DoW
8mo ago
I find arguing about the holocaust to be strange as it's ultimately quibbling over details that don't really matter in any practical sense.
6 million, 5 million, 4 million, are all the same number and that number is "a lot".
The baseline assumption for belief, for people who don't know a lot about Holocaust history, is that there is a coherent narrative that makes sense, the historians have consistently agreed on, and the historical evidence has consistently supported.
And they are correct, that narrative is that during the second world war the German government deliberately killed a lot of jews on the basis of their ethnicity. This is supported by such a weight of evidence supporting this that it's accepted by pretty much all reasonable people who don't have ulterior motives for trying to weaken said narrative.
Frankly I don't think anyone is surprised that the party who incessantly harped on about the evil of jews, blamed them for pretty much all that they believed was wrong in the world and systematically eroded their rights then went on to go kill large numbers of jews when they got the chance. It's on par with a rapper releasing a song rapping about how they really hate someone and want to murder them, before going out and murdering them.
DoW
8mo ago
What would you offer Putin?
Nothing, you don't reward people for doing things to which you are opposed, especially when you don't have to.
Other than "nothing, the trap is shut and it's not coming open until you die and whoever replaces you crawls back to grovel".
"Do not call this a grave, it is the future you chose". Putin has been given off-ramp after off-ramp, chance after chance and he has refused every single one. He is not interested in any resolution of this conflict other than near-total victory and is apparently willing to stake everything on a war he lost months ago.
If Russia ends up in the American sphere of influence, China will have a 4000 km long border it will have to adequately man, drawing both funds and manpower away from its other military endeavors.
Firstly, Putin would rather burn Russia to the ground than even consider thinking about imagining the possibility of "Russia in the American sphere of influence". Secondly, Russia is a spent force for at least a generation, having burned through more men and materiel than the modern Russian state can credibly replace. Thirdly, the war in Ukraine has revealed that the armed forces of Russia are incompetent, hollowed out by an institutional culture of lying. Of course, China is probably in a similar state, but they also have substantial advantages in both manpower and materiel. Additionally, the forces that would be used to fight a war with Russia (a land campaign) are not the same as the forces that would be used to fight the US (air and naval) and China already has both.
DoW
8mo ago
It would also be like saying that the incentives for drug dealers is to keep you addicted and thus coming back for more, even if it's damaging you.
It's important to remember societal expectation (and a certain degree of legal heft). I think if definitive proof emerged that dating apps were deliberately trying to promote a kind of shallow hook up culture at the expense of longer lasting relationships, people would be far less bothered than if it turned out there was a conspiracy among a large body of physios to keep their patients injured.
DoW
8mo ago
That feels like quite the arbitrary distinction, why would someone be ok with providing the infrastructure to coordinate more effectively and call in artillery, but not be ok with using it to guide drones?
Maybe there's something I'm missing, but this sounds like a restriction put in place by someone who doesn't really understand warfare.
DoW
9mo ago
that does not explain why Europe had WW2 to begin with
European civilisation arose over centuries from the post-apocalyptic mess left in the wake of the Roman empire and was accompanied by nearly ceaseless warfare. The US by contrast arose from a much more stable foundation and then expanded rapidly with the help of advanced technology that made it far easier to maintain and control large amounts of territory. This expansion also had the added bonus of allowing the nation to direct a substantial amount of its energy towards western expansion, rather than having to jostle with neighbours you've been fighting with since days long forgotten. These factors combine to allow the US government to control a substantially larger area than would ever be feasible in Europe, as WW2 quite nicely demonstrates. This control was often fairly loose, but largely unchallenged, resulting in a degree of stability that was not seen outside of the UK in Europe and over an area of territory several times larger.
Europe is a possible counter-example both to various naive forms of HBD and also to the notion that ethno-nationalism is an advantage.
For the record, I do not subscribe to the "IQ is the be-all and end-all" thing some people seem to around here, but I would describe myself as an ethno-nationalist. I would argue that the United States has succeeded in spite of not being an ethno-state, that its multiple massive advantages have been enough to overcome this disadvantage. Imagine what the US could have achieved with all the energy it has wasted squabbling over race, just think of the forests of trees and oceans of ink wasted on writing about it, the brainpower spent trying to find a way to put blacks and whites in a great collective "get-along-shirt", not to mention the smaller squabbles between the other races.
I often see people on here who look at the runaway success of the US and then draw the conclusion that the US way of doing things must simply be better in all the relevant fields. While I believe the US does lead the way in quite a few areas, I also believe that it is quite probable that many of the systems and methods used in the US either simply wouldn't work in a different enviroment or are actively hindering the US, but that again this is compensated for by a few truly staggering advantages. It's like having an 8 foot tall MMA fighter in a competition, you're probably not going to finish first if you're a rank amateur, but you don't have the same pressure to truly get your technique down if you want to win.
DoW
9mo ago
Without some larger mission, most men aren't going to be motivated whatsoever. Men need a reason to exist. And not a poor, weak reason like 'following your dreams' or 'getting money' or 'being a good person.' Men need something to strive for, something worth dying for, something that they can use to shield themselves from the terror of the void.
Speak for yourself big man, the absolute overwhelming majority of men throughout history have spent their lives just living day to day until the day they died, with no greater ambitions than maybe following the script that their society laid out for them. Most men throughout history haven't been great adventurers, warriors, explores or philosophers, they were peasant farmers. If there was anything that could be described as "something to strive for, something worth dying for" it would be their families, it would be doing exactly what the woman in this article proposes as a solution.
the question remains: why?
For a young man in a contemporary world that is entirely individual-centric, what is the appeal of any altruistic act?
I can't help but get the feeling of a stroppy 12 year old asking why they should do something their parents have asked them to do that they don't want to.
The answer is because it is almost certainly in your own best interest. The average human is a social creature and actually tend to derive satisfaction from helping other people. For most a life of mindless hedonism is like a life spent eating nothing but sweets, it sounds like a good idea at the start, but eventually it rots you from the inside out. A life spent broadly in pursuit of making a better life for yourself and your community is a safer bet if you're looking for fulfillment. It's not for everyone, but if you're the kind who needs to be lead by the hand to your purpose in life, it's probably your best shot.
How will you cleanse your hands of blood?
I've found that water tends to do the job fine, does so even better if you've got a little soap, so I suppose if I'm dying near some water I could use that if I've got the energy and inclination.
DoW
9mo ago
The fact that there was quite persecution of Christians in the roman empire obviously showed that Romans were worried about the potency of said religion.
The persecution of the Christians does seem to have been somewhat overstated by Christian authors, whose writing comes down to us with a bit of an agenda.
There was only ever really one concerted push to stamp out Christianity and that was under Diocletian. Before this point the persecution of Christians was largely sporadic and localised. Even when Diocletian actually tried to eradicate Christianity, enforcement was spotty and largely depended on the feelings of local officials.
To reduce the opinions of a vast number of people, living across several centuries, down to a sentence. The Romans did not feel threatened by Christianity, they found Christianity to be weird, alien and therefore unsettling.
You appear to have just completely missed a good chunk of my original post, let me reiterate, those numbers are the same, because they are both "a lot". At this scale, that kind of range just blurs into meaninglessness inside the human brain, which is not able to instinctively understand the difference in the same way it would between 5 and 10. There's nothing practical to be gained by quibbling over the precise figure so long as "wow that's a lot of dead people" is the default reaction.
No it isn't, the deliberate attempt to exterminate Jewish non-combatants on a mass scale is proof of a holocaust. You don't need to be at war to do that.
Because they considered them to be untermensch, who would eventually need to be disposed of and as such were only left alive when it was not more convenient to kill them. The Germans held themselves to different standards when dealing with races that they considered to be inferior than when dealing with those they considered their racial equals. The Oradour-sur-Glane massacre was a shocking barbarity in the west, but standard practise in the east.
The Soviet Union did not place a very high value on the life of its own men, let alone those of a great ideological enemy that had invaded their country, massacred civilians and considered them to be sub-human. The red army didn't care to exert the kind of force it would have needed to rein in their soldiers when they had practically no sympathy for the people the soldiers were murdering and raping.
Yes really. Reasonable people don't tend to care about a topic this niche with this much passion. The only people I've ever encountered to be this invested in the topic are anti-semites that lack the strength of their convictions to just say "yes it happened and I'd do it again if I could", arabs and zionists.
I don't pretend, there are plenty of people who believe they can benefit from trying to play the numbers up and they sound just as motivated to anyone that wasn't born yesterday. That said they also tend not to try and rely on the usual attritional approach of "spew bullshit, try to sound authorative and drown anyone who disagrees with leading questions until they get bored and leave", instead preferring "get very emotional and hope everyone stops thinking".
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