My point is not that Nazi architects were great. Or even particularly good. It's more that even the Nazis were not capable of producing the eye-searing, soul-destroying fuckshit buildings that surround us like oozing zombie wallpaper: ugly,hungrily sucking every twitching fiber of life they can find. Beige sinkholes draining the last bit of goodness out of existence.
Like a lot of items in American life, we have taken the initial Nazi impulse and refined it to a stupefying perfection. The Autobahn has become the Interstate. Meth doled out to Panzer commanders has become the meth trafficked all across the country, to truck drivers, nurses, and factory workers in small towns. (And with the tank commanders, a lot of meth heads started tweaking to stay awake at their grinding jobs -- not for three day debauches of sex orgies.) The abject worship of the military and police.
I suppose someone could make a case that these strip malls strewn around represent "vitality" and "entrepreneurship" and happy chaos. They'd be wrong. It's simply greed, the valuation of money above anything else -- common sense, functionality, intelligent design all go by the way side. Note that I don't even introduce the notion of "beauty" -- a word that has become richly fruity and suspect even to the arts establishment, let alone some contractor trying to flip a property for a quick buck.
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