> It is a lesson of human experience whether the issue is playground bullying, Enron or Europe in the 1930s that the worst outcomes occur when good people find

> It is a lesson of human experience whether the issue is playground bullying, Enron or Europe in the 1930s that the worst outcomes occur when good people find reasons to accommodate themselves to what they know is wrong. Hannah Arendt mentioned something like this in an interview, how many of the intellectual friends (or maybe rather acquaintances; intellectuals, anyway) she had had in Germany were very apt at coming up with all sorts of "high minded" things about Hitler. You know, cutesy salon talk, theories, predictions. She found this grotesque, obviously. I am often reminded of this when reading HN. And frankly, I find this circus about Trump mostly circus. I mean, what is the difference between him and other presidents or people who ran? That he is openly gross? That he doesn't sugar coat me-first fascism? That he makes the underbelly visible? You know what's worse than talking shit about women or foreigners? Killing them in the thousands and millions. But oh boy, just nobody say "pussy", nobody be a racist, and of course, nobody call anyone a Nazi or something. America, the country where it's leadership this and excellence that, with glorification of the military as bookends. Where people excuse pushing for putting the whole of humanity into a little glass bottle and smashing it on a rock with the fact that this or that isn't unleashed on Americans, or not on Americans yet, or to lesser degree, yet. This becomes even more obvious when some people do what they consider making a moral point. Like that Streep Oscar acceptance speech. All that compassionate work Hollywood is doing, awww. Are those baby shoes, or is that really the best you've got? Even the post by Summers essentially boils down to: > It is to enabling if not encouraging immoral and reckless policies in other spheres that ultimately bear on our prosperity. If that is your main concern, I'm not impressed. If your problem is that you might get put in a train cart, and not that others have already been put in one and tortured to death at their destination, while their murderers still show off the gold they extracted from their teeth at gala dinners, you are not measurably better, not compared to others. You're the front organization, compared to which the more radical inner circle can consider itself more hardcore, you're the fake representation of an outer world, to steal another thought from Arendt which I do think applies. And it's a bit like using terrorism or pedophiles to push totalitarianism -- how could anyone criticize that? How could anyone criticize people criticizing Trump for being racist or whatever? Well, they're the good cop to the bad cop, made more effective by having no clue that's what they are. They mean well, which makes it more important to insist on the point. Good luck I guess.