Kinda crazy that we are even having a discussion about this.
Wonder what kind of dinner table and bier hall and student gathering and hunting camp discussions were happening in 1933 Germany…
We’ll have jobs. But what about the brown shirts. They aren’t interested in us. The Jews sold us out at Versailles and we didn’t lose the war. They are a cancer. He is taking over all the organizations. We will get to on our own car. We’ll have Lebensraum…. We are superior and the ‘others are vermin…
Now today in America… a shining green future. We will have EV’s. There will be total equality. They are just ignorant flyover country people. We went to Harvard and became rich, of course we are superior. They have to give up their freedoms and their guns for safe democracy. The constitution was written by old men who owned slaves so it’s irrelevant. Diversity is our strength. Men can get pregnant…
Is it any different? Delusional worldviews fed by a need to be part of a giant movement? Create an enemy. Vilify the opposition, don’t try and beat their arguments with better arguments. Unleash thugs to put down opposition. Fake riots and strife to justify crackdowns on political opponents.
I always wondered what it was like to be in Germany in 1933 and how an advanced and cultured people with the best science and technology in Europe could just “let it all happen.” Well, now I am seeing!
The problem is that inertia is safer and the majority are rule-followers. Allowing the crazy and tiny majority (the national socialists in Germany and the core communist leadership in Russia were only a few thousands strong)… to subvert an entire nation. While the rule followers wake up one day and find that they are not just complicit but that any opposition is fatal. So they go with the flow hoping that they can work within the “new normal” and make the best of it.
So what if their neighbors are being hauled off or if there are breadlines. The central authority is promising great things just around the corner! Two weeks to flatten the curve. Diversity will make us strong. Once we get to Net Zero the world will be a paradise. If we give up hydrocarbons everything will be better…
This is what the crazy zealots of any religion or political system that advocated central control wants….
And why we were founded as a Republic. That we are having a hard time keeping, it seems. Because the siren song “democracy and utopian equality” under socialism is a great message for the masses that think they should be able to vote themselves the labor of others.
Well, it has worked a lot in history…. Not sure why we’d be any different.
Sirhr