Wartime Ironies

Among the varied volumes on the shelf at the back of the hall where naudiz's reception was held, I found a 1940s pulp novel featuring Captain Midnight (and his Secret Squadron), which I skimmed to pass the time while the rest of the wedding party took pictures.

Reading with the benefit of historical hindsight, I noticed this unsettling coincidence: at the very moment that these patriotic adventure stories were being written, featuring villains who earned that status mostly by merit of their wily and cunning "Asiatic blood" (often mixed with good, strong white blood, a particularly vile yet potent combination), halfway around the world real people were being killed by the thousands for their unclean, inferior blood.

Darn those Nazis, ruining eugenics for the rest of us.

I wonder what will become unfashionable once the current troubles are over (if they ever end)? I'd like to think "religious intolerance", but if anything, the opposite seems to be true...