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It’s such an alien thought process that I don’t even know where I would begin with discussing politics with such a person.
This is the voter Kamala was supposed to sway with “better messaging”.
You mean by hanging out with Liz Cheney and talking about a ‘lethal military’?
“the greatest argument against democracy is a conversation with the average voter”
Marx grasped this essence of capitalist democracy splendidly when, in analyzing the experience of the Commune, he said that the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm
That’s already more than any communist regime allowed, so lesser of two evils and all of that…
This is some quote from an ancient Greek right? Socrates, Pericles et cetera?
Churchill, so the story goes. But probably not: https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-141/red-herrings-famous-quotes-churchill-never-said/
It’s one of the many often attributed to Winston Churchill, though to my knowledge there’s no actual evidence of him actually saying it and his other writings go against the sentiment. I don’t know who actually did say it first
It was me. Winston and I were tying one on and I said it in passing. He thought it was hilarious.
Churchill and ancient greek philosopher kings, famous champions of the common people
As others put, no, but it does remind me that Aristotle felt society should only be run by the most intelligent among us, hence the term Aristocracy.
Of course, in practice people make up bullshit rules to determine who is most intelligent and that messes up the whole concept (e.g. Jim Crow tests and such). But it’s a nice fantasy if ever we could pull it off.
If only Aristocracy actually meant society was run by the most intelligent among us. Instead, it means “society is run by me and my buddies.”
Even if it was actually the most intelligent they would still have the power to hurt others for their own gain. In fact I imagine it would be far easier for them to justify to themselves by arguing merit.
The problem is that no government can thrive as a force for good in the face of apathy, maliciousness, or a lack of duty.
Pretty much, yes. Even if you put up requirements on a democracy to require basic civic understanding, you ultimately disenfranchise a group.
Exactly and many people have misguided understanding of duty to country and the benefits that come from it. In rural America you often see people who treat military service as absolutely vital to preservation of freedom, and gun ownership as critical to preventing tyranny, but don’t see that jury duty and consistently participating in the political process with an open mind for all people’s right to live as they feel is right for themselves as the absolute lynchpins of American freedom that they are.
Protecting freedom isn’t glorious, it isn’t exciting. It’s hard mental and emotional labor that requires resisting demagoguery and bigotry even when you’re struggling. It requires understanding that giving the government unchecked power will eventually bite you in the ass, just as surely as refusing to prosecute leaders who commit crimes. It requires paying your damn taxes so the country doesn’t fall into disrepair. It involves paying the prices required of the freedoms you have.
It annoys me how some people refuse to vote lest they be called to jury duty. Motherfucker, trial by a jury of your peers is a magnificent right you hold, and that’s the price of it. Also you hold a portion of a nuclear arsenal and can’t even be bothered to find out that that’s not how the government that holds them works, or to express your will on it regardless.
Also a great argument for education reform
Tell me you are a racist piece of shit without telling me you are a racist piece of shit.
I really believe that most Americans are dumb enough to be racist and just smart enough to know they shouldn’t say it. I can’t help but read all this apologism for Trump as thinly veiled, “I know he’s a weird guy, but thank God someone is finally going to do something about all the people that look different than me”.
Also, misogynist. “I sont agree with his dictatorial views, but at least he’s got a dick!”
That’s sadly almost every '24 Trump Voter I’ve ever spoken to.
Bingo. This guy is likely happy about the reports that twice as many black women than white women die in child birth and after RvW those numbers doubled. He’s probably happy when he hears about family seperation, people caught in immigration prisons for dozens of years, and on and on.
As a German, this the insane things our parents, grandparents and institutions warned us about. People begrudgingly accepted their lead in the hopes that “although it’s an authoritarian, maybe he will take care of our goals”. What followed was the cruelty of 1939 to 1945 and no one deserves to live through that, not even the idiots that got us in this mess.
I desperately, desperately, hoped that Germans, Jews, and especially the few remaining holocaust survivors, could somehow articulate this in a way that would penetrate at some point during the past few years.
Nope. We are literally doomed to repeat it.
Without mentioning the name of the poster, I replied to a comment yesterday that said this:
The only reason I voted for him was because we’re on the brink of WW3 and I thought he was truly the last hope of getting the wars settled. I’m scared, and I’m sorry, but shit is crazy right now. Trump at least has some relations with Russia and North Korea, that could potentially cool the pot. Feel free to tell me why I’m wrong, I’m open to discussion.
In times past, I was fascinated by Hitler and WW2. It was a lifelong obsession that I had since childhood. But ever since the Trump era started it started to wane due to the fact that WW2 and Hitler just didn’t seem so distant anymore… the world felt like a repeat of what was happening in those days and looking up facts felt, in part, like learning more to understand what is happening now instead of about history.
But if there is something that I need to point out is that Hitler was a SHIT leader. Germans and Germany ever since the Kaiser era were portrayed as hyperefficient and militaristic, and people then claim the Nazis were the same. They weren’t. Nazi bureaucracy was bullshit and most of their economic growth was based on plunder (initially from German Jews and other marginalized groups and later from other countries) and almost purely military build up. Germany actually lagged behind in technological build-up to most countries, despite the stereotypes of the Wunderwaffen of WW2 (Fritz-X bomb, the ME-262, etc), and industrially as any technology that didn’t have a direct military benefit was discarded. They didn’t even have any proper anti-biotics during the war!
Even agriculture was fucked by the Germans. Despite the romanticization of the German peasantry and the countryside by the Nazis, they could not sustain their population at all. Most German food was imported, and they were preparing their population for harsh wartime rationing even before the war started. They fed their population almost entirely on stolen food from Poland, France, the Netherlands, and Ukraine. Also by killing a lot of people in the death camps they saved on food that way as well.
People stereotype communist countries as having no food when they don’t realize that fascist nations just can’t feed their own folk. Nazi Germany wasn’t alone in having serious food problems. Imperial Japan couldn’t feed its own population and would have had widespread hunger if they didn’t start plundering China during the war.
Hitler lead Germans and Germany into death and destruction and misery and mayhem. He did nothing good for Germany. None at all. Even towards the end of the war he would have been OK with the German people being genocided since if they were defeated by the barbarian orc-like Soviets and the mongrel Americans they were not the master race he thought they were and they deserved to die. There is a reason why he is remembered as one of the world’s greatest monsters.
He did nothing good for Germany.
He did kill Hitler tho.
Then he also killed the dude that killed Hitler
igual igual
true
I see where you’re coming from. Perhaps not as obsessed, but I always had a historical interest in the era until it became an alarming parallel to present day news. Most people do not know much about what went down in the pre-war period. They just have knee-jerk reactions to it. “Traditional values” were trending at the time, Nazism was marketed as the modern, cool choice. Education, administration and even scouting and chess clubs were Nazified at the time. I see it with the freaking MAGA hat everywhere nowadays. I just see it and say, fuck this is some Nazi Germany shit. To me now there are two kinds of people, those who see it, and those who don’t. People are so precious thinking that Germans went nuts with the mass murder shit and elected this guy, but themselves have been on the exact same track as Nazi Germany for years: idolizing a dangerous man without ever questioning him. Soon they will have no excuse either, only collective guilt. Some of us won’t be here to see it though, for one reason or another. I have pointed this out in my other comment: once fascists get hold of the state apparatus, there is no horror we can put past them.
i think it’s at least in part because we have always been taught to see Hitler as a monster instead of a person. We dehumanised him and the entire nazi party so much for many it sounds like a myth instead of history, the take away seems simple - just don’t be a monster.
The lesson was - some people are born evil
Instead of - anybody can fall the wrong path and find themselves committing atrocities. Even your friends, even your family, even you
i’ve been saying this for a long time - Hitler wasn’t a monster, he was human just like you and me, and that’s a hundred times more terryfing
Indeed, dehumanization of the Nazis made most people think they are immune both to similar propaganda and similar atrocities. They think that Hitler advertised the Holocaust to be elected. It was a war time state secret (although there was the “Hitler’s Prophecy” but no-one took it at face value).
Hitler regime rose to power with the now familiar rhetoric: traditional values, family, order, capitalism, down with the trans degenerates, beat up leftists they poison the blood of our country.
That is why Trump goes out so easily saying “Hitler mught have said that but in a very different way”. He didn’t. It was the same fucking way.
Having said that, consider how the “abstractio ad Hitlerum” advertized as a fallacy actually enabled, eventually, Trump to get away with Hitler shit, just by saying it is a fucking fallacy. (I think this is in turn called the “Fallacy fallacy”) This timeline is history repeating itself as a farce, exactly as Marx predicted.
I feel for some Nazi-like propaganda in times past, and I am PISSED at the people who tricked me and I will never forgive them. They weren’t born evil in some nefarious manner, I will agree, but they did fall for the same shit that anyone can fall for. This was the critical lesson that most people forget.
Also the depiction of Nazi Germany as this hyperadvanced tech nation also played a role in it. While the Germans did have some very interesting secret weapon projects, people don’t realize the following:
1: They were in trial stages and were often rushed into production well before the underlying technology was sufficient to make them operational. Meaning they would NOT have been able to turn the tide of the war no matter what.
2: The Germany military was seriously lacking in many BASIC components. They didn’t have enough trucks and automobiles to do most of their shit. The Americans were fully mechanized, on the other hand and had FAR more of the nuts and bolts needed to win the war.
3: Much of the secret weapons they tried to make were wastes of time and resources. If they had put their efforts onto the stuff that is needed to win they might have held out for longer, but their failure was their attempt to win by a magic bullet instead of real bullets.
4: The Allies also had their own secret weapons projects that were just as funky and cool as the Axis. The Allies had jets and radar controlled stuff, too (and need I mention THE ATOMIC BOMB!). The Allies even had operational jet fighter squadrons during the war, but they didn’t throw them at the enemy. Even the Soviet Union, a backwards nation compared to the UK and the US, had their own secret weapons projects, too. But Stalin, like Roosevelt and Churchill, realized that the war would not be won by magic bullets, but real bullets, and focused more on getting the basic needs of the military done.
In short the Nazis weren’t any more advanced with their tech. Their attempted use of fancy shit was done out of desperation and not an sign of better thinking.
Yup. I have a similar argument before. If one reads more about Hitler and the Nazis, they are actually not different to any of the standard third world dictators like Idi Amin and Muammar Gaddafi. The difference is that the Nazis were only more powerful because they inherited a working institution-- especially the Prussian-based military-- while third world countries had to start from scratch after decolonisation.
The Nazis like other dictators are very inefficient. I am reading Hannah Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil”. The book goes through the convoluted bureaucracy and logistics of the Holocaust. Different pen pushers and administrators arguing who should be able to use the trains for their own departmental needs. What struck me the most is that the Nazis wasted so much effort transporting so-called undesirables to concentration camps, when their own soldiers are struggling to get supplies and reinforcements to the frontlines!
More importantly, as you correctly mentioned, Nazi Germany struggled to feed their own people. As a matter of fact, there is strong evidence that Hitler started the war in Europe to stave off the looming economic crisis, which his own economic minister warned him of, thanks to endless government spending particularly with the re-armement. That economic crisis had been warded (temporarily of course) by plundering the resources of their conquered territories.
The one scary thing about the holocaust is that while it did cause some problems in shipping supplies as you mentioned, it actually didn’t cost that much at all and even produced a profit. If I had to point to the ultimate evil of capitalism I wouldn’t point to the massive wasted food or environmental destruction. I would point to the death camps. They were remarkably cheap to run all things considered AND they paid for themselves AND made a profit.
On short term the Nazis may have profited, but on the long term, all the potential talents were killed and brain drain occurred even before the war.
Absolutely. The nazis would have destroyed everything. George Orwell in his review of Mein Kampf noted that the only thing that Hitler seemed to have in mind for German culture is literally taking over land, breeding a new generation of soldiers for them to to go war again and again and again. Just a repeat of that. No culture, no real anything other than spreading themselves far and wide.
I remember in 2016 thinking how similar Trump was to Hitler and rhetoric and everything. I was written off is basically being nothing but hyperbole and physical form unfortunately I wasn’t wrong which sucks
There were over 40 assassination attempts on the shit stain Hitler and all of them were domestic. The Allies fully understood who was responsible for Germany’s strategic and tactical failures and they wanted the turd alive until the end. Cadet Bone Spurs will do the same thing to the US military.
Dictators: famous for ending wars. We’ll never learn how many wars could have been prevented if only all countries had authoritarian leaders, too bad it’s never happened before.
Because Hitler is famous for avoiding global armed conflict.
I mean it’s only because they didn’t give him exactly what he wanted and how he wanted it immediately and without any resistance that we got the war. He was the real oppressed one after all /s /s /s /s
Because I cannot emphasis enough that what I said above is sarcasm.
“I voted for the guy that I think is like Hitler to end conflicts and keep us out of wars.”
Did he not read the part where Hitler genocided Jews, Europeans, and the disabled?
Did he not read the part in history where Hitler caused a war so large that it wiped out entire European families, literally tens of millions of Europeans?
The white working class in this country is going to get everything they voted for. I hope Trump floods their neighborhoods with immigrants, LEGALLY.
Read!?
Ha!
The thing to keep in mind about idiocy is that idiots make mistakes, a lot. At the same time, those mistakes are usually small-stakes affairs (it’s hard to make big mistakes with no money and/or resources) and are usually recoverable. The idea that their mistake could affect so many others simply does not happen, because that’s not how things typically work.
Ya know… if I thought someone was literally Hitler, the last thing I’m gonna fucking do is help them literally have control of… everything.
Unless you want to bring about the end of the world. Seriously, that’s how at least some of these people think. They want to throw a monkey wrench in the works, because they think they’ll be the ones to survive the apocalypse.
I want the end of the world too, but it’s because I don’t wanna survive the apocalypse, we are not the same.
Haha… I’m depressed.
Trump won’t bring about the apocalypse he’ll just bring about economic ruin. Which is a lot less fun than the apocalypse.
But what if the country needed a change in leadership after recently being fucked up by this hitler guy, eh?
This is what happens when you systematically dismantle the public education system.
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
I wonder who Trump voted for.
Oh that’s right, he’s a convicted felon. That would be voter fraud.
Acting like that would be his first fraud. Or the only fraud in this election. Trump is moving pawns behind every state election, and he has 5 Ace’s up his phony sleeve. Its all crooked when Trump is involved
Only if you’re black.
It’s legal in Florida, where Trump voted.
Convicted felons can vote in Florida, but a woman can’t get an abortion after 6 weeks, which is right when a lot of them realize they’re pegrenate. Well isn’t that special.
I’m beginning to see why he is a former construction worker.
This guy was fired for being obviously mentally unstable.
Oh, far from it. This is very much the norm in any construction sector. Everyone is dumb as absolute fuck.
Historical fact: In the distant past, guys like this belonged to a Union, and the union told them how to vote.
The union was led by ruthless people whose power was entirely dependent on the support of the union.
The union leaders kept their people happy by negotiating better prices for their labor, and the happy people did what the leaders said. Their tribe was the union, and the tribe stuck together.
At some point the owner class realized it was easy to redefine what happiness meant for idiots: Lying. A lot. Tricking absolute idiots is easy, so they started whittling away at unions with promises of prosperity a union leader could never fulfil, until we get to today where unions and union membership is lower than it’s ever been.
And idiots like that still vote for who their handler tells them to, only their handler now has zero investment in keeping them happy. Lying to them is sufficient as long as the rest of the tribe reinforces the lies. The tribe is now everyone too stupid to not vote for Hitler, and the tribe sticks together.
The tribe is now everyone too stupid to not vote for Hitler, and the tribe sticks together.
And the tribe is 70+ million strong. Let’s not forget that.
Voter turnout among Democrats this year was 10 million lower than in 2020, while Republican turnout barely changed. Trump won the popular vote by about 3.5 million. TBF it’s unknown how many Democrats didn’t vote because they were purged off voter rolls, and how many simply refused to participate because Harris didn’t satisfy their moral purity standards. But based on the consistent failure by Republicans to win their election restricting lawsuits, my strong guess is that it’s those 10 million fuckheads who did this to us. Zero tolerance doesn’t work, folks, You don’t walk barefoot across broken glass because you didn’t like the choices of shoes.
Democrats fall apart, Republicans fall in line.
Very succinct. I’m reminded of Michael Moore’s comparison -
democrats: “What should we do about dinner?” “Um, we could go out.” “Do you want to go out?” “I dunno, do you?” “Well, if you do…” “Okay, where should we go?” “I dunno, where do you wanna go?”
republicans: <slams hand loudly on table> “Git in the car, we’re goin’ to the Sizzler!”
there’s a lot of racist and misogynistic democrats
It’s also in line with 2012 and 2016 participation levels for Dems. It seems like the GOP have a reliable voting base while dems need a pandemic or a monumental candidate like Obama to bother showing up to the polls.
