domain:mattlakeman.org
RaiderOfALostTusken
6hr ago
It's even worse - we had our flags at half mast for like 6 months because a ground penetrating radar found "disturbances" under ground. We now know it was roots, rocks - no excavation has or will take place.
The whiplash from "celebrating canada day is evil" to "elbows up! I love Canada!" has been a lot to take in
Imaginary_Knowledge
7hr ago
The gas chamber narrative is epistemic violence. It uses force to stop ideas moving from my mind to my mouth. I can't express that I find it implausible. And the force is applied for two reasons, both of which I think are legitimate and fill me with rage:
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Allowing the public to question one aspect of the Holocaust narrative would undermine the whole premise, and since that premise is a central part of our faith, the epistemic violence is acceptable collateral damage.
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Point deer, make horse: forcing people to mouth absurdities in public outs people who value integrity over loyalty; these people are potential traitors to the regime, making the epistemic violence acceptance collateral damage.
(Let's assume for now that it's false but not possible in polite company to deny it. You can substitute any of the other narratives we're forced to mount (e.g. blank slate theory) in the above without changing the structure of my argument.)
For my part, I turn the whole thing around. Overturning of the structure of society is acceptable collateral damage in making the epistemic violence stop.
hydroacetylene
7hr ago
as opposed to the quiet piety of the babushka) is an actual representation of Russian culture.
This is also, statistically, not a very good representation of Russian culture- Russia does not have a high church attendance rate, even by European standards, and the more religious former Soviet countries are the ones which like Russia less(Georgia, Ukraine, remoter ‘stans).
cjet79
7hr ago
I was a bit of an odd duckling growing up. I watched a lot of history channel, maybe that changed my perspective. I do not feel I learned about the war with that framing. I felt that pearl harbor almost shared equal horror and tragedy with the Holocaust. I mean I guess it was up to the teachers at the time there might be two questions on the Pacific war, and two questions on the Holocaust for the state test so they get equal billing in class lesson plans.
hydroacetylene
7hr ago
Why do gas chambers matter?
The intentional mass killings of civilians by axis forces during WWII were a terrible crime, and many officers in axis forces deserved to be prosecuted. I don’t see why it being done with gas chambers or not(and everyone agrees that many of the killings were not done with gas chambers) is a relevant distinction.
hydroacetylene
7hr ago
Hitler was a bad man. The Holocaust happened and was a terrible crime. But what makes it a worse crime because it was aimed at Jews? I’ll grant you that I find Jews more sympathetic than gypsies or gays, but I find them less sympathetic than the disabled, or Slavs. The Jew-targeting wasn’t what made the Holocaust evil. The mass murder was.
The argument for the Holocaust being worse than the holodomor is one of either a) Jewish lives are worth more than gentile lives(I reject this premise, and if forced to choose between saving a random kulak or random Jew would probably pick the kulak, although you could easily flip it the other way by specifying that eg the random Jew would be a child. I don’t claim the moral high ground from this; in shitty decisions you just have to make the decision and base prejudices are as good a way as any) or b) intentional mass murder is worse than negligent mass murder and the holodomor was the latter while the Holocaust was the former(to note- I reject both premises. Mass murder as a policy is mass murder as a policy; rulers have an obligation to be competent enough to avoid it and also the holodomor was intentional- getting rid of kulaks was a specific policy goal).
So, I ask- what makes the Holocaust worse than the holodomor to you?
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
7hr ago
I mean, yes. But he also doesn’t really separate out the single event that modern discourse around WW2 the holocaust is the tragedy of the war. Here, it’s surrounded by other atrocities— battle casualties, burned capitols, European cities in ruins. It has not yet developed the mythical power that it will hold much later on. A modern writer talking about the events listed in this passage would never dare to put the holocaust in the same paragraph as other casualties of the war. Modern telling puts the holocaust front and center, alone, with no other atrocities allowed to detract from it. That’s not how Churchill sees WW2. To him, the holocaust is one tragedy among several others, not something uniquely evil or even more evil than the other events of the war.
To post mythic generations, this would be pretty ambivalent, and if the person were Jewish, he’d probably consider such a retelling pretty antisemitic as it downplayed the holocaust compared to how modern history talks about it.
aeqno
7hr ago
my grandparents who remembered it clearly describe it as definitely on the way out
C'mon. It required actual military force to desegregate educational institutions in the South. That isn't a system that was petering out on its own accord.
AsTheDominoesFall
8hr ago
Steven Brust writes fantasy novels in the style of Dumas. They're spinoffs of a noir-style series that's also fun in a very different way.
You seem to be accepting the predominantly American framing of Hitler ("he was bad because he genocided the Jews, and then I guess there was also that whole WWII thing") as default truth, whereas in much of Europe it has been closer to "he was bad because he wanted German supremacy and started WWII, and then I guess there was also the whole Holocaust thing" all along. (The difference makes sense, since Europe bore the brunt of the WWII part of Hitler's record, while the Americans are under the heel of all various kinds of Zionists.) Where does the UK land between those poles?
Being anti-Hitler and pro-Hamas looks a lot more coherent in the latter frame. In fact, I think that, for example, in Germany, an interpretation like "Hitler would be pro-Israel in 2025" would catch on easily were it not for constant effort exerted by Transatlanticists and other establishment types to keep the blood debt alive and salient.
(See also the question whether Ukraine could be run by "Nazis" - reactions ranging from Americans seeing a Jewish-heritage president and concluding obviously no, to Russians seeing swastikas, German steel and people who want to violently move the Western European cultural sphere closer to Russia and concluding obviously yes)
Imaginary_Knowledge
8hr ago
One rule of thumb which never, ever fails is that any claim you can be arrested for questioning is false. It's been like that through recorded history. Why would gas chambers in WW2 be some singular exception to this otherwise completely reliable rule?
Eupraxia
Shut up and quantify
8hr ago
Women's importance to the continuance of the species is absolutely important, I agree. My concern is that on an individual level, it seems to me like women get the short end of the stick in their potential for eudaemonia, to the point where the Athenian prayer isn't unwarranted. See here downthread for my elaboration.
(I appreciate your enjoyment, thx!)
AmericanSaxeCoburgGothic
Happy to be here! Goal is to post the most exclamation points.
8hr ago
Edited to add authors!
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
8hr ago
huh I recently started Whitemane and it was super easy to set up. They have a wrath server which is fun.
But yeah I have heard a lot of folks frustrated with how Blizzard has handled the classic rollout. Alas.
FtttG
8hr ago
Seconded The Secret History, an incredibly readable book even when almost nothing is happening plot-wise.
cjet79
9hr ago
You misread me.
Imagine an alternate world where no one claimed gas chambers and said 2-3 million Jews were rounded up and effectively murdered through horrible conditions and starvation. My assertion is that the end result would have been much the same. It was still a horrible atrocity and large scale genocide carried out with the machinery of the state, and under the guise of a racial ideology. I believe there still would have been a push for a Jewish state, the Nazi ideology would still be viewed as evil antichrist stand in, and this alternate history world would be mostly indistinguishable from our own.
(It should be worth noting that they did not need to be rounded up. So the death rate should be compared to the general civilian population, not the general prison camp population. The choice to round them up in such large numbers was still that: a choice.)
And yeah I will still say I don't really care if they lied about the method of death and doubled the numbers. But I mostly don't care because everyone that would have perpetrated the lie is dead and out of power. Had this lie been 10 years ago, yes I absolutely would care, and I'd want to punish the liars.
I've self assessed this on other issues I care about. I care about communism being an evil ideology that leads to mass murder and starvation. The New York Times is now known to have had active communist agents on the payroll in the 30s-50s. And that these reporters actively helped cover up the atrocities committed by the USSR. But it all doesn't actively bother me very much. And it bothers me far far less than the errors and lies perpetrated over covid. I have a recency bias, and WWII is not recent.
I wrote the above before I saw that it's Mother's Day, lack of tact, mea culpa, etc.
To be clear, I don't want to just dunk on women — I like the women in my life and bear no ill will towards their sex. I'm just skeptical of uncritical complementarian narratives that declare that men and women are simultaneously unequal in their dispositions and yet equally valuable in their own domains, because it seems pretty obvious to me that men get the better deal. Earth Mother and Sky Father might be of equal value in nature, but the story of civilization has been of reaching to the stars with only a minimal umbilical connecting us to our roots.
If I were dictator, I'd look into ways of (eugenically or otherwise) partly relieving women of those traits which most negatively impact their eudaemonic potential (neuroticism, conformity, lower risk tolerance, lower agency) and augmenting their traits which legitimately compliment men's (verbal IQ, social intuition, physical endurance, sensual sensitivity).
AmericanSaxeCoburgGothic
Happy to be here! Goal is to post the most exclamation points.
9hr ago
· Edited 8hr ago
I'm reading A Farewell to Arms (Hemingway) so far so good, trying to read more and limit screen time. Recently finished the Beautiful and the Damned (Fitzgerald) was a slower start but once the bride enters the scene what a trip.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
9hr ago
There will always be some gap left when imposing federal dictat on recalcitrant States (same when it was abortion from the left), but most of the US has shall-issue CCW.
Where's the gap in gay marriage? The gap in abortion was rather smaller and always contested until Dobbs. Meanwhile, we've got multiple states (including NY, of Bruen fame) with "shall issue" CCW which have so many exceptions in places where you are allowed to carry, that you'll very likely be a felon if you attempt to take advantage of it. And I still can't buy a gun in any state (including my home state of NJ), whereas leaving the state for an abortion (or marriage) was never forbidden.
Heller and Bruen were absolutely empty victories. The case which matters is Rahimi, which says "when push comes to shove, the Court will find a reason to accept a gun restriction".
AmericanSaxeCoburgGothic
Happy to be here! Goal is to post the most exclamation points.
9hr ago
· Edited 9hr ago
Elif Batuman, Possessed (beware has a lot of Russian novel references but even without that is pretty fasted paced with stories and asides). Another really gripping memoir read is the Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. For fiction the Secret History by Donna Tartt, its longer and maybe not as fast paced but I found I read it quickly. Reading some parts were like eating dessert.
AmericanSaxeCoburgGothic
Happy to be here! Goal is to post the most exclamation points.
9hr ago
One of my favorites! The character of the adoptive mother is the one who made the deepest impression on me. I think I would get a lot out of rereading it.
That actually was the usual didactic approach to the Holocaust in America in the late 2000s and the first half of the 2010s. Portraying it as a more general crime against humanity. The number of deaths was often described as 10-12 million and it included Soviet POWs, homosexuals, religious and political dissidents like Jehovah’s Witnesses, other miscellaneous ethnic groups like the Romani people and Polish Slavs, Rhineland Germans of African ancestry, and the disabled. I don’t know exactly what the politics behind the shift was, but that approach fell out of favor in the last half of the 2010s and it started being described again as mainly a crime against European Jews.
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