In times past, I was fascinated by Hitler and WW2. It was a lifelong obsession that I had since childhood. But ever since the Trump era started it started to wane due to the fact that WW2 and Hitler just didn’t seem so distant anymore… the world felt like a repeat of what was happening in those days and looking up facts felt, in part, like learning more to understand what is happening now instead of about history.
But if there is something that I need to point out is that Hitler was a SHIT leader. Germans and Germany ever since the Kaiser era were portrayed as hyperefficient and militaristic, and people then claim the Nazis were the same. They weren’t. Nazi bureaucracy was bullshit and most of their economic growth was based on plunder (initially from German Jews and other marginalized groups and later from other countries) and almost purely military build up. Germany actually lagged behind in technological build-up to most countries, despite the stereotypes of the Wunderwaffen of WW2 (Fritz-X bomb, the ME-262, etc), and industrially as any technology that didn’t have a direct military benefit was discarded. They didn’t even have any proper anti-biotics during the war!
Even agriculture was fucked by the Germans. Despite the romanticization of the German peasantry and the countryside by the Nazis, they could not sustain their population at all. Most German food was imported, and they were preparing their population for harsh wartime rationing even before the war started. They fed their population almost entirely on stolen food from Poland, France, the Netherlands, and Ukraine. Also by killing a lot of people in the death camps they saved on food that way as well.
People stereotype communist countries as having no food when they don’t realize that fascist nations just can’t feed their own folk. Nazi Germany wasn’t alone in having serious food problems. Imperial Japan couldn’t feed its own population and would have had widespread hunger if they didn’t start plundering China during the war.
Hitler lead Germans and Germany into death and destruction and misery and mayhem. He did nothing good for Germany. None at all. Even towards the end of the war he would have been OK with the German people being genocided since if they were defeated by the barbarian orc-like Soviets and the mongrel Americans they were not the master race he thought they were and they deserved to die. There is a reason why he is remembered as one of the world’s greatest monsters.
He did nothing good for Germany.
He did kill Hitler tho.
Then he also killed the dude that killed Hitler
igual igual
true
I see where you’re coming from. Perhaps not as obsessed, but I always had a historical interest in the era until it became an alarming parallel to present day news. Most people do not know much about what went down in the pre-war period. They just have knee-jerk reactions to it. “Traditional values” were trending at the time, Nazism was marketed as the modern, cool choice. Education, administration and even scouting and chess clubs were Nazified at the time. I see it with the freaking MAGA hat everywhere nowadays. I just see it and say, fuck this is some Nazi Germany shit. To me now there are two kinds of people, those who see it, and those who don’t. People are so precious thinking that Germans went nuts with the mass murder shit and elected this guy, but themselves have been on the exact same track as Nazi Germany for years: idolizing a dangerous man without ever questioning him. Soon they will have no excuse either, only collective guilt. Some of us won’t be here to see it though, for one reason or another. I have pointed this out in my other comment: once fascists get hold of the state apparatus, there is no horror we can put past them.
Ya know… if I thought someone was literally Hitler, the last thing I’m gonna fucking do is help them literally have control of… everything.
But what if the country needed a change in leadership after recently being fucked up by this hitler guy, eh?
Unless you want to bring about the end of the world. Seriously, that’s how at least some of these people think. They want to throw a monkey wrench in the works, because they think they’ll be the ones to survive the apocalypse.
It’s such an alien thought process that I don’t even know where I would begin with discussing politics with such a person.
This is the voter Kamala was supposed to sway with “better messaging”.
No, this is the voter she pissed off Dem voters for…
It didn’t work out well if you’ve already forgotten.
If someone says trump is Hitler but they voted for him anyways…
Then he was already going to vote for trump, and chasing his vote just led to losing traditional Dem voters with literally no gain.
Moving to the right is political suicide, yet we keep doing it because that’s how you max donations. And that’s all the people running the party care about.
No, this is the voter she pissed off Dem voters for…
Not sure why you said “no”, since you’re making the same point I was. This is who the party asked her to sway, and now the party is blaming her for not working hard enough to win the votes of complete fucking morons.
I could have told you that ignoring these morons and running a campaign focused on the working class, social justice, and economic fairness would have gone 1000% farther than trying to win over fence-sitters during the most divided election in U.S. history. Not sure why the Democrats ignored this, I assume they have at least one competent advisor that said this…
I think I interpreted it the same way the original commenter did, but I see now we’re all on the same page.
Maybe instead of saying she was “supposed to” it would be more clear you meant her campaign was “trying to”.
They said “no” because to them, the most important thing is blaming Kamala for whatever happened in some way. They’re disagreeing with you because you didn’t do that, and trying to correct you on it.
You blamed the voter, which was the right response. I would expand that to include blaming the obviously Russian-influenced campiagn, however it happened, that convinced this person that Ukraine was a hugely important issue in this campaign in this particular bizarre way.
We can give some blame to Kamala for her messaging, sure. But the thing you didn’t do, that made them say “no,” was redirect the whole conversation into a conversation about how it’s all Kamala’s fault and nothing else.
Well if the right are the only ones who constantly vote then yes they well change their views. Doesn’t matter if 2/3 of the country are Democrats if they can’t be bothered to get off their asses and vote.
Yeah, the people running the party didn’t see that they lost the left wing vote, they only care about who voted and not for them.
ok but… the Democrats in swing states (hell, any state) who said “I’m staying home because Kamala courts Republicans, even though I know Trump is Hitler” are absolutely as shitty as the people who voted for Trump
So?
What matters is winning elections.
Stomping our feet and saying they should do what we tell them isn’t fucking working.
So if you want them to vote D so together we can stop Rs…
Maybe we should try running a better candidate than we have been?
Maybe no matter how much the wealthy insist on it, just being slightly better than trump isn’t enough.
Maybe we should just run the best candidate we can, one that already agrees with Dem voters so we don’t have to ask millions of people to hold their nose?
The excuse for running candidates further to the right then Dem voters has always been that it would magically win an election.
It hasn’t, and it won’t.
It’s a bad strategy and we’ve stuck with it for about a decade longer than we should have already.
What logical reason can you give to stick with a plan that even when it works doesn’t get us as much as we need, and fails regularly?
As a bonus, the more Dems move right, the more Republicans do.
So every election Dem voters have their potential winnings reduced and potential loses increased…
And people are really surprised why turnout was low?!
You mean by hanging out with Liz Cheney and talking about a ‘lethal military’?
Well he speaks English, same as you. I guess you could always meet a conservative and then ask them questions sometime. Might be a mind blowing experience to talk to someone who disagrees with you, and actually listen.
I have listened, and there is nothing worth listening to. I have to listen, because there are all around me at work. It is continuous fear and ignorance. Not a single worthwhile thing. I’m done listening, especially since they won’t return the favour. I’m not going to meet hate in the middle.
Can you promise me there will be something other than lies or misinformation coming out of their mouths when I do so this time? Because based on my first hand experience over at least the past 8 years, those are the only two things I’m going to get.
I’ve met plenty of Tories and their ilk, but none of them would vote for someone they publicly think is basically Hitler.
This bloke’s thought processes are so alien to us they I don’t think we’ll ever understand him, sadly.
Everyone keeps looking for answers to why trump won. I keep coming back to media directed stupidity
And social media feeds.
How much you wanna bet this guy scrolls facebook a ton? Or listens to railing radio/podcasts on drives? This opinion didn’t spawn from a vacuum.
They should be following up and asking him where he got those ideas.
Yeah, media, social or mass, has guided the people incapable of sound reasoning exactly where they wanted them.
“I voted for the guy that I think is like Hitler to end conflicts and keep us out of wars.”
Did he not read the part where Hitler genocided Jews, Europeans, and the disabled?
Did he not read the part in history where Hitler caused a war so large that it wiped out entire European families, literally tens of millions of Europeans?
The white working class in this country is going to get everything they voted for. I hope Trump floods their neighborhoods with immigrants, LEGALLY.
Read!?
Ha!
The thing to keep in mind about idiocy is that idiots make mistakes, a lot. At the same time, those mistakes are usually small-stakes affairs (it’s hard to make big mistakes with no money and/or resources) and are usually recoverable. The idea that their mistake could affect so many others simply does not happen, because that’s not how things typically work.
Tell me you are a racist piece of shit without telling me you are a racist piece of shit.
I really believe that most Americans are dumb enough to be racist and just smart enough to know they shouldn’t say it. I can’t help but read all this apologism for Trump as thinly veiled, “I know he’s a weird guy, but thank God someone is finally going to do something about all the people that look different than me”.
Saying “I voted for Trump” is saying “I’m a racist piece of shit”. We can retire the “without saying” joke in this context.
Also, misogynist. “I sont agree with his dictatorial views, but at least he’s got a dick!”
That’s sadly almost every '24 Trump Voter I’ve ever spoken to.
Bingo. This guy is likely happy about the reports that twice as many black women than white women die in child birth and after RvW those numbers doubled. He’s probably happy when he hears about family seperation, people caught in immigration prisons for dozens of years, and on and on.
You mean that, try as you might, you just can’t accept any new information into your worldview?
What information did you add to your worldview that led you to embrace hatred as a political ethos?
Trump offers no information that wasn’t already around in Germany in 1934
Are you going to supply new information? Or just say it’s there with the proper “research”
“the greatest argument against democracy is a conversation with the average voter”
Classical technocracy is where it’s at.
Tap for spoiler
/s
Marx grasped this essence of capitalist democracy splendidly when, in analyzing the experience of the Commune, he said that the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm
That’s already more than any communist regime allowed, so lesser of two evils and all of that…
Also a great argument for education reform
This is some quote from an ancient Greek right? Socrates, Pericles et cetera?
Churchill, so the story goes. But probably not: https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-141/red-herrings-famous-quotes-churchill-never-said/
It’s one of the many often attributed to Winston Churchill, though to my knowledge there’s no actual evidence of him actually saying it and his other writings go against the sentiment. I don’t know who actually did say it first
It was me. Winston and I were tying one on and I said it in passing. He thought it was hilarious.
Churchill and ancient greek philosopher kings, famous champions of the common people
As others put, no, but it does remind me that Aristotle felt society should only be run by the most intelligent among us, hence the term Aristocracy.
Of course, in practice people make up bullshit rules to determine who is most intelligent and that messes up the whole concept (e.g. Jim Crow tests and such). But it’s a nice fantasy if ever we could pull it off.
If only Aristocracy actually meant society was run by the most intelligent among us. Instead, it means “society is run by me and my buddies.”
Even if it was actually the most intelligent they would still have the power to hurt others for their own gain. In fact I imagine it would be far easier for them to justify to themselves by arguing merit.
The problem is that no government can thrive as a force for good in the face of apathy, maliciousness, or a lack of duty.
Pretty much, yes. Even if you put up requirements on a democracy to require basic civic understanding, you ultimately disenfranchise a group.
Exactly and many people have misguided understanding of duty to country and the benefits that come from it. In rural America you often see people who treat military service as absolutely vital to preservation of freedom, and gun ownership as critical to preventing tyranny, but don’t see that jury duty and consistently participating in the political process with an open mind for all people’s right to live as they feel is right for themselves as the absolute lynchpins of American freedom that they are.
Protecting freedom isn’t glorious, it isn’t exciting. It’s hard mental and emotional labor that requires resisting demagoguery and bigotry even when you’re struggling. It requires understanding that giving the government unchecked power will eventually bite you in the ass, just as surely as refusing to prosecute leaders who commit crimes. It requires paying your damn taxes so the country doesn’t fall into disrepair. It involves paying the prices required of the freedoms you have.
It annoys me how some people refuse to vote lest they be called to jury duty. Motherfucker, trial by a jury of your peers is a magnificent right you hold, and that’s the price of it. Also you hold a portion of a nuclear arsenal and can’t even be bothered to find out that that’s not how the government that holds them works, or to express your will on it regardless.
Because Hitler is famous for avoiding global armed conflict.
I mean it’s only because they didn’t give him exactly what he wanted and how he wanted it immediately and without any resistance that we got the war. He was the real oppressed one after all /s /s /s /s
Because I cannot emphasis enough that what I said above is sarcasm.
This is what happens when you systematically dismantle the public education system.
As a German, this the insane things our parents, grandparents and institutions warned us about. People begrudgingly accepted their lead in the hopes that “although it’s an authoritarian, maybe he will take care of our goals”. What followed was the cruelty of 1939 to 1945 and no one deserves to live through that, not even the idiots that got us in this mess.
I desperately, desperately, hoped that Germans, Jews, and especially the few remaining holocaust survivors, could somehow articulate this in a way that would penetrate at some point during the past few years.
Nope. We are literally doomed to repeat it.
Without mentioning the name of the poster, I replied to a comment yesterday that said this:
The only reason I voted for him was because we’re on the brink of WW3 and I thought he was truly the last hope of getting the wars settled. I’m scared, and I’m sorry, but shit is crazy right now. Trump at least has some relations with Russia and North Korea, that could potentially cool the pot. Feel free to tell me why I’m wrong, I’m open to discussion.
It’s like people really believe America entered WW2 to fight fascism becaus Americans are innately good…
Large amounts of the country said the same shit this guy is. They wanted to either stay out of it or outright join the nazis.
Especially the wealthy. Prescott Bush was believed to be part of the Business Plot that wanted to overthrow the US government in favor of fascism and doing the Axis powers.
They didn’t succeed (mostly because of Pearl Harbor) but his son became head of the CIA, VP, and then president. One of his sons also became president, and almost another one.
If we don’t remember what history was really like, we’re doomed to keep being surprised when the same shit keeps happening.
Ya, CCCP started it all with Hitler, later on the USA was forced in to the war.
Don’t forget.
Edit, to clarify: the USA was forced into the war, later on, they didn’t enter voluntarily. The nazis and the soviets kicked off ww2 in 1939. Sorry for the confusion.
Edit again:
Ya, CCCP started it all with Hitler
Whut?
Is this an attempt at a joke or do you really believe that?
It’s hard to tell these days when someone is just pretending
Heard about the ribbentrop molotov pact?
That was what kicked it all off.
Alright, let’s clear this up. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact wasn’t what brought the US into WWII. That pact was a non-aggression agreement between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed in August 1939, which allowed both powers to avoid fighting each other while they focused on expanding their influence in Europe. This agreement directly led to the invasion of Poland and the start of WWII in Europe, but it didn’t prompt US involvement.
The US didn’t enter the war until December 1941, over two years later, after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. That was the actual catalyst. Up until then, despite plenty of pro-Nazi and anti-Nazi sentiments among the populace, the US had largely followed an isolationist policy, though they supported the Allies with programs like Lend-Lease to aid Britain. The US’s decision to go to war was mostly a response to Japanese aggression, and Germany’s declaration of war on the US shortly afterward sealed the deal for full US involvement in both the Pacific and European theaters.
So yeah, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was important for starting the conflict in Europe, but it wasn’t why the US entered WWII.
I didn’t say it brought USA into the war, I said it was what kicked off ww2 and it was the fault of the soviets + nazi germany.
You are correct, but you misunderstood me, or I wasn’t clear enough.
Edit: I was not clear enough, I edited my post. In my mind the two things were separate, I just didn’t have the writing skills.
I didn’t say it brought USA into the war
You literally did
Ya, CCCP started it all with Hitler, the USA was forced in to the war.
Now, perhaps this isn’t what you meant to say. It is, however, what you said
It’s two things, separated by a comma. Like apples are green, I went to the doctor yesterday. Not very good writing I admit.
No. I mean, congrats on the mental gymnastics needed to somehow blame it on communists, but no.
WW2 was caused by thoss dastardly Judeo Bolsheviks.
So splitting up poland and the baltics wasn’t what started ww2?
Let’s hear your version.
Are you familiar with the concept of a casus belli or are you just cognitively impaired?
So it’s time for insults.
Yeah the great Soviet Union started off WW2 with Nazi Germany, like it or not. I know they don’t teach that in some countries and call it “the great patriotic war” instead. Yo know, to muddy the waters.
I’m beginning to see why he is a former construction worker.
This guy was fired for being obviously mentally unstable.
Oh, far from it. This is very much the norm in any construction sector. Everyone is dumb as absolute fuck.
Historical fact: In the distant past, guys like this belonged to a Union, and the union told them how to vote.
The union was led by ruthless people whose power was entirely dependent on the support of the union.
The union leaders kept their people happy by negotiating better prices for their labor, and the happy people did what the leaders said. Their tribe was the union, and the tribe stuck together.
At some point the owner class realized it was easy to redefine what happiness meant for idiots: Lying. A lot. Tricking absolute idiots is easy, so they started whittling away at unions with promises of prosperity a union leader could never fulfil, until we get to today where unions and union membership is lower than it’s ever been.
And idiots like that still vote for who their handler tells them to, only their handler now has zero investment in keeping them happy. Lying to them is sufficient as long as the rest of the tribe reinforces the lies. The tribe is now everyone too stupid to not vote for Hitler, and the tribe sticks together.
The tribe is now everyone too stupid to not vote for Hitler, and the tribe sticks together.
And the tribe is 70+ million strong. Let’s not forget that.
Dictators: famous for ending wars. We’ll never learn how many wars could have been prevented if only all countries had authoritarian leaders, too bad it’s never happened before.
I wonder who Trump voted for.
Oh that’s right, he’s a convicted felon. That would be voter fraud.
Only if you’re black.
Acting like that would be his first fraud. Or the only fraud in this election. Trump is moving pawns behind every state election, and he has 5 Ace’s up his phony sleeve. Its all crooked when Trump is involved
It’s legal in Florida, where Trump voted.
Convicted felons can vote in Florida, but a woman can’t get an abortion after 6 weeks, which is right when a lot of them realize they’re pegrenate. Well isn’t that special.
Can’t we convince MAGA that trump has been replaced by the deep state or something that makes them fight for a good cause for once?
No, because Dems are stuck on a high horse and burned 1 billion campaigning like its the 1950s. Fff, they could have won the election spending a tenth of that on bots and paying off influencers.
We absolutely need money for a shameless ‘oppositional’ propaganda apparatus.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the RNC was more “with the times” than the DNC on how to campaign in the current media-circus climate. That’s right, they were more progressive when it came to using information technology. This observation burns like the heat of a thousand suns and I hate it, but there it is.
Granted, thanks to the likes of FoxNews and bloviating try-hards on radio and podcasts, they had the inside track here. Still, a billion USD should have leveled the playing field for a short campaign like Harris’.
It’s on purpose. Nobody is this incompetent, this many times in a row, by accident. The Democratic party doesn’t care about us and needs to be replaced.
Exactly this. And when you try to talk about it people look at you like you’re crazy or spouting some insane conspiracy theory.
Dems believe, clearly incorrectly based on recent results, that money wins elections. They decided that if they wanted to compete they’d have to get some of that sweet, sweet donor cash. Those donors aren’t spending money out of the goodness of their hearts, they expect something in return.
So now they are caught in a trap, they can either promote very popular progressive policies and watch the donors dry up or they can do the bidding of the donors and try to convince the voters that they are still somehow promoting the policies they want.
What we are seeing now is the end result of running that latter selection over and over. The millionaires and billionaires donating to the Dems don’t want to fix the endemic problems we face, because the donors handing them checks got their money because of those endemic problems.
When healthcare takes up 1/8th of your GDP, that money goes somewhere, to the people that buy the politicians to make sure that healthcare keeps funneling 1/8th of GDP into their pockets. That’s why the ACA didn’t embrace a single payer or even a public option, it just made it so that everyone had to give the donors their money. Same with rent, those checks go to landlords who buy the politicians.
The real solutions to our problems will never come out of a party capture by the donor class, not because of some tin foil conspiracy but by asking one simple question. Would the people funding this politicians want them to fix this problem I care about? This ask explains why the only place the Dems will take hard stances are on issues that don’t threaten the wealthy. The large umbrella term of identity politics (which is often overused or misapplied, but sometimes it’s accurate) has been a great carve out for the Dems for the last few decades.
Gay marriage doesn’t threaten a landlords wealth, so it’s fine to pick a fight on that topic. But even these have limits. Capitalism is by its very nature exploitative, the only way for the person who has the capital to make profit is for them to pay labor less than the value they generate and capture the difference as profit. So if your identity politics veers too close into empowering a class that’s currently being exploited, shut it down.
It would be great if the lesson they took away was, “money won’t be enough to win, we need to actually fix these problems” but they seem dead set on going “we just weren’t far enough to the right to get those swing voters, we will shift further”
