3 ms·

Don't be obtuse. The Nazis gassed people because they thought that eliminating the demographics they were gassing would lead to a better society. Sure the peo

Don't be obtuse. The Nazis gassed people because they thought that eliminating the demographics they were gassing would lead to a better society. Sure the people at the top knew it was questionable but the guy loading the train had spent a decade reading newspapers full of junk and thought he was deporting undesirables. The American Indians who's culture was systematically destroyed, all those people the eugenicists sterilized, the black communities that were turned into crap over the 50s and 60s, all of that was done by people trying to their little part make the world a better place.

renewiltord 4y ago
Fine. You're right. That was unfair. I'm just annoyed that there is wholesale bullshit going on in this comment thread about the data and I applied that annoyance to you. Consider the comment withdrawn.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  Thank you for being reasonable.
phs318u 4y ago
In all those cases there was a pre-existing, widespread social bias and open bigotry against the groups being targeted - which of course doesn't make it right, but does explain why such things were tolerated and even thought to be good ideas in those societies. But in most of those cases, I would argue that the intentions of the leadership enacting such policies did not do so out of pure-though-extremely-misguided intentions. They acted in various ways to disenfranchise and disempower (gross understatement in the case of the holocaust!) the groups being targeted, playing to the gallery and entrenching their own power. As I read the sentiment in the US (as an outsider), I find it hard to believe the CDC are playing to the gallery here. I think there is a genuine intention on the part of the CDC (despite the CDC being a key bogeyman in many flavours of fever-dream). The problem is that the culture of secrecy and "for your own good" in the US is so entrenched (because it's soooo much easier than trying to educate folks), that combined with past mistakes, trust has been irrevocably eroded to the extent that everything is doubted by everyone. My own view is that this is symptomatic of a huge malaise in the US and to a lesser (but growing) extent in the rest of the world. Can the idea of "society" function in the face of such mistrust in instututions? I doubt it. We are increasingly voluntarily partitioning ourselves into tribes/bantustans and shrinking the circle of trust. To my mind that model doesn't scale well with population. Bad times ahead.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
You are being obtuse - in neither of the cases did anyone involved believe people being killed were killed for their own good. The 'other' were being killed so that the right people can benefit. How is this comparable to the topic at hand?
IfOnlyYouKnew 4y ago
That's a perfectly pointless and tautological argument, then. Because anything anybody ever did was considered by that person to be useful to themselves at that point of time. It has nothing to do with the cliché about "good intentions", which rests on a theory of using some universally accepted "good" as cover or argument for some action, or even as the true motivation for actions that end up having unwanted side effects. The Nazis did not use anything like that to advertise the Holocaust. In fact they did not advertise the Holocaust at all: while any thinking German had an inkling, official communications only ever spoke of "resettlements". There was very little virtue signaling with the Nazis, in other words. Much like their brethren today, they very much knew they were the baddies and embraced that status with a certain sense of "so what?", hence skulls as insignia: it's an open acknowledgement that you reject common concepts of virtue with full knowledge, and that you enjoy using raw power to do so. "Owning the libs" 1.0, so to speak.

renewiltord 4y ago

Fine. You're right. That was unfair. I'm just annoyed that there is wholesale bullshit going on in this comment thread about the data and I applied that annoyance to you. Consider the comment withdrawn.

throwaway0a5e 4y ago
Thank you for being reasonable.

phs318u 4y ago

In all those cases there was a pre-existing, widespread social bias and open bigotry against the groups being targeted - which of course doesn't make it right, but does explain why such things were tolerated and even thought to be good ideas in those societies. But in most of those cases, I would argue that the intentions of the leadership enacting such policies did not do so out of pure-though-extremely-misguided intentions. They acted in various ways to disenfranchise and disempower (gross understatement in the case of the holocaust!) the groups being targeted, playing to the gallery and entrenching their own power. As I read the sentiment in the US (as an outsider), I find it hard to believe the CDC are playing to the gallery here. I think there is a genuine intention on the part of the CDC (despite the CDC being a key bogeyman in many flavours of fever-dream). The problem is that the culture of secrecy and "for your own good" in the US is so entrenched (because it's soooo much easier than trying to educate folks), that combined with past mistakes, trust has been irrevocably eroded to the extent that everything is doubted by everyone. My own view is that this is symptomatic of a huge malaise in the US and to a lesser (but growing) extent in the rest of the world. Can the idea of "society" function in the face of such mistrust in instututions? I doubt it. We are increasingly voluntarily partitioning ourselves into tribes/bantustans and shrinking the circle of trust. To my mind that model doesn't scale well with population. Bad times ahead.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

You are being obtuse - in neither of the cases did anyone involved believe people being killed were killed for their own good. The 'other' were being killed so that the right people can benefit. How is this comparable to the topic at hand?

IfOnlyYouKnew 4y ago

That's a perfectly pointless and tautological argument, then. Because anything anybody ever did was considered by that person to be useful to themselves at that point of time. It has nothing to do with the cliché about "good intentions", which rests on a theory of using some universally accepted "good" as cover or argument for some action, or even as the true motivation for actions that end up having unwanted side effects. The Nazis did not use anything like that to advertise the Holocaust. In fact they did not advertise the Holocaust at all: while any thinking German had an inkling, official communications only ever spoke of "resettlements". There was very little virtue signaling with the Nazis, in other words. Much like their brethren today, they very much knew they were the baddies and embraced that status with a certain sense of "so what?", hence skulls as insignia: it's an open acknowledgement that you reject common concepts of virtue with full knowledge, and that you enjoy using raw power to do so. "Owning the libs" 1.0, so to speak.