Schoolgirls who defied the Stasi

When it was first rolling out there were articles with pictures of streets where more was blurred than not. Not sure if acceptance has increased much in the years since then, but I'd assume the current young generation may be less bothered.

Since getting divorced, I have mostly not owned a TV. I think I have been to one movie at a theater in the many years since my ex moved out.

I'm aware it is a classist, sexist, racist system in many ways.

I also seem to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leaderboard of Hacker News. I hit the board under my original handle of Mz about a month or so after finally getting off the street, so a lot of the upvotes that got me to the leaderboard were gotten during the years I was homeless.

I bitch regularly about the classism and sexism both in the world and on HN. But I'm not really the right person to aim your remark at. Because if you imagine you are "talking about me," then you have absolutely no idea whatsoever who the hell I am.

The Stasi would have still found out that he fled the republic as long as he entered in West Germany under his real name. His girlfriend would still have been interrogated etc, perhaps a little less since it would have been easier to feign unawareness with her boyfriend just disappearing out of the blue.

The real beneficiaries would have been the students helping him and the teachers. They would have been able to travel to the GDR (to see their friends/family) since they likely wouldn’t have been connected to the escape.

The bravery the girls displayed was for defying the East German dictatorship. It could have ended much worse for them had they been found out before crossing the border. They did put their fellow students and teachers at risk, no doubt. But after the fact it seems pointless to punish them for helping a fellow human being escape dictatorship. Aside from maybe discouraging future travelers from such actions.

Which society exactly are you referring to? What crime are you claiming that every single member of this society is complicit in? How does feeling like a criminal itself absolve someone of complicity in this crime? You seem to be saying we should take on guilt for something precisely in order to free ourselves of this guilt. This seems like a paradoxical admonition. Could you please clarify?

Essentially, in modern society, if you do not feel like a criminal, it's because you are walking on eggshells around your government. Just about every modern government has laws on the books which are just plain ethically, morally, or constitutionally unjustified.

The DMCA, the PATRIOT act, the listing of cryptography under non-exportable munitions, the War on Drugs, the US foreign drone strike program, whistleblower laws, same-sex marriage laws or even death penalties, (soon to be) Article 13, social credit systems, mass surveillance, threat of ostracization/deplatformization if you fall outside of or in the middle of the now-split Overton window, the militarization of police in some developing countries coupled with a growing propaganda-driven movement to disarm citizens in order to increase the power gap, neoliberalist consumerist lifestyles propped up by military coups, dictatorships, and pollution sinks in developing countries.

I could keep going. But what it boils down to, is that if you don't find yourself at odds with the way things are being run in most parts of the developed world (not just the US) then you're either living under a rock, or complicit. If you're in the UK, it also means you like your sex without salt.

And, as ignorance is not an excuse in a society where you have plenty access to such information, you are still complicit.

I think a bit of guilt over the way our lifestyles impact the health of the earth and the lives of other people is certainly in order. I think some guilt over allowing our brand new rebel government to turn into the world's largest bully and largest perpetrator/denier of climate change, some guilt over not participating in activities which put you directly at odds against your government for the sake of knowledge or ethics, is entirely in order. Guilt gets things done.