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They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)

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Re: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)

#281

Post by graemep »

rsynnott wrote: post #228
ookblah wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't even want to give people that benefit at this point. used to think that it was education, circumstances, outside forces, culture, etc. like "if only" we had XYZ then we can prevent this. at this point i just want to call it "stupidity". not even a left vs right thing. there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things wo…

> there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work I'm sceptical of that. I tend to suspect that Michael Gove's "the people have had enough of experts" thing was _kind_ of correct; there's a deep strain of anti-expert feeling throughout, at least, the West at the moment. (I don't think this is quite the same as traditiona…

Gove was right. The problem is that experts no longer have to explain or justify themselves or explain the level of evidence behind their opinions.

Expertise has also been politicised. Experts are picked who give the prior decided opinions, and those who have the wrong opinion are got rid of (e.g. Professor David Nutt).

Finally Gove was speaking in the context of Brexit, and arguing that it ultimately a question of national identity. DO people identify as British or European? I agree - it is more like whether people in Northern Ireland want to be part of the UK or the Irish Republic, or maybe Scottish independence, than anything else in British politics. lots of parallels around the rest of the world.

Covid policy had multiple examples of this, and of not consulting experts on a sufficiently wide range of subjects.

A lot of evidence based policy is like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gMcZic1d4U

Re: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)

#282

Post by pjc50 »

rsynnott wrote: post #236
pwatsonwailes wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You never have one except because everyone decides they do. The moment anyone with a modicum of power decides to say it doesn't exist, it doesn't exist.

I mean, see, say, South Korea. Or, for a less spectacular example, see Boris Johnson's defeat in his attempts at a bit of tinpot dictatorship of his own: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_(Miller)_v_The_Prime_Ministe... Really, in democratic societies there are three levels; those where the offending politician is actually deposed, those where their unconstitutional action is blocked by the courts or by another arm of…

R v Miller was important but ultimately overtaken by events - while Parliament did want to discuss Brexit, they were unable to find a viable solution and we still got no-deal Brexit where vital things like the status of Northern Ireland had to be patched up later. For whatever insane reason, the demand to eject us from the Single Market was just too strong.

Re: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)

#283

Post by eigart »

mandmandam wrote: post #244
eigart wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing your posts hours after Trump launched a plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza is quite the sight. You’re like the black knight from Monty python. Edit: I welcome the pushback on this post. The message I meant to convey is that of two evils. Yelling at the losing candidate does nothing for Gaza. It alienates even people who care (but I’m not perfect). I apologize for the divisive nature of my post.

> Seeing your posts hours after Trump launched a plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza is quite the sight. Biden provided the bombs and the diplomatic cover that allowed Israel to decimate Gaza's population, permanently damaging entire generations, reducing the most densely populated areas on Earth to smoking rubble, and explicitly supported Netanyahu's ethnic cleansing plans. He basically alley-ooped this scenario to Trum…

It was damned if you do, damned if you don’t. What about all the voters you lose by dropping support for Israel?

Democrats were powerless to stop the genocide. Gaza voters weakened them further.

Re: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)

#285

Post by jdcasale »

rsynnott wrote: post #228
ookblah wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't even want to give people that benefit at this point. used to think that it was education, circumstances, outside forces, culture, etc. like "if only" we had XYZ then we can prevent this. at this point i just want to call it "stupidity". not even a left vs right thing. there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things wo…

> there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work I'm sceptical of that. I tend to suspect that Michael Gove's "the people have had enough of experts" thing was _kind_ of correct; there's a deep strain of anti-expert feeling throughout, at least, the West at the moment. (I don't think this is quite the same as traditiona…

Fwiw, my experience from growing up in deep red America was that anti-intellectualism was staggeringly strong there. People would actually define their beliefs in opposition to those of people they perceived to be 'smart'.

The way that I always understood this was that if they had a disagreement with someone 'smarter' than them, and they operated in good faith, they would lose ~98% of the time. This doesn't feel good. It makes smart people threatening -- it breeds resentment toward them.

However, if you have a roomful of people who define their position in opposition to the 'smart' person, your beliefs are the ones that matter, regardless of what the truth is, so you get to feel like you've won the argument. Most arguments are not consequential, so this practice doesn't really cause meaningful short-term harm so there's no negative feedback.

Over the long-term, this herd mentality is how people learn to navigate the world, and you end up with a giant mess.

Re: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)

#286

Post by elif »

ookblah wrote: post #134
noduerme wrote: post #73

"The Germans" is an absolutely jaw dropping read, a series of interviews with average German citizens and low-level nazi party members, conducted a decade or so after the war, by an American Jewish journalist. It shows, in first hand accounts, the banality of evil and how easily it can prevail if people do nothing. It is an account of modern tyranny and everyday collaboration. The parallels in the feeling of what's h…

i don't even want to give people that benefit at this point. used to think that it was education, circumstances, outside forces, culture, etc. like "if only" we had XYZ then we can prevent this. at this point i just want to call it "stupidity". not even a left vs right thing. there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things wo…

Once you see how stupid and useful this group is, it's hard to unsee the deliberate attempts to make this group larger and dumber.

Re: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)

#287

Post by elif »

rsynnott wrote: post #228
ookblah wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't even want to give people that benefit at this point. used to think that it was education, circumstances, outside forces, culture, etc. like "if only" we had XYZ then we can prevent this. at this point i just want to call it "stupidity". not even a left vs right thing. there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things wo…

> there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work I'm sceptical of that. I tend to suspect that Michael Gove's "the people have had enough of experts" thing was _kind_ of correct; there's a deep strain of anti-expert feeling throughout, at least, the West at the moment. (I don't think this is quite the same as traditiona…

The anti mask, anti vax, anti chromosomal expression, anti 'tariffs are taxes' are beyond "anti-expert"

These positions are flatly anti-base-reality. If you want to frame them in terms of authority rejection, you could call them anti-first graders

Re: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)

#288

Post by samirillian »

there are certainly some parallels with what's happening today but analogies are always difficult. i could be wrong but i really don't think of this administration as murderous in the way that Nazi Germany was.

Of course, the biggest asterisk beside the analogy is the lack of warmongering. Like, kind of the most important part, and Trump is acting more like Woodrow Wilson in that respect. Didn't Woodrow Wilson once say that the US isn't a melting pot but a garbage can?

Re: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)

#289

Post by teddyh »

roenxi wrote: post #210
Dalewyn wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, what you should takeaway is that misoverusing the term Nazi as an insult patently no longer works precisely because noone cares about being called a Nazi anymore due to its misoveruse. In a different timeline, Trump being called a Nazi or any of the vicinity terms should have been an immediate termination of his campaign chances. What actually happened is Trump ignored it (as he should) and the American people sh…

> Another moral is that insulting Americans probably doesn't actually work in general. "Deplorables", "Garbage", and others were turned around into rallying cries during the 2016 and 2024 campaigns... It depends on the insult; sometimes that doesn't work. One of the purest expressions of joy I've seen in politics was Scott Adams (Dilbert guy) back in 2019 analysing [0] a group of anti-Trumpers trying to rally around…

Direct link to segment: https://www.youtube.com/embed/1_3HGjAVv0M?start=90&end=450>

Re: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)

#290

Post by kuschku »

MrVandemar wrote: post #275
rsynnott wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work I'm sceptical of that. I tend to suspect that Michael Gove's "the people have had enough of experts" thing was _kind_ of correct; there's a deep strain of anti-expert feeling throughout, at least, the West at the moment. (I don't think this is quite the same as traditiona…

>there's a deep strain of anti-expert feeling throughout Probably because the experts are telling them that if they want a future, everyone is going to have to compromise their current lifestyle. Not a popular message. People will always be sceptical and hostile towards people who say "you can't have X". People are always happy to believe people who say "Vote for me and you have as much X as you want!"

Tbh, the Matrix wasn't far off with the portrayal of Cypher. They just didn't expect half of the population to prefer the comfortable lie over the inconvenient truth.
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