05-09-2020, 12:01 PM
(05-08-2020, 09:00 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(05-08-2020, 07:46 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Just a reminder -- today is the seventy-fifth anniversary of the formal surrender of the demonic Third Reich, and it would be a day of gigantic festivals of celebration except that a tiny virus has prevented those. Technically the celebration was on the Ninth in the USSR because the Soviets had their own ceremony in Berlin due to logistical difficulties of getting their top generals to France...
It may be ironic that the two German generals who signed the surrenders (Alfred Jodl in Reims and Wihelm Keitel in Berlin) would be tried as major war criminals, be convicted, and be hanged for those crimes. The war was over in Europe, and there has since been no war between the major powers in Europe since them. Fear, yes, due to ideological differences and a missionary desire to establish dominion in the name of the ideology of the main winners. Free-wheeling capitalism and barracks socialism are diametric opposites in economics and politics.
The sort of war that had been commonplace in Europe as one despotic leader got angry and started a war to punish an affront was over. Democracy would become the norm... if abortively behind the Iron Curtain. Fascism died everywhere in Europe except in Spain and Portugal, whose leaders managed to stay out of the war. (It turns out that Churchill bribed Franco in Spain and Salazar in Portugal, which was a good deal for all concerned).
Who cares about that? Who cares that the Russian Generals only had easy access and the power to celebrate their victory in East Germany and East Berlin for obvious reasons? A tiny bug stopped the NHL season, the NHL playoffs and the Stanley Cup Final and stopped thousands of concerts that would have taken place in their arenas across the country during the off season and eliminated the jobs of millions of local people who work there. That's just one example of many, many, many examples of economic losses that liberals are ignoring right now. The Minnesota Twins, the Minnesota taxpayers and the city of Minneapolis are paying for an empty stadium right now. The city of Minneapolis and Minneapolis residents are absorbing/seeing it's economic loss right now.
You grossly misunderstand historical reality. One does not celebrate final victory in a war zone. The German Army had disintegrated in the western parts of Germany because the German Army had nothing worth fighting for. The Americans, British, and Free French were well behaved, and about all that the Germans were going to miss was Nazism. The fear that the Gestapo enforced would never re-appear. So swastika flags, copies of Mein Kampf, portraits of Nazi leaders, and statures of Hitler get trashed. In contrast Berlin was a war zone into the very early part of May even after Hitler blew his brains out and Josef Goebbels offed himself. German troops continued fighting in part to defend German females from rape. But once Berlin was no longer a war zone, the German Armed Forces could surrender at any place of convenience.
If in western Germany the Wehrmacht had lost the cause to fight, in eastern Germany the Wehrmacht lost the means by which to fight. Once Berlin was safe for a surrender ceremony that American, British, and French officials could participate could the Soviet Army get the highest-ranking member of the Wehrmacht surrender.
The formal division of Germany would happen later, although it was already agreed upon.
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So a "tiny" bug (actually a virus) could stop your precious NHL season? It also stopped the 75th anniversary of VE-Day, which could have been a huge celebration. It has also stopped the Final Four in the NCAA, it has stopped the NBA playoffs, it has stopped the start of the 2020 MLB Season, the Triple Crown of racing, the start of the WNBA... it put ends to opera and symphony concert seasons... lots of local spring festivals, and made a travesty of many people's school years. It has put a damper on dating, marriages, and coming-of-age festivals. That is before I mention commerce, the Holy Grail of a capitalist society.
Most significantly in America it has put an end to the lives of over 78,000 lives. I hope that that is no triviality to you. It could have killed more had some state governors not declared emergencies so profound as to cause stay-at-home-orders. Millions of Americans hate what is going on, and I concede that we will probably start doing more of what we enjoy doing as the danger abates or conduct ourselves in fitting ways -- like wearing masks, spraying or wiping things off with disinfectants, and washing our hands obsessively. We will adapt or die, and we will innovate to evade a tiny virus.
Small things can kill. So it is with small amounts of venom, drugs, chemical reagents, radioactive materials, bacteria, and viruses. Need I continue?
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.