or the Leftists, or BLM or the Transgender Hegemony.) And that is precisely the point!! I don’t think such corporations even understand (or care) what it is they are getting into. They see a social movement, they see dollar signs (or Reichsmark signs) and they jump on the bandwagon. Then they create rationalizations for why they do it. A company like I.G. Farben is asked to manufacture Zyklon-B — the deadly poison used to kill millions in the death camps. They are presented with a contract. They are going to say yes because the desire for wealth and power demand it. Then they are going to come up with justifications as to why they say yes. It’s about the money, yes, but they can’t ever actually say that. Otherwise they would be forced to recognize that they are not industrialists, they are monsters. They then are forced by their own twisted consciences and venality to join the Nazi song of “social justice.” Thus the reasoning process in my “Mercedes Benz” poem absolutely must be a compromised one. Illogic must win (we’ll avoid taking a moral stand because we must take a moral stand!) if the company is to prosper let alone survive. Intentional blindness. Otherwise, as you note, “damned if they do, damned if they don’t.” Were all German people complicit in the Holocaust? That is a frighteningly deep question which I would like to answer “no” since my mother was German, raised under Hitler, and her father, my grandfather, fought for the Germans in both World War I and World War II. Can I say “no” with certainty however? I think I can. I shy away from the concept of collective responsibility. It’s wrong in attacks on the Jewish people (my father’s side of the family) , it’s wrong in attacks on Americans for slavery and I think it’s wrong in attacks on Germans. At a certain point, liability must be concentrated on the centers where different policies and actions could have resulted. Did all Germans receive benefits from heinous national policies? Sure. In the same sense that all Americans received benefits from slaves picking cotton and adding to the GDP. But how far back is it reasonable to go and how tightly should the net be woven? As for the issue of reparations, I did provide a partial answer to Cheryl Corey’s question, specifically about Mercedes Benz. But know that Germany has been making reparations directly to Jews and other victims of the Holocaust ever since the end of the War. When does it end? I’m not sure. But I know that Holocaust survivors still exist. In the U.S. alone there are still around 50,000. So I’m not sure if the German obligation should end when the last victims are gone or when the grandfathers and great-grandfathers who engaged in atrocities are gone. Putting on my lawyer hat and addressing the way debts are handled, debts do not die with the person who owed them. The obligations are taken over by the estate so I believe the reparations should continue so long as victims still breathe. There is a marked difference here between debts owed to living persons who were in fact victims during living memory, versus talk of reparations for slavery in the U.S. which ended in 1865. When neither direct victims nor those deemed culpable are alive and are generations removed it makes no sense to me to create a financial obligation which is nothing but a race-based redistribution of wealth to appease the mob and unrealistically guilty consciences. Reply
Margaret Coats August 10, 2023 Brian, thank you for your detailed response to my comments on the Mercedes poem. What you were trying to say in the poem is simpler than my reading, and far less complex than my implied questions. Therefore my first reply in return is that the issues themselves bring up complicated thought and questions. Writing on these matters will always lead some readers to consider deeper issues about guilt and reparation. I did not find compromised logic in your Mercedes board meeting. It says straightforwardly that bribes will be given and death camp business undertaken. Wordplay is outlined in case board members need to know agreed-upon talking points, but the company is knowingly guilty. That’s how I find your picture different from what probably happens in board meetings today. I suspect that hospital boards never call gender-affirming surgery mutilation; honestly or dishonestly, they consider it care that is needed to prevent suicide. You are right that there is a process of rationalization, but this is done only by thinking individuals who need it. Many do not. In your German board, individuals who might object have been fired before the meeting begins. The then-and-now difference arises because consciences now are more tender, thanks to Nuremburg and innumerable lawsuits. You do give profit as a main motive for Mercedes, but nationalism and progressivism (moving with the times) come in as well. I would say the same things operate in contemporary boards, with dominant left-liberalism replacing nationalism per se. This is my view, but you make it possible for a reader to find the confused logic you intend to be seen. You also make possible the view that money alone matters. And you allow an interpretation where the desire for profit and the need for rationalization coalesce. As a lawyer, you must see how this complexity goes into deciding the guilt of individuals. I looked at the IG Farben trials and found that only half the defendants were convicted of war crimes. What each knew and thought about what he did contributed to his defense and the decision of judges who had been his country’s enemies. Notably, not a single one was convicted of the number one indictment for preparing and waging war! Don’t have time now to go on to corporate and collective responsibility, but I will say you have some intriguing views on this kind of guilt and how long it lasts. Reply
Brian A. Yapko August 10, 2023 Thanks for these additional thoughts, Margaret. My feeling about the compromised logic in the board meeting was that a) this is a good decision because the public likes it; and b) Our (the possessive was important here) Nazis may be on the up and up…” The board is trying to convince itself of something that is blatantly false — which, I think, is frighteningly familiar. Perhaps this is mere rationalization, but that too is faulty logic. Or at least fluid logic which changes with whichever way the wind is blowing. Which is also frighteningly modern as the Bud-lite fiasco shows. I am impressed that you looked up the I.G. Farben trials and I’m dismayed to hear that only half of the defendants were convicted. And this would have been by American judges in Nuremberg! But the problem with justice after WWII in occupied Germany was the beginning of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. We did not want to alienate West Germany too much lest it fall into the wrong hands. They were needed! This is rather similar to the U.S. import of German physicists, many of whom had war-crime culpability but who the U.S. wanted anyway. Think Wernher Von Braun who ended up doing great work for NASA, even though he was single-handedly responsible for so many deaths in London from his V-2 rockets. As you point out, the guilt of individuals and corporate and collective responsibility are complicated things. And sometimes political necessity encourages the powers that be to put a finger or two on Justice’s scale
Joseph S. Salemi August 12, 2023 Margaret, preparing for war and waging war are not crimes. That is why the IG Farben defendants were acquitted of those charges. Every sane nation prepares for war, and wages it when necessary. You can be convicted of using slave labor, or committing atrocities against civilians, or killing POWs, or starving and working captives to death. The United States is now fighting a proxy war against Russia in the Ukraine, and preparing for the eventuality of a direct conflict if our Ukrainian puppets are routed. Those plans are stupid and probably suicidal, but not subject to criminal charges.
Margaret Coats August 12, 2023 Joe, I know as well as you do that preparing for war and waging war are not crimes–and even if they were, individual persons ought not to be charged with them. But that was the first item on the indictment of all individuals charged in the IG Farben trial! It did specify “war of aggression or invasion.”
Brian A. Yapko August 12, 2023 Joe, I agree and I disagree. To elaborate, I agree that a nation has the right to prepare for and wage war. There will be abuse and there will be collateral damage and civilians will get killed. However, I consider I.G. Farben a special case because of its connection to the mass murder of over a million unarmed innocent civilians held captive in concentration camps in the Holocaust. As summarized in Wikipedia: “Described as the most notorious German industrial concern during the Third Reich” in the 1940s the company relied on slave labour from concentration camps, including 30,000 from Auschwitz, and was involved in medical experiments on inmates at both Auschwitz and the Mauthausen concentration camp. One of its subsidiaries supplied the poison gas, Zyklon B, that killed over one million people in gas chambers during the Holocaust.” To me, the medical experiments on captive human beings (we’re not talking drug trials here… we’re talking vivisection and worse) and the creation of poison to kill humans on an industrial scale goes beyond normal war-preparation into genocidal war-crimes territory.
Margaret Coats August 8, 2023 “Entropy” is easier to deal with because my living room is in better shape than society, and my hats have stayed in order since I cleared out my closet months ago. Still, I have a great deal to do elsewhere that calls for work. The problem with work is that you can exert enormous amounts of energy and do zero work when you try to move something that resists. Or you do no net work if it falls back into its original position. Physics is fun, isn’t it? Seriously, I’m glad you put “pray!” in the poem. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are said to nullify entropy in the spiritual realm. Human virtue rows the boat, but after a while the supernatural gifts enable a diligent rower to sail. We can surpass ourselves, although I think James Tweedie speaks well to praise personal relationships based on mutual trust and accountability. These provide so much help in motivating the quest for order. And, Brian, your call in the poem puts the desire for beautiful order into metered words of inspiration that are good to hear. Reply
Brian A. Yapko August 8, 2023 Thank you, Margaret, for this most enjoyable comment. I’ve thought of Physics in many ways but rarely has “fun” come into the picture. I did not know that about the Holy Spirit but the idea of attacking disorder with prayer was intuitive to me. In addition to entropy in the physical world and the social world, I believe entropy is a phenomenon which exists in the spiritual lives of many people and cultures. That is why I also made the passing reference to the difficulty of filling the pews in Church. Prayer, to me, seems to be a proper method of fighting back at the devolution of congregations being whittled down to a faithful few and of churches diluting Scripture, message and discipline. Covid did much damage and amplified a trend to stay home that had already gained much traction. Is this not also entropy? Reply
Mia August 8, 2023 Thank you for these extremely interesting poems that tackle some universal themes. And thank you for the interesting comments that always help me to learn so much. I must say that the second poem is my favourite. But is there a reason they are together? The Nazi’s were definitely keen on order weren’t they! May I just share an insight I had whilst pondering all about the above and then reading the news where three girls on the subway in New York were filmed being vile to an Asian family? I wondered why they picked on them and of course racism was mentioned. But as I pondered on the lives of those young girls it struck me that it was envy. Envy for family and not just because they were Asian. Asian’s share this strong trait with Jews. And Muslims of course but they can have more than one wife and they are not such an easy target! Here in the west there are more single parent families, divorce is easier and abortions etc abound. Whoever thought to attack mothers/fathers , parenting and family knew they were attacking the foundations of strong societies. Without family entropy ensues? It would seem that there are many ways to declare war. Thank you again, what I love about the SCP is that it is populated with people who are knowledgable and who care and even if disagreements occur it is because people put themselves out there for what they believe in. Reply
Brian A. Yapko August 8, 2023 Thank you very much for your comment and inquiry, Mia. The pairing of the poems has much less to do with “order” than an exploration of the erosion of morality and values in the modern world. As I’ve mentioned in some other comments, the real subject of the “Mercedes Benz” poem is not the wickedness of the Nazis (a subject worthy of filling many a library) but the venality of corporations who answer not to God or morality but to the bottom line of profits and who accordingly use manipulative marketing to appear as if they are social justice warriors on the right side of history but who, in reality, simply reveal how vilely cynical they are. This corruption and lack of ethics is very much tied to the erosion of value and discipline in the “Entropy” poem. Now, this erosion of values fits in very neatly with the compelling point you raise about the destruction of the family (including the violent envy of some at seeing a strong family unit.) I touch on the devolution of the family a bit with my line about how people no longer think marriage is relevant. But it’s much, much deeper and you really nail it when you talk about those who attack the family as attacking the foundation of strong society. I remember in a comment a long time ago (my “Birthing Person” poem) when Dr. Salemi talked about how even the words “mother” and “father” are now disfavored by leftists and how they try to manipulate language into degrading the family unit. It’s hard for me to believe that the attempt to eliminate gender in physiology, culture and language itself is not a direct attack on the family unit. Thank you, Mia, for your kind words and perceptive insights which now have me thinking deeply. Reply
Susan Jarvis Bryant August 8, 2023 Brian, as ever your poems are beautifully conceived and thoroughly engaging. Although very different in form (the first one could have been lifted straight from a musical, and the second exudes creative flair with its spot-on-rhyme-to-blank-verse decision) they both speak to me of today’s society with entertaining and chilling accuracy. In ‘Mercedes Benz Makes a Corporate Decision’ these lines leapt out at me: The public’s on our side. What could go wrong When business is the business of our business? It’s huge fun and has aesthetic appeal on the creative flair level. I especially like the the repetition of the word ‘business’ – how very clever! It also has a glimmer of hope. What if the public wasn’t on their side? We have more power than we imagine… if only ‘Entropy’ was kept at bay. I love your analogy… this scientific term applied to the degradation of society works perfectly. I truly believe if we don’t pay attention to the importance of the little things – starting with personal appearance and attitude, all else will slide into chaos and ruin. If we can’t get our own backyard in order, there’s no hope for us making a difference on a global scale. My favorite lines are all those in stanza 2… not only do they sing to me, they’re full of hope and complement my favorite lines in the first poem beautifully. Great stuff!! Reply
Brian A. Yapko August 8, 2023 Susan, thank you very much indeed for your generous comment and your fine eye on the details of the poems. You’ve gleaned exactly what I hoped in terms of the content of both and I’m particularly delighted by the phrase “entertaining and chilling accuracy.” I do strive to tell the truth as I see it, but I also strive to do it in a way that does not bore the reader. I’m pleased that my somewhat strange structural forms have helped to serve this purpose. And the “business” line made me laugh when I wrote it so I’m glad it amused you as well. I also appreciate your analysis of the message in “Entropy.” It’s true that all the little details in life matter. This is something — if you can believe it — that I learned from St. Therese of Lisieux and her “Little Way.” Maybe I can’t do great things, but every little thing that I do can be infused with sanctity. How I spend my time matters. How I dress and groom matters. And yes, if we can’t get our own backyard in order (a very tall order for me!) then how do we make a difference? Well, I really do think the accumulation of little things in the end has the potential to make a huge difference. Mustard seeds, after all. Attitude matters. Let’s begin by banishing the slovenly. Let’s go out into the world with respect rather than treating stores, restaurants, schools and other places as our living room. Let’s treat our bodies with respect rather than turning them into pincushions and walls of graffiti to be eventually composted. Let us reverse entropy. Restoring dignity to society would be a good start. Reply
Joshua C. Frank August 9, 2023 Wow, I didn’t know all those companies were involved in and profited from the Holocaust! It reminds me of all the companies today that have a similar relationship with the Abortion Holocaust and with China, to the point where you can’t buy anything without a lot of it going to Planned Parenthood or Chinese concentration camps. You’ve articulated the thought process well. As for “Entropy,” yes, that’s exactly what’s going on. A society can no more last forever than a person can live forever. People think Rome was an anomaly, but all societies eventually reach this point—science-fiction alternate histories that imagine Rome surviving to this day are just that. You’ve seen my poems about Western culture dying, so you know you won’t see any disagreement from me. I especially love how you switched from rhyming to blank verse in the middle! Not only does it show the entropy, but it shows how the speaker is sick of having to control himself around it and is ready to say what he really thinks without regard to any consequences. Great poems! Reply
Brian A, Yapko August 9, 2023 Thank you very much, Josh! I always appreciate the insights you bring to your comments. You reminded that I recently bought a religious item here in Santa Fe which I was drawn to. Then I brought it home and — guess what? — “Made in China.” Is anything NOT made in China? Your point about every culture reaching a turning point and an inevitable slide is compelling. Rome, Byzantium, etc. I can’t help feeling that this time it’s different. Before now, the people of every culture had to work and they had a system of beliefs — even after the fall, people were engaged in activities and thought that assured some type of vigor — even if it was the vigor of their conquerors. Vigor has now been replaced by faithlessness, narcissism and sloth. Technology allows anyone to be their own media star and to sit on their butt doing nothing, and the abolition of faith and even objectivity lead me to believe this decline is far more destructive and permanent than those of the past. Entropy, to me, is the long, drawn-out subtle story of how civilization dies. Reply
Shaun C. Duncan August 11, 2023 These are both extremely effective poems, Brian. I was convinced the Mercedes Benz poem was a response to some silly woke initiative they’d undertaken (who can keep up with these things – the last campaign I saw from Mercedes was encouraging Australian men to “have a conversation” about masculinity) so the sudden appearance of the word “Reichsführer” in the fourth stanza was like a cold shower. “Entropy” likewise demonstrates similar skill with form and narrative as the rhyme scheme subtly decays and I enjoyed the irony of asking why poetry no longer needs to rhyme in the blank verse section. As Joshua rightly points out above, civilizations have a life cycle. From reading Jacques Barzun’s “From Dawn To Decadence” I am convinced the seeds of our society’s decay were planted as far back as the Renaissance, that period commonly regarded as the apotheosis of Western culture. Reply
Brian A. Yapko August 11, 2023 Thank you, Shaun, for this extremely gratifying comment. The reaction you describe in “Mercedes Benz” to the late introduction of Nazi elements in the poem is EXACTLY what I was hoping for! I appreciate your kind words regarding “Entropy” as well. Yes, while discussing the devolution of modern society I simply had to make that poetry point! I do agree that civilizations have a life cycle, though I wonder if at some point there is that final civilization that encounters Armageddon. And I wonder if that civilization is us… I must read this Barzun book. Thank you again for the comment and for the book referral. Reply
Joseph S. Salemi August 11, 2023 Shaun, whenever I hear someone say “Let’s have a conversation about…” I know that I am being scammed by a left-liberal proselytizer. This particular approach to discourse is now a red flag, indicating that the speaker wants to lecture and browbeat you into surrendering your values and opinions and accepting his. It’s not an invitation to dialogue or honest debate. It basically means “Please shut up and listen as I tell you what the truth is, and why you must accept it.” And if you attempt to make a cogent and lucid argument against what he’s promoting, you are immediately accused of hate speech, and cancelled. Mercedes-Benz wants to have a conversation about masculinity? Screw them. The only conversation they deserve is a smack in the face with a two-by-four. Reply
