The Dreeson Incident(216)

And they were fiercely determined that that nation would be "modern," as they understood the term. A term which was of course heavily influenced by American ideas and attitudes but which stemmed still more from long-gestating German ideas and long-festering German injustices. What the Americans had brought through the Ring of Fire was really not so much their "new ideas." What they mostly brought was the deep and abiding confidence that those ideas worked. That, so far from being airy and impractical, they were vastly more practical than the notions and methods advocated and used by the existing rulers of the Germanies.



So, all that was medieval and barbaric and primitive was to be destroyed. First and foremost, those two prominent and long-standing traditions in the Germanies of anti-Semitic pogroms and witch-hunts. Traditions which, in fact, were very closely related not simply in spirit but in the persons who carried them out.



The fact that many of the CoC soldiers didn't know any Jews or care about Jews—even, in plenty of instances, were themselves prejudiced against Jews—was neither here nor there. Some of them even still, somewhere deep inside, probably believed in "witchcraft." Half-believed, at least.



That didn't matter, anymore than it mattered whether this or that soldier in Sherman's army burning its way across Georgia in the march to the sea liked or disliked black people. The Confederacy was an abomination, a gross act of treason to the republic, and the Confederacy would damn well be destroyed. Period.



So it was, with the attitude of the soldiers in the CoC columns fighting on the Rhine and the Main. The ancient customs of anti-Semitic pogroms and witch-hunting were damn well going to be destroyed. Because so long as they remained they would keep the nation shackled to barbarity and medievalism.



Not compromised with; not alleviated; not diluted; not "reformed."



Destroyed. Razed to the ground. Turned into rubble—and if the bodies of the defenders of medieval barbarism lay bleeding to death beneath the rubble, not a one of those fighters in the CoC columns cared in the least. Good riddance.



It had taken several years to entrench those new attitudes in the central and eastern provinces of the USE. The CoCs planned to finish the job in the western provinces in a few weeks.





And . . .



For the most part, they succeeded. Mike Stearns had predicted they would.



"It's simply a myth," he told Francisco Nasi, "that social attitudes are so deeply rooted that they'll last for generations under any circumstances. And the reason it's a myth is because attitudes in the abstract require actions in the concrete in order to remain solid and well-entrenched. It's not enough to 'feel' or 'think' this or that bias or prejudice. To keep those biases and prejudices solid—give them meat and blood and bone—you have to be able to act on them. And you've got to be able to do it frequently and regularly and in the public eye. Destroy the ability to act, and you will—very quickly—see the attitudes crumble and fade away. That's because you can't dragoon everybody else into tacitly supporting you, any longer."



He studied the Elbe from the window, for a moment. "I've seen it happen in my own lifetime. Well . . . most of it actually happened while I was still a kid, or hadn't even been born yet. Americans don't like to talk about it now, but the truth is that there were as many lynchings of black people in America in our not-so-distant past as there are lynchings of Jews and so-called 'witches' in Germany in the here and now. Yet by the time I was an adult, the lynchings were over. In a few short years, a social habit and custom that had lasted for centuries and had seemed as deeply ingrained as any had just vanished."



He swiveled his head and gave Francisco a fierce, hawkish look. "And you want to know how it was done? Forget all that vague twaddle about changes in so-called 'social consciousness.' Yeah, sure—those changes did happen and they were both real and important. But it's what lay beneath them and anchored them solidly that really counted—and that was as crude and simple as it gets."



He transferred the hawk glare to the river. "There was a time in America when you could lynch a black man with impunity. And then the time came when if you did so, you would get your ass handed to you. Often enough, by a black man wearing a badge and carrying a gun."



His smile managed to be wry and savage at the same time. "It's amazing, Francisco, how quickly 'deeply ingrained attitudes' will change—when the consequences of not changing are so immediate and obvious and detrimental to your health and well-being. Oh, yeah. It's really amazing how fast that can happen."



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