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They Thought They Were Free (1955)

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Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#261

Post by skybrian »

epistasis wrote: post #253
skybrian wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s my understanding that the humanities doesn’t get much in government grants to begin with, but when the sciences have a finance problem, they cut the humanities for some reason.

I'm not aware of humanities getting get to fund the sciences, at least in the UC system. But in many places with highly complicated accounting, the sciences can sometimes indirectly fund humanities through the overhead rate that universities charge. These are highly negotiated rates between the government and the universities, so there has to be a bit of confusion on what money keeps which buildings going.

The problems at the University of Chicago seem especially bad and I don’t entirely trust this article, but for what it’s worth:

> The reason today’s Dean of Humanities wants to send students to other universities to learn subjects that she would like to cancel, or use ChatGPT to teach subjects tomorrow that humans teach today, is to drive the “marginal cost” of teaching students from 20 percent of their tuition down to 10 percent. Future applicants should know that the University plans a further expansion from around 7,400 students to 9,000 ... and has simultaneously announced an intent to hold the number of research faculty constant. Perhaps we can drive the cost of educating students below 10 percent? Perhaps that is what the president and provost and dean of humanities mean when they say that we need to position ourselves as leaders in the field.

https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-crisis-of-the-univers...

It would be nice to read something more in-depth about university finances. Can humanities courses be funded by tuition alone or not?

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#262

Post by FrustratedMonky »

chillingeffect wrote: post #147
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Also, Project 2025 was openly published. Anybody could read it. They aren't hiding the goals. People just don't want to bother with it.

In their defense, there is an inexhaustable supply of "take over w my ideology material." This is a confluence of many conditions. Some long-focused efforts, some architecting and annealing of interests, some individual greed, some long-lasting effects of trauma, and some massive ignorance. One of the only good points is that the American people are stubbornly allergic to authoritarianism. Yes there are exceptions, b…

I like a lot of what you are saying. But sadly I think it is an older view. Maybe this was true in 80's before social media.

"American people are stubbornly allergic to authoritarianism"

Literally 40%+ of Americans have voted for Authoritarianism. It's viewed as being 'tough'.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#263

Post by schiffern »

noobermin wrote: post #232
jebarker wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an awful lot of stuff about “national character” that is… questionable. Yes! I recently read this book and was pretty shocked by how much was chalked up to the German character. I came away feeling neither comfort nor increased panic relating to the current US situation. I read the book because I was hand-wringing about how complicit I am just by getting on with my privileged and comfortable life right now. I didn’…

While reading about history can always be enlightening, I sure hope you aren't looking to a book to inform you on what is right or wrong and what your behaviour should be.

  >I sure hope you aren't looking to a book to inform you on what is right or wrong
While it's not my cup of tea, from what I've heard there are a few major world religions that might disagree on that point.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#264

Post by overfeed »

nosianu wrote: post #234
jackstraw42 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excerpts from this have popped up in Reddit comments quite a bit the last few years. At first it did feel out of place, but now I'm going going back and listening to Dan Carlin talk about the headspace of society before something like Nazi Germany happens. With all the Executive Orders and lawlessness from the Executive Branch and throughout our federal government with this new regime, it's pretty clear they're attem…

> and who knows what it will look like if we have some kind of civil war out of this. I don't understand mentions of "civil war" in the public lately (there's even a Hollywood movie about it). There is only one party controlling the armed forces. I also doubt that any high-ranking officers would take the troops they command out of the command structure and then even order them to attack the government and other troop…

> Armed civilians with their puny little guns and little organization are right out as soon as any part of the military joins a fight

In the 1940s, the DoD published a field manual on how folk with "puny little guns" - or no guns at all - can fight.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#265

Post by ethical_source »

wyldfire wrote: post #223
ethical_source wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to take Trump "seriously but not literally". The government threatened to revoke a broadcast license , a right to use a limited resource for the public good. Broadcast licenses come with rules to ensure the limited resource is used for public benefit: for example, you're not allowed to broadcast profanity over the air despite profanity in general being protected speech. Nobody is denying anyone's ability to…

Because HN says I should take you seriously, I will take you seriously. I think you are uninformed. Of course, we're all aware of the limitations of over-the-air broadcasts and why there are limitations there. > Nobody is denying anyone's ability to communicate over privately owned channels. There's several dimensions to this that I think you are lumping in to the simplest possible explanation, because you're uninfor…

> Trump himself said "When 97 percent of the stories are bad about a person, it’s no longer free speech

Pulling this quote out of context fits in a general pattern of demonization of Trump that goes all the way back to the "fine people" Charlottesville hoax.

What Trump meant about free speech is that once 97% of a broadcast consists of partisan attacks, the broadcaster can no longer hide beyond the fig leaf of individual commentators exercising their individual rights to free speech. A broadcast that consists of 97% demonization of a people on one side of an issue that splits the country 50-50 isn't serving the interest of the public.

Absolutely nobody is preventing anyone from being 99.9% hostile on his own infrastructure, but we're under no obligation to let this broadcaster continue using public airwaves just because it labels its propaganda as "free speech". There is no free speech right to the electromagnetic spectrum.

When Trump says "free speech" in that quote, he's using it to refer to this fig leaf of propaganda as "free speech". That's just how the man talks. Anyone who's listened to him knows what he meant.

It's precisely this form of misrepresentation that's made Americans mistrust the media and establishment more than at any time in history.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#266

Post by padjo »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #189
motoboi wrote: post #126

> "How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certain…

> And well, criticizing democracy is fashionable again. Yup. I've see it a few times a week on HN at this point

By all means criticise the implementation but definitely don’t criticise the idea! America’s democracy would be greatly improved by being made more representative through electoral reform.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#267

Post by Nasrudith »

AfterHIA wrote: post #259

There really needs to be a Second American Revolution. It should be bloodless and as simple as 90% of the country showing up to take back the wealth that was stolen from the middle classes during the neoliberal assault. The popular momentum exists for this project in both the MAGA camp and lefties that support Sanders. It seems like the only alternative is liberal authoritarianism which we're seeing from Vance and Pe…

Ah yes, the syllogism of thieves strikes again. - You have it. I want it. Therefore you must have stolen it from me and I am justified in taking it "back".

Have you read history at all? "Revolutions" by entitled thieves who feel that every transaction they agreed to is somehow retroactively unfair because somebody else has more money is the surest way to kill an economy. Nobody wants to do trade with cannibals.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#268

Post by herval »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #207
herval wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has always been a very moralistic country. From banning alcohol and burning witches to its long struggle to accept differences (in skin color, gender or even the definition of freedom). “Cancel culture” is part of America since its foundation. It’s a moral tug of war. It’s a different thing altogether to have the government itself weaponize “cancel culture”, however. As much as right wing people like to scream…

> little evidence of the same level of systemic abuse You not looking for it doesn't mean "little evidence." It's well documented that the previous administration pressured social media to silence views it didn't like, as well as instances of debanking conservative organizations. That's not to say this administration doesn't throw its weight around, too, but to think it's only one side make you complicit in the probl…

Some individuals from the previous administration asking a donor to do something is not exactly the same thing as the president FORCING someone to do it and demanding bribes or else they’ll impose fines on the business (which he then proceeds to do anyway, eg with Nvidia)

You’re quite literally a character from the book in this post, if you think they’re equivalent (your argument is verbatim what one of the nazis interviewed uses to justify having supported hitler)

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#269

Post by [deleted] »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #164
herval wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has always been a very moralistic country. From banning alcohol and burning witches to its long struggle to accept differences (in skin color, gender or even the definition of freedom). “Cancel culture” is part of America since its foundation. It’s a moral tug of war. It’s a different thing altogether to have the government itself weaponize “cancel culture”, however. As much as right wing people like to scream…

> there’s little evidence of the same level of systemic abuse and disregard for institutions in the name of revenge If you think that, you've not been paying attention. Both sides doing it is disgusting and I think the right does it more than the left (at this point in time), but the left DOES do it.

[deleted]

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#270

Post by ck2 »

and remember there was a NAZI RALLY AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN

1939, twenty-thousand attended

while all that was going on, it was normalized

in the end took 15 million military killed

38 million civilians killed

to stop it finally

when in 1930 it simply started by making all other political parties illegal

making all jews illegal immigrants so they could not have jobs, healthcare or even shop eventually

group after group made illegal so they could be disappeared

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/artifact/chart-of-...

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