(05-19-2019, 11:49 AM)AspieMillennial Wrote:(05-19-2019, 09:34 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: The Lost in America are contemporaries of some of the most evil people who ever lived -- Nazis and perpetrators of Stalinist horror. Of the ten executed (and one who committed suicide rather than face a hanging and another sentenced to death in absentia) after being convicted in the main Nuremberg trials, eight were born between 1883 and 1945, inclusive -- as were such abominable Nazis as Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, and the infamous 'hanging judge' Roland Freisler. Also born between 1883 and 1900, inclusive were such quislings as Laval, Doriot, Deat, and Pellepoix of Vichy France, Szalasi in Hungary, Pavelic in Croatia, Rupnik in Slovenia, Tiso in Slovakia, Mussert in the Netherlands -- and Quisling himself. Most of the leading generals of Japan associated with horrific crimes, including Tojo, were of this age group.
Of Stalin's 'ablest students' -- Bierut in Poland, Ulbricht in East Germany, Gottwald in Czechoslovakia, Rakosi and Gero in Hungary, Gheorghiu-Dej in Romania, and Dimitroff in Bulgaria -- only Dimitroff was bourn outside that age span. Need I mention Vishinsky, Zhdanov, Beria, and Kaganovich? Then there are Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh...
...and many of the worst mobsters in American history. That was a troubled generation. Yes, it had its heroes and creative people, and legions of honest entrepreneurs and toilers. But if you are looking for evil, much of it was born between 1883 and 1900.
Seeing all this evil of the 1930s and 1940s I don't see how you could keep a positive view of humanity. When I see 4T behavior all I think is that humans are evil scum.
I do not consider myself an optimist. I recognize how scummy people can be. People must choose between Good and Evil. When too many choose Evil, Humanity is in a bad scrape. If we must choose between sophisticated technology and culture on the one side and goodness toward humanity, we choose goodness even if such consigns us to be serfs lest we become monsters. Some mobster who can order a gangland hit during an intermission of Turandot is no better for his musical taste. If I had to choose between being Old-Order Amish (which would imply extreme losses of much of what I consider essential to my happiness) or program a computer to keep tabs on people scheduled for extermination, then I would choose to be a very Plain Person.
Don't get me wrong; I love Puccini, and I love the capacity that the Internet gives me for communicating ideas that I can develop after discovering something. The problem with Nazis was not in their musical taste, and the problem with the Japanese of WWII was not bonsai trees or kabuki theater.
On the other side I recognize heroic resistance to Nazi evil even in Germany itself, even if it resulted in those who were caught being beheaded or strung by piano wire to meat-hooks to die in maximal agony. I recognize people who sacrificed their lives in camps so that their children could survive or at least have a chance. I recognize heroic behavior of soldiers who threw themselves onto live grenades so that that hero would be the only one to die in that foxhole that day. Let us also remember that the British, many of them veterans of WWI and WWII, acceded to the dissolution of their colonial empire -- and that American GI vets turned against the racist order of "Kukluxistan".
Maybe people who see evil and recognize what it can do seek ways to prevent its re-emergence. Sure, we have some horrible people who admire Hitler, and I have had some unpleasant encounters with them. In several of them I have said "I would rather be a Jew than you!" followed by an explanation that I would sacrifice neither my culture nor my ethical values. (I had long overestimated the proportion of German ancestry that I have -- much of it is English. Knowing that I speak in pride of being connected to the European nation that did best at protecting its Jews by keeping the Wehrmacht, Gestapo, and SS out of their country).
A 4T can be unspeakably bleak and ominous, and many people devoid of culpability in the bleakness and horror become victims of the worst that people can do to fellow Humanity. But even if the 4T is analogous to a forest fire, plants can germinate in the ashes. (OK, I also use a building fire as an analogy. In a 3T people can get out of a building by finding a door or even put out the fire easily -- or remove the collection of oily rags that can spontaneously combust. In a 4T, people must force an escape route as the fire makes the building structure unsafe or blocks exits).
It is just as heroic, and more practical, to inculcate humane decency as it is to encourage sacrificial behavior on behalf of the Nation, "race", or sect. It is best that people not die for murky ideas.
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.