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While the current climate is not comparable, I find the actions and general attitude of the current US government similar to that during the McCarthy era. Whic
by magnio 1y ago
While the current climate is not comparable, I find the actions and general attitude of the current US government similar to that during the McCarthy era.
Which led me to this very interesting article from 1965: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1965/6/17/the-university-in-the-mccarthy-era/ https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1965/6/17/the-university-...
In it, the author described the attacks on specific personnels and public villainification of Harvard. More tellingly though, the author wrote the article for students in the 60s, who, growing up a mere decade after, most likely considered the events "an aberration which could not have lasted", and that, "the whole [McCarthy] period has an air of unreality".
Those who did not know history are bound to repeat it. Unfortunately, no amount of textbooks and historical resources seems to be sufficient to impart lessons to subsequent generations, and we are bound to repeat it after a few cycles.
- DrewADesign 1y agoAssuming lack of knowledge is the reason authoritarian tendencies show up periodically dismisses the fact that a lot of people think it’s a good thing. There were neo nazis right after wwii. They didn’t forget — they wanted it.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y agoYeah that worries me. The Nazi party ended on paper, the flags were taken down, but there is no military defeat that really changes the minds of the losing faction. They just went covert, stopped saying the quiet part, and waited.
- esseph 1y agoWe won the war but never learned as a group how to handle the ideological problems.
- DrewADesign 1y agoThat feels oversimplified. A lot of people would think people that oppose Nazis are the ones with the ideological problems. Who defines what a problem is in our society? The majority or some skewing of it. This is the problem that politics is supposed to solve, and then the problem that the electoral college was supposed to safeguard against. How do we avoid the tyranny of a demented majority? Aligning to a specific moral code? … like a theocracy? I can’t think of any way that doesn’t immediately instill the tyranny of a minority in its place. We in the US have been very arrogant in assuming we’ve found the solution to all this when all it took was a few decades — a flash-in-the-pan, really — of consistent, strategic bad faith by the political rulers to undermine the whole thing.
- justin66 1y ago> A lot of people would think people that oppose Nazis are the ones with the ideological problems. Who defines what a problem is in our society? The majority or some skewing of it. This view presupposes there are not moral facts.
- DrewADesign 1y agoProvable moral facts have nothing to do with this because humans aren’t philosophically consistent, and societies are ruled by humans. Defining them and getting enough people to agree to those definitions to enforce them is the problem democracy is supposed to solve, but in the end, flawed leaders will be ruling a flawed populace. No matter how cut-and-dried those moral facts are through rigorous philosophical analysis, societies always navigate through the lens of perception, which can be swayed.
- mlrtime 1y agoWhere are the list of universal moral facts? Let's just exclude the easy ones for now (Murder/Rape/Steal).