5 ms·

Whenever leftists say that "Trump is a symptom of an illness that has been metastasizing for a long time" this is what we mean.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
komali2 1y ago
My big ask is, was it always this stupid? Like, all these huge historical events and figures, did it all go down as stupidly and clownishly as the modern USA? Was there an early 20th century fascist Europe equivalent to a man named Big Balls being beat up by children and a fascist police action being triggered as a result? Was there a Napeolonic era equivalent to a media figure known for making light of school shootings, getting killed in a school shooting, a second after again making light of school shootings? Was George III as publicly and flagrantly fellated by the court as Trump is by the media still allowed into the White House? I feel like I can't possibly live in the stupidest era in world history so it makes me try to see other historical eras in a similar light - how can I reinterpret the past such that it also experienced a bunch of clownish nonsense?
- sdenton4 1y ago
  Every generation gets the stupidest politics the world has ever seen... So far.
- anthem2025 1y ago
  [dead]
- ivape 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - tempodox 1y ago
    > there’s no evil army here locking people up. Not what you meant, but that evil army is called ICE.
    - no_wizard 1y ago
      Which assuming the recent funding bill that funds its expansion it will be the 4th largest military in the world, effectively. ICE is gateway to something far more sinister in my opinion, and that will be persistent fascism enforced by a quasi military entity
  - 4ggr0 1y ago
    Problem could be economical. The rich want to get richer and more powerful, the poor and rest of the 99% have issues. Solving a lot of these issues would mean less wealth and power for the rich. So they need to create scapegoats. And racist stereotypes are probably the easiest way to do that. Close second are the people who think differently than [your_group]. helps that the same rich people have lots of influence over what the rest sees, hears and thinks.
  - gnutrino 1y ago
    They say money is the root of all evil, and I think that is the core issue. It's unchecked greed and blind nationalism. Political and racial polarization is profitable. Selling guns and ammo is profitable. Being a corrupt politician who helps their rich friends make more money is profitable.
- shadowgovt 1y ago
  Details vary but from time-to-time, yes, things do go this wildly off the rails. You could argue that the entirety of Europe declaring war on itself over the death of one royal (and not even a reigning monarch; an heir-apparent) is such an example; tens of millions dead over something as transient as birthright rulership. Others that come to mind are much of the reign of Henry VIII (everyone knew he was dangerously paranoid, nobody with the potential to do so mounted an overthrow of his power, and his son was shaping up to be worse and England was narrowly spared his reign by the luck of his own bad health). Then there's the French overthrow of a monarchy to replace it with a bloody civil war that liquidated, among others, most of the people who overthrew the monarchy (and replaced it with an empire). Power consolidation begets perverse effects.
  - gambiting 1y ago
    >>You could argue that the entirety of Europe declaring war on itself over the death of one royal (and not even a reigning monarch; an heir-apparent) is such an example I mean that was just an excuse, in hindsight it's completely obvious that Europe was gearing up for war for years prior to the event. Just like now it seems completely possible that we might end up in a war or even civil war in some countries over a (seemingly) minor event - it's just going to be a spark that sets off the powder keg.
  - lazyasciiart 1y ago
    You could also just go with the details of that assassination, which are Baby’s Day Out levels of comic blundering.
- cratermoon 1y ago
  > was it always this stupid? Excellent question. There are two easily readable sources I know of covering historical events of the sort you're asking about. The first is Barbara W. Tuchman's The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam, where the entire premise is that stupid people did stupid things and then doubled down on stupidity as they went along. The second is Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, in which Hannah Arendt details just how dull and unimaginative Eichmann was. She writes, "it was difficult indeed not to suspect that he was a clown", and suggests that Eichmann was not especially different from anyone he worked for, right up to the top. History doesn't seem clownish because of the way it is recorded and taught. Even Arendt's writing is cool and formal compared to the histrionics we see on social media and many news outlets. > Was there a Napeolonic era equivalent to a media figure known for making light of school shootings, getting killed in a school shooting, a second after again making light of school shootings? The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and subsequent events leading to the start of the First World War, were filled with errors and stupidity, so much that history mostly lumps them all under the term "July Crisis", and rarely goes into detail. If you're familiar with the Abilene paradox, you have a framework for how the Great War started as the result of collective actions by soldiers, diplomats, and national leaders.
  - cantor_S_drug 1y ago
    > stupid people did stupid things and then doubled down on stupidity as they went along. You might like this review of the movie Civil War. Very well thought out review. Alex Garland's CIVIL WAR has a clear and simple meaning https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWBzZJxhQtY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWBzZJxhQtY
    - cratermoon 1y ago
      That contrasts well with how most of the media present events as somehow well thought out and considered. Many stories somehow manage to make even the most unhinged, word salad rants into thoughtful position statements, followed up with a bland bit of "other side" objection.
    - rhcom2 1y ago
- tormeh 1y ago
  Apparently (can't be bothered to fact check this) the nazis liked having parades in the dark because it was easier to propagate the idea of the nazi ubermensch when you couldn't see that the dedicated members of the nazi party were generally on the uglier side of average. As you'd expect of dissatisfied radicals, really. Probably same reason there's a stereotype of right-wing people on social media having a profile picture of themselves in a car with sunglasses on. Anyway, as stupid as this is, Americans are generally literate, with access to unadulterated messages from the other side of the world. Imagine how stupid things were when 95% were illiterate and all information passed through a giant game of telephone before it arrived to you.
  - heavyset_go 1y ago
    > Anyway, as stupid as this is, Americans are generally literate, with access to unadulterated messages from the other side of the world. Imagine how stupid things were when 95% were illiterate and all information passed through a giant game of telephone before it arrived to you. I agree, but the other side of this is that we're open to manipulation coming from anyone around the world, and sometimes that game of telephone can act as an effective bullshit filter.
- banku_brougham 1y ago
  >I feel like I can't possibly live in the stupidest era in world history. Your statistical intuition is sound, and while there are many historical sources describing very stupid events (VSE) dating as far back as recorded history, it is difficult to appreciate the outer bounds of the stupidity range because what has been written is a small fraction of the history that people have lived for at least 100,000 years. So while I feel we are living in the stupidest era in history (the SEIH), I must conclude that we don't.
  - rkomorn 1y ago
    I think the speed at which the impact of stupidity can spread in current times is unrivaled throughout history, though.
    - viridian 1y ago
      I think what's more important, is that you have a device that will broadcast you a personalized feed of whatever the most engaging stupidity in the world is, at that very moment, 24/7. The magnitude of this passive exposure is far greater than even the rate of spread.
  - tormeh 1y ago
    I generally agree, but if we assume that the amount of history scales proportional to the number of humans, then it's not so clear cut, as there's never been more humans alive than now. In other words, there's just more history to be dumb in, nowadays, than before.
- krapp 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - tormeh 1y ago
    There's a lot of stupid people out there waiting for someone who knows how to speak to them. Sounding like a country bumpkin and being unimpressive to the elites is probably good qualities if you want to be that sort of person.
    - integralid 1y ago
      >a lot of stupid people I mean not being condescending to them would go a long way.
      - Freedom2 1y ago
        How else do you describe people who didn't know what a tariff was, didn't care to check how it works, blindly believes that other countries will pay for it (especially after Mexico didn't really pay for the wall the first time around?), and will likely still believe whatever misinformation they're fed next time?
      - tormeh 1y ago
        They're generally not on HN. And since they're not here, we might as well speak about the problem using plain language.
        krapp 1y ago
        There are plenty of Trump voters on HN, though.
        tormeh 1y ago
        Do you mean republicans? That’s different. I have some sympathy for the whole small government thing. I even kinda vote that way myself. But there’s a certain kind of person who will instantly vote for a “man of the people” who “tells it like it is” and promises that he’ll fix everything and says the foreigners took your jobs. And we have a term for those people.
- photonthug 1y ago
  To know the answers to all of these questions, you should really check out the Bbehind the Bastards podcast because that is the whole premise. Covering the lead-up to horrible situations and the inevitable slide in fascism. It's insanely detailed about covering many, many stupid fascist bastards and a few smart ones.
- photonthug 1y ago
  To know the answers to all of these questions, you should really check out the Behind the Bastards podcast because that is the whole premise. Covering the lead-up to horrible situations and the inevitable slide in fascism. It's insanely detailed about covering many, many stupid fascist bastards and a few smart ones.
  - jordanb 1y ago
    That's a good podcast that gets across that most of the Nazis really were just dense thugs. One thing that it doesn't really cover is the rest of German society and how those thugs managed to get power. Weimer Germany was run by the social democrats. These people were basically 'center left.' They ended up in control after the 1919 revolution that got rid of the Kaiser, and ruled via coalition government with other centrist and center-right parties as junior members. In general people's complaints were 1) land reform because especially in Prussia most of the land was still owned by massive landowners (Junkers) and most peasants were tenant farmers and 2) better working conditions in industry for the working poor 3) some way to get out of the economic crisis that was bad even before the depression in Germany. The social democrats failed to deliver any of this. And mostly they spend their entire time in power battling with the Communists. This included hiring freekorps, which were paramility groups that roamed the German countryside after the war and eventually turned into brownshirts, to work with the police to attack communists. There was already a ton of state sponsored terror in the 1920s directed almost entirely at the left. Support for the social democrats and other center parties collapsed and in the 1932 election, the nazis and communists were the big winners almost entirely at the expense of the social democrats. The center parties decided that working with the communists was absolutely beyond the pale and thought that the nazis would be more easy to manipulate, so they decided to work with Hitler and made him chancellor. Once the nazis had their foot in the door, as it were, and given that they had contempt for democracy and the rule of law, they used every dirty trick they could after that to consolidate power.
    - photonthug 1y ago
      > One thing that it doesn't really cover is the rest of German society and how those thugs managed to get power. Just to clarify for other folks, there are many episodes re: Nazis, but it also covers everything from Khmer Rouge to more modern coverage that's truly the more banal kind of evil, covering the worst and most destructive grifters. So while it's definitely kinda preoccupied with fascism, there's another through-line with dis/misinformation, etc etc. I do agree with your basic criticism though, fair to say the general show format for dictators is 1st part bio which is frequently unremarkable, then the 2nd part is appalling crimes. How society was complicit/tolerant enough to allow the decline to happen is usually sidelined. On the other hand though, it's kind of always the same and pretty simple. To the extent it's not simply hidden or covered up, it works like this. After things are definitely very shitty, whatever misguided optimism folks can muster is usually all about "harming the out-group will help somehow!". (It doesn't.) But the astute dictator (or their advisors) can rely on and exploit that kind of tribalism. Common sense, static value-systems, or any sensitivity to blatantly hypocritical statements/behaviour etc just are not things that the common person can really hang on to once they are angry/impoverished/aggrieved/hungry
- njarboe 1y ago
  Well, I at least know that teenagers were considered adults, not children, in the past and were expected to be responsible. Maybe that change is a big part of the problem.
- nonameiguess 1y ago
  This rings poignant now that I finally got around to reading The Three-Body Problem. It starts off depicting struggle sessions during the cultural revolution in China in the 60s, in which they're beating a physicist to death for teaching relativity because Einstein gave imperialists the bomb. It's so stupid, that if it was fiction, I wouldn't find it realistic that people would be this stupid. To be clear, the book is fiction, but struggle sessions and beating physicists to death is not.
  - tehjoker 1y ago
    Do you have a citation for an actual physicist being beaten to death because of their views on physics or was the book exaggerating for the sake of the plot and promoted widely in the west because it promoted anticommunism? For what it’s worth I like the show just not that part.
    - komali2 1y ago
      What didn't you like about that part, just the depiction of violence while everyone watched and did nothing? I'll preface with, I am a communist so I have no anti communist tendencies. But, that is what struggle sessions were like, and their most frequent locations were in classrooms, and their most frequent targets were teachers and professors. And they'd often drag in random peasants to watch. I remember one quote that was like, feeling bad for these peasants who have no idea wtf is going on or why they're watching some professor get beat half to death. The CPC's reasons for the struggle sessions were cynically open-eyed: they wanted people to participate so that people were involved and culpable with the state violence against "counter revolutionaries." This is why the PRC's communist revolution was flawed from the start and doomed to slide into deep authoritarianism, which holds out as a historical fact now. Btw for what it's worth the book really isn't all that anti communist, or anti CPC at least. Criticism of the cultural revolution is allowed in the PRC now, or the author never would have been allowed to publish.
      - tehjoker 1y ago
        I knew that there were kids running around acting like gang members, but I was skeptical of the part where the professor was attacked solely for his scientific beliefs and not some kind of social or political belief or action.
- verisimi 1y ago
  > how can I reinterpret the past such that it also experienced a bunch of clownish nonsense? The thing is, you don't know what happened in the past - you weren't there. What you have is a lot of stories and films that bring that to life for you. Personally, I'm pretty sure nothing in the implementation has changed, but that the goals being sought have changed, as has the technology and therefore the implementation.
AnthonyMouse 1y ago
> Whenever leftists say that "Trump is a symptom of an illness that has been metastasizing for a long time" this is what we mean. It's also the thing I don't understand about party loyalty. When candidate George W. Bush was running for President, he was saying all kinds of things about how big government is bad and regulation destroys small businesses etc. Clearly not consistent with what he did once he was in office. When candidate Obama was running for President, he was saying how those things Bush actually did were bad and unconstitutional, and then once he's in office he signs a Patriot Act extension, fails to pardon Snowden, etc. When candidate Trump, well, you know. Most of this is structural, not partisan. And a lot of it is Congress even though people mostly talk about the President. The partisanship itself is structural -- get your state to use STAR voting instead of first past the post and you get more than two choices, and then liars can be evicted even if their state/district goes >60% to the left or right.
- godelski 1y ago
  > get your state to use STAR voting instead of first past the post and you get more than two choices, and then liars can be evicted even if their state/district goes >60% to the left or right. This. Or any cardinal voting, such ask approval, ends up being a huge win. The system is flawed from its roots. People need a voting system that allows them to specify their conscious, not vote on strategy only. The latter only leads to a race to the bottom. Unfortunately ranked voting systems do not allow for this, and we've seen those predictions come true in places like New York. > It's also the thing I don't understand about party loyalty. What I don't understand is how a lot of people will state both parties are corrupt and then also be party loyal. My parents are some of these types of people, but it is also pretty common. Together we'll happily criticize any member of the left, we'll happily criticize the abstract notion of politicians, but as soon as a name like Donald Trump leaves my mouth there's accusations of communism. I've literally had conversations where we both agree Biden is too old, we both agree that the country shouldn't be run by geriatrics or anyone over 60, but as soon as the next part is mentioned about how this means I don't want Trump then they start talking about how he's a special case and will contradict everything that they said before. They literally cannot understand how I voted Biden but also happily criticize him and state that I think he was unfit to be president. We've turned politics into religion. It's not just the right (though I'd argue it's more common), but so many people love to paint everything as black and white. Anyone who thinks the world isn't full of shades of gray is a fucking zealot and we've let that go on for too long.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

komali2 1y ago

My big ask is, was it always this stupid? Like, all these huge historical events and figures, did it all go down as stupidly and clownishly as the modern USA? Was there an early 20th century fascist Europe equivalent to a man named Big Balls being beat up by children and a fascist police action being triggered as a result? Was there a Napeolonic era equivalent to a media figure known for making light of school shootings, getting killed in a school shooting, a second after again making light of school shootings? Was George III as publicly and flagrantly fellated by the court as Trump is by the media still allowed into the White House? I feel like I can't possibly live in the stupidest era in world history so it makes me try to see other historical eras in a similar light - how can I reinterpret the past such that it also experienced a bunch of clownish nonsense?

sdenton4 1y ago
Every generation gets the stupidest politics the world has ever seen... So far.
anthem2025 1y ago
[dead]
ivape 1y ago
[flagged]
- tempodox 1y ago
  > there’s no evil army here locking people up. Not what you meant, but that evil army is called ICE.
  - no_wizard 1y ago
    Which assuming the recent funding bill that funds its expansion it will be the 4th largest military in the world, effectively. ICE is gateway to something far more sinister in my opinion, and that will be persistent fascism enforced by a quasi military entity
- 4ggr0 1y ago
  Problem could be economical. The rich want to get richer and more powerful, the poor and rest of the 99% have issues. Solving a lot of these issues would mean less wealth and power for the rich. So they need to create scapegoats. And racist stereotypes are probably the easiest way to do that. Close second are the people who think differently than [your_group]. helps that the same rich people have lots of influence over what the rest sees, hears and thinks.
- gnutrino 1y ago
  They say money is the root of all evil, and I think that is the core issue. It's unchecked greed and blind nationalism. Political and racial polarization is profitable. Selling guns and ammo is profitable. Being a corrupt politician who helps their rich friends make more money is profitable.
shadowgovt 1y ago
Details vary but from time-to-time, yes, things do go this wildly off the rails. You could argue that the entirety of Europe declaring war on itself over the death of one royal (and not even a reigning monarch; an heir-apparent) is such an example; tens of millions dead over something as transient as birthright rulership. Others that come to mind are much of the reign of Henry VIII (everyone knew he was dangerously paranoid, nobody with the potential to do so mounted an overthrow of his power, and his son was shaping up to be worse and England was narrowly spared his reign by the luck of his own bad health). Then there's the French overthrow of a monarchy to replace it with a bloody civil war that liquidated, among others, most of the people who overthrew the monarchy (and replaced it with an empire). Power consolidation begets perverse effects.
- gambiting 1y ago
  >>You could argue that the entirety of Europe declaring war on itself over the death of one royal (and not even a reigning monarch; an heir-apparent) is such an example I mean that was just an excuse, in hindsight it's completely obvious that Europe was gearing up for war for years prior to the event. Just like now it seems completely possible that we might end up in a war or even civil war in some countries over a (seemingly) minor event - it's just going to be a spark that sets off the powder keg.
- lazyasciiart 1y ago
  You could also just go with the details of that assassination, which are Baby’s Day Out levels of comic blundering.
cratermoon 1y ago
> was it always this stupid? Excellent question. There are two easily readable sources I know of covering historical events of the sort you're asking about. The first is Barbara W. Tuchman's The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam, where the entire premise is that stupid people did stupid things and then doubled down on stupidity as they went along. The second is Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, in which Hannah Arendt details just how dull and unimaginative Eichmann was. She writes, "it was difficult indeed not to suspect that he was a clown", and suggests that Eichmann was not especially different from anyone he worked for, right up to the top. History doesn't seem clownish because of the way it is recorded and taught. Even Arendt's writing is cool and formal compared to the histrionics we see on social media and many news outlets. > Was there a Napeolonic era equivalent to a media figure known for making light of school shootings, getting killed in a school shooting, a second after again making light of school shootings? The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and subsequent events leading to the start of the First World War, were filled with errors and stupidity, so much that history mostly lumps them all under the term "July Crisis", and rarely goes into detail. If you're familiar with the Abilene paradox, you have a framework for how the Great War started as the result of collective actions by soldiers, diplomats, and national leaders.
- cantor_S_drug 1y ago
  > stupid people did stupid things and then doubled down on stupidity as they went along. You might like this review of the movie Civil War. Very well thought out review. Alex Garland's CIVIL WAR has a clear and simple meaning https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWBzZJxhQtY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWBzZJxhQtY
  - cratermoon 1y ago
    That contrasts well with how most of the media present events as somehow well thought out and considered. Many stories somehow manage to make even the most unhinged, word salad rants into thoughtful position statements, followed up with a bland bit of "other side" objection.
  - rhcom2 1y ago
tormeh 1y ago
Apparently (can't be bothered to fact check this) the nazis liked having parades in the dark because it was easier to propagate the idea of the nazi ubermensch when you couldn't see that the dedicated members of the nazi party were generally on the uglier side of average. As you'd expect of dissatisfied radicals, really. Probably same reason there's a stereotype of right-wing people on social media having a profile picture of themselves in a car with sunglasses on. Anyway, as stupid as this is, Americans are generally literate, with access to unadulterated messages from the other side of the world. Imagine how stupid things were when 95% were illiterate and all information passed through a giant game of telephone before it arrived to you.
- heavyset_go 1y ago
  > Anyway, as stupid as this is, Americans are generally literate, with access to unadulterated messages from the other side of the world. Imagine how stupid things were when 95% were illiterate and all information passed through a giant game of telephone before it arrived to you. I agree, but the other side of this is that we're open to manipulation coming from anyone around the world, and sometimes that game of telephone can act as an effective bullshit filter.
banku_brougham 1y ago
>I feel like I can't possibly live in the stupidest era in world history. Your statistical intuition is sound, and while there are many historical sources describing very stupid events (VSE) dating as far back as recorded history, it is difficult to appreciate the outer bounds of the stupidity range because what has been written is a small fraction of the history that people have lived for at least 100,000 years. So while I feel we are living in the stupidest era in history (the SEIH), I must conclude that we don't.
- rkomorn 1y ago
  I think the speed at which the impact of stupidity can spread in current times is unrivaled throughout history, though.
  - viridian 1y ago
    I think what's more important, is that you have a device that will broadcast you a personalized feed of whatever the most engaging stupidity in the world is, at that very moment, 24/7. The magnitude of this passive exposure is far greater than even the rate of spread.
- tormeh 1y ago
  I generally agree, but if we assume that the amount of history scales proportional to the number of humans, then it's not so clear cut, as there's never been more humans alive than now. In other words, there's just more history to be dumb in, nowadays, than before.
krapp 1y ago
[flagged]
- tormeh 1y ago
  There's a lot of stupid people out there waiting for someone who knows how to speak to them. Sounding like a country bumpkin and being unimpressive to the elites is probably good qualities if you want to be that sort of person.
  - integralid 1y ago
    >a lot of stupid people I mean not being condescending to them would go a long way.
    - Freedom2 1y ago
      How else do you describe people who didn't know what a tariff was, didn't care to check how it works, blindly believes that other countries will pay for it (especially after Mexico didn't really pay for the wall the first time around?), and will likely still believe whatever misinformation they're fed next time?
    - tormeh 1y ago
      They're generally not on HN. And since they're not here, we might as well speak about the problem using plain language.
      - krapp 1y ago
        There are plenty of Trump voters on HN, though.
        tormeh 1y ago
        Do you mean republicans? That’s different. I have some sympathy for the whole small government thing. I even kinda vote that way myself. But there’s a certain kind of person who will instantly vote for a “man of the people” who “tells it like it is” and promises that he’ll fix everything and says the foreigners took your jobs. And we have a term for those people.
photonthug 1y ago
To know the answers to all of these questions, you should really check out the Bbehind the Bastards podcast because that is the whole premise. Covering the lead-up to horrible situations and the inevitable slide in fascism. It's insanely detailed about covering many, many stupid fascist bastards and a few smart ones.
photonthug 1y ago
To know the answers to all of these questions, you should really check out the Behind the Bastards podcast because that is the whole premise. Covering the lead-up to horrible situations and the inevitable slide in fascism. It's insanely detailed about covering many, many stupid fascist bastards and a few smart ones.
- jordanb 1y ago
  That's a good podcast that gets across that most of the Nazis really were just dense thugs. One thing that it doesn't really cover is the rest of German society and how those thugs managed to get power. Weimer Germany was run by the social democrats. These people were basically 'center left.' They ended up in control after the 1919 revolution that got rid of the Kaiser, and ruled via coalition government with other centrist and center-right parties as junior members. In general people's complaints were 1) land reform because especially in Prussia most of the land was still owned by massive landowners (Junkers) and most peasants were tenant farmers and 2) better working conditions in industry for the working poor 3) some way to get out of the economic crisis that was bad even before the depression in Germany. The social democrats failed to deliver any of this. And mostly they spend their entire time in power battling with the Communists. This included hiring freekorps, which were paramility groups that roamed the German countryside after the war and eventually turned into brownshirts, to work with the police to attack communists. There was already a ton of state sponsored terror in the 1920s directed almost entirely at the left. Support for the social democrats and other center parties collapsed and in the 1932 election, the nazis and communists were the big winners almost entirely at the expense of the social democrats. The center parties decided that working with the communists was absolutely beyond the pale and thought that the nazis would be more easy to manipulate, so they decided to work with Hitler and made him chancellor. Once the nazis had their foot in the door, as it were, and given that they had contempt for democracy and the rule of law, they used every dirty trick they could after that to consolidate power.
  - photonthug 1y ago
    > One thing that it doesn't really cover is the rest of German society and how those thugs managed to get power. Just to clarify for other folks, there are many episodes re: Nazis, but it also covers everything from Khmer Rouge to more modern coverage that's truly the more banal kind of evil, covering the worst and most destructive grifters. So while it's definitely kinda preoccupied with fascism, there's another through-line with dis/misinformation, etc etc. I do agree with your basic criticism though, fair to say the general show format for dictators is 1st part bio which is frequently unremarkable, then the 2nd part is appalling crimes. How society was complicit/tolerant enough to allow the decline to happen is usually sidelined. On the other hand though, it's kind of always the same and pretty simple. To the extent it's not simply hidden or covered up, it works like this. After things are definitely very shitty, whatever misguided optimism folks can muster is usually all about "harming the out-group will help somehow!". (It doesn't.) But the astute dictator (or their advisors) can rely on and exploit that kind of tribalism. Common sense, static value-systems, or any sensitivity to blatantly hypocritical statements/behaviour etc just are not things that the common person can really hang on to once they are angry/impoverished/aggrieved/hungry
njarboe 1y ago
Well, I at least know that teenagers were considered adults, not children, in the past and were expected to be responsible. Maybe that change is a big part of the problem.
nonameiguess 1y ago
This rings poignant now that I finally got around to reading The Three-Body Problem. It starts off depicting struggle sessions during the cultural revolution in China in the 60s, in which they're beating a physicist to death for teaching relativity because Einstein gave imperialists the bomb. It's so stupid, that if it was fiction, I wouldn't find it realistic that people would be this stupid. To be clear, the book is fiction, but struggle sessions and beating physicists to death is not.
- tehjoker 1y ago
  Do you have a citation for an actual physicist being beaten to death because of their views on physics or was the book exaggerating for the sake of the plot and promoted widely in the west because it promoted anticommunism? For what it’s worth I like the show just not that part.
  - komali2 1y ago
    What didn't you like about that part, just the depiction of violence while everyone watched and did nothing? I'll preface with, I am a communist so I have no anti communist tendencies. But, that is what struggle sessions were like, and their most frequent locations were in classrooms, and their most frequent targets were teachers and professors. And they'd often drag in random peasants to watch. I remember one quote that was like, feeling bad for these peasants who have no idea wtf is going on or why they're watching some professor get beat half to death. The CPC's reasons for the struggle sessions were cynically open-eyed: they wanted people to participate so that people were involved and culpable with the state violence against "counter revolutionaries." This is why the PRC's communist revolution was flawed from the start and doomed to slide into deep authoritarianism, which holds out as a historical fact now. Btw for what it's worth the book really isn't all that anti communist, or anti CPC at least. Criticism of the cultural revolution is allowed in the PRC now, or the author never would have been allowed to publish.
    - tehjoker 1y ago
      I knew that there were kids running around acting like gang members, but I was skeptical of the part where the professor was attacked solely for his scientific beliefs and not some kind of social or political belief or action.
verisimi 1y ago
> how can I reinterpret the past such that it also experienced a bunch of clownish nonsense? The thing is, you don't know what happened in the past - you weren't there. What you have is a lot of stories and films that bring that to life for you. Personally, I'm pretty sure nothing in the implementation has changed, but that the goals being sought have changed, as has the technology and therefore the implementation.

AnthonyMouse 1y ago

> Whenever leftists say that "Trump is a symptom of an illness that has been metastasizing for a long time" this is what we mean. It's also the thing I don't understand about party loyalty. When candidate George W. Bush was running for President, he was saying all kinds of things about how big government is bad and regulation destroys small businesses etc. Clearly not consistent with what he did once he was in office. When candidate Obama was running for President, he was saying how those things Bush actually did were bad and unconstitutional, and then once he's in office he signs a Patriot Act extension, fails to pardon Snowden, etc. When candidate Trump, well, you know. Most of this is structural, not partisan. And a lot of it is Congress even though people mostly talk about the President. The partisanship itself is structural -- get your state to use STAR voting instead of first past the post and you get more than two choices, and then liars can be evicted even if their state/district goes >60% to the left or right.

godelski 1y ago
> get your state to use STAR voting instead of first past the post and you get more than two choices, and then liars can be evicted even if their state/district goes >60% to the left or right. This. Or any cardinal voting, such ask approval, ends up being a huge win. The system is flawed from its roots. People need a voting system that allows them to specify their conscious, not vote on strategy only. The latter only leads to a race to the bottom. Unfortunately ranked voting systems do not allow for this, and we've seen those predictions come true in places like New York. > It's also the thing I don't understand about party loyalty. What I don't understand is how a lot of people will state both parties are corrupt and then also be party loyal. My parents are some of these types of people, but it is also pretty common. Together we'll happily criticize any member of the left, we'll happily criticize the abstract notion of politicians, but as soon as a name like Donald Trump leaves my mouth there's accusations of communism. I've literally had conversations where we both agree Biden is too old, we both agree that the country shouldn't be run by geriatrics or anyone over 60, but as soon as the next part is mentioned about how this means I don't want Trump then they start talking about how he's a special case and will contradict everything that they said before. They literally cannot understand how I voted Biden but also happily criticize him and state that I think he was unfit to be president. We've turned politics into religion. It's not just the right (though I'd argue it's more common), but so many people love to paint everything as black and white. Anyone who thinks the world isn't full of shades of gray is a fucking zealot and we've let that go on for too long.