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They Thought They Were Free (1955)

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Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#491

Post by immibis »

analog8374 wrote: post #385
immibis wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't. I see lots of arguments. You're engaging in one right now. COVID arguing was Reddit's most popular subreddit, back before Reddit was an AI slopfest. Is it possible that the majority opinion is the correct one and the majority arguments are the reasons why it's correct? I mean, that's how it works with the blue sky, round earth, and fiber optic internet narratives.

Irrc, dissent from the official narrative about covid on reddit got culled with extreme prejudice. And the protofascistic multitudes were overjoyed to play along.

So do narratives that say we have to gas the jews. Is that extreme prejudice? Is that protofascistic? Actually, I think culling people who want to gas jews is anti-fascistic.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#492

Post by anigbrowl »

DrewADesign wrote: post #478
anigbrowl wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're absolutely comparable, notwithstanding their being different. One could just as well argue that it was a lot easier for the military to do drone strikes or call in CAS on the Taliban with zero risk of political blowback. You remind me of someone who was seriously arguing with me in 2004, telling me the Iraq war would not turn into a quagmire because Iraq was arid desert whereas Vietnam was semi-tropical and f…

You didn’t counter anything I said. You just said I was wrong and presented a couple of strawmen.

Why waste the effort on a gish gallop? Your original comment was full of handwaving assumptions, it doesn't deserve more.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#493

Post by anigbrowl »

qcnguy wrote: post #489
anigbrowl wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppressing them didn't cause them to stop fighting, though. In every guerrilla war the conventional army is nominally in charge, and generally never loses any sort of pitched battle. The whole military theory of guerilla warfare is to avoid shootouts in favor of hitting the enemy and running away.

No it didn't, but the US military isn't going to get bored of the US and leave.

Indeed not, but they could well get bored of who's ordering them around and make those persons leave.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#494

Post by immibis »

MrJohz wrote: post #333
simpaticoder wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, having lived in Germany for a couple of years recently, there is a perceptible national character. The best way to understand it is to ponder the difference between a drag race and a rally race - in one, success means going as fast as possible; in the other success means getting to navigation points within a window of error. Or, with beer: in America success is discovering a new beer with a different fla…

Eh, I think that's a bit overblown. In theory, Germans are famously methodical and precise, in practice the rail network is falling apart, a major bridge in my city recently collapsed due to lack of proper maintenance, and "made in Germany" is mainly an encouragement to buy local, rather than buying for quality. My experience of Germans, having lived among them for almost a decade, and having married one of them, is…

Germany's "rail network is falling apart" means you are delayed a few hours on a cross-country trip, which is unimaginable luxury to people from some regions, which I think proves the point.

As I see it, they're running the system at close to capacity, so it has long queue times [1] and little spare capacity to return to normal after a disruption. It's one of several valid ways to run a system. You can have fewer trains and fewer cascading delays, or more trains and more cascading delays. In some places, the trains are on time but they only run once per day; I think I prefer the German system to that.

This is about the long-distance system. Other systems have their own properties. The BVG has not infrequent disruptions but the next train is usually only 5-10 minutes away so who cares.

[1] https://nickarnosti.com/blog/longwaits/

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#495

Post by DrewADesign »

defrost wrote: post #480
DrewADesign wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn’t counter anything I said. You just said I was wrong and presented a couple of strawmen.

Something you didn't say, something significant, is the US military is made up of US soldiers. A good many of those soldiers will have "Patriot Sympathies" (of many kinds). This will lead to a great deal of information leakage, "lost" equipment going to militias, sabotage, etc. Regardless of oaths to US military, an innate sense of duty to some personal ideal of USA will over weigh for a significant number, and a goo…

Sure, that could be a factor. Didn’t really seem to stop soldiers from steamrolling through American cities during the civil war, doesn’t seem to stop cops from messing people up during protests, and doesn’t stop genocide in other countries. We, as a species, are pathetically easy to manipulate through in-group, out-group thinking, which honestly is much of the basis for patriotism anyway.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#496

Post by DrewADesign »

anigbrowl wrote: post #492
DrewADesign wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn’t counter anything I said. You just said I was wrong and presented a couple of strawmen.

Why waste the effort on a gish gallop? Your original comment was full of handwaving assumptions, it doesn't deserve more.

oof… ok.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#497

Post by tpm »

immibis wrote: post #494
MrJohz wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I think that's a bit overblown. In theory, Germans are famously methodical and precise, in practice the rail network is falling apart, a major bridge in my city recently collapsed due to lack of proper maintenance, and "made in Germany" is mainly an encouragement to buy local, rather than buying for quality. My experience of Germans, having lived among them for almost a decade, and having married one of them, is…

Germany's "rail network is falling apart" means you are delayed a few hours on a cross-country trip, which is unimaginable luxury to people from some regions, which I think proves the point. As I see it, they're running the system at close to capacity, so it has long queue times [1] and little spare capacity to return to normal after a disruption. It's one of several valid ways to run a system. You can have fewer tra…

> This is about the long-distance system. Other systems have their own properties.

The systems are also not completely separated, so delays and failures propagate. And if you are late for work or school almost every day, it's an easy way to get a bit cynical. Or maybe use a car, which incidentally my German colleagues do. And I think it's sad Germany didn't invest in the system in time.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#498

Post by nobody9999 »

Jensson wrote: post #457
LevGoldstein wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Armed civilians with their puny little guns and little organization are right out as soon as any part of the military joins a fight, that's why I only mentioned the latter to begin with. We have several recent real-world examples of that not working out for the military. Assuming like minded people wont self-organize is a bad starting point, and jets and tanks have a tough time doing things like enforcing curfews.…

> We have several recent real-world examples of that not working out for the military. Only when the military is not serious since they are not fighting for their own lands and the civilians are backed by another country. When the military is fighting civilians in its own homeland the civilians stand no chance unless they get massive help from foreign powers. > Besides, I've always hated this argument, because why fi…

>There are always enough likeminded people that you can't end a horrible reign just by killing the leader.

An excellent point. Just look at the line of succession to the Presidency right now[0]:

No. Office Incumbent Party

1 Vice President JD Vance Republican

2 Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson Republican

3 President pro tempore of the Senate Chuck Grassley Republican

4 Secretary of State Marco Rubio Republican

5 Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent Republican

6 Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth Republican

7 Attorney General Pam Bondi Republican

8 Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum Republican

9 Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins Republican

10 Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick Republican

11 Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer Republican

12 Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Independent

13 Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Scott Turner Republican

14 Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy Republican

15 Secretary of Energy Chris Wright Republican

16 Secretary of Education Linda McMahon Republican

17 Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins Republican

18 Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem Republican

Now which one is dedicated to the Constitution/rule of law?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_lin...

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#499

Post by Jensson »

herval wrote: post #474
Jensson wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were making large overreaches and censorship, thinking anything else also makes you a person from this book. This report was written when Biden was still in power, it details how they did pressure companies to censor material and not just friendly suggestions: https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/weaponizati... Authoritarianism getting dialed up and voters having less power is bipartisan, this cannot…

So you think “both sides are the same” and that democrats “ramping up republicans” legitimizes what the government is currently doing, all based on a report by the judiciary that’s controlled by the current administration?

Why would I think that? I just dislike how Americans refuse to criticize their own side when they do bad things and I feel that is the biggest problem you have.

Most people don't switch side over small differences, so as long as Democrats continue to follow Republicans into becoming worse and worse nothing will change.

And why do I complain about Democrats? Because you should try to convince the reasonable one, you can't change Trump, but you can maybe change Democrats. But as long as Democrats continue to play along you are doomed, if not this term it will be the next or the one after that, but at some point it will happen.

And no, no amount of "Trump is the devil, see all he has done" will make people stop voting for him. You have to improve the democrats, not throw more shit at Trump. The 2024 election was lost by the Democrats, it was not won by Trump. Trump didn't get more votes in 2024 than 2020, but he won anyway since democrats got so many fewer votes.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#500

Post by heresie-dabord »

moomin wrote: post #105

I’ve read the book. It’s genuinely interesting. It’s very interesting to see how people misremember the post-war years. It also contains a) passages that are very much quoted out of context and b) an awful lot of stuff about “national character” that is… questionable. I highly recommend actually reading it and understanding what it is and isn’t. Mostly I learned that there’s no simple answers, but also that people an…

> interesting to see how people misremember the post-war years.

The observations about the ineffectiveness of US propaganda in post-war Germany are interesting.

But for all the flaws of Meyer's work, the book is about how people thought they were free during the sordid, infamous Nazi period. Above all, the people who saw themselves as the honest folks supporting the good principles of the dictatorship.

It is also interesting to read how people — the very same who were supporters of the dictatorship and who helped persecute the target groups — are comfortable in all their justifications.

"Sure, we knew these people who were taken away. But what could we do?"

"I didn't do anything terrible. If something terrible happened, it happened later, elsewhere."

"The Great Leader failed only because he had some bad people in his circle."

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