problems to be avoided

Contemplating totalitarian dictators: when I was in grade school, or maybe middle school, I asked my father why the German people would allow Hitler to do such terrible things. My dad's answer had something to do with the economy in Germany -- he said people were desperate and afraid because there was no stability. This image stayed in my mind, all these years: he told me that in 1930s Germany, the economy was so bad that if a man wanted to buy a potato -- just one potato -- he would need, like, a wheelbarrow full of money.

There you go. Economics 101.
And because people were desperate, they listened to the ravings of a lunatic like Hitler.

Osama bin Laden. (Did people in the middle east have that potato -- wheelbarrow problem? I....erh -- think it's something different, there. ...but maybe, some of the same desperation, and hopelessness of the Way Of Life ...)

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