People neither want to think about bad things that could happen in the future nor acknowledge them when they do. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:
Sometimes, it’s hard to see what’s right in front of your face – mostly because you don’t want to see it.
Because it’s so hard (for a decent person) to believe it. That such a thing is even possible. The hare freezes at the sight of the fox. It hopes the fox doesn’t see him.
Soon, the hare sees nothing at all.
The people being loaded onto those boxcars back in the long-ago also didn’t want to see it – because they didn’t want to believe it, either.
They froze.
Such things can’t happen, they told themselves as they queued up in line. Not in civilized countries and besides, we’ve done nothing to warrant it. We are just people and just people aren’t herded like cattle and sent to an abattoir by the government. We are just being resettled in the east.
All will be well.
They were so blind they even packed suitcases, filled with clothes they’d never wear again.
But then, it was a process. It didn’t happen suddenly because if it had, they would have seen – and probably not queued up peacefully, to be herded off to be “resettled” in the East.
They had to be corralled, first.
Mentally and morally penned in. As well as set apart, by the rest of the people.
Conditioned to accept what was coming – all of them – without seeing where it was headed. Each step toward the gate where Work Makes You Free an isolated, momentary progression . . . on the way to the next step.
And so on, until you’re there.
Until it’s too late to go back.
