Stogumber

I saw the George Bernard Shaw theater version of 'Joan of Arc' many years ago. The story includes a righteous priest, Stogumber, strenuously declaring/supporting that Joan of Arc must be executed in the most painful way possible. But when he witnesses Joan of Arc burn at the stake, he becomes inconsolable, . . . he never imagined the execution would be so astonishingly cruel.Like Stogumber, I do believe the ‘righteous’ people who voted for the former president (tfp), also support the deportation, imprisonment (and likely torture and death), to the people that tfp and Fox News tells them are inner enemies of America.But would they if they witnessed the actual cruelty? . . .___Since the recent collapse of Syria’s regime, I just watched videos of Syrian political opponents (over 100,000 men woman, and apparently children) being hastily released from Saydnaya Prison.

quote:

---

Referred to as a "human slaughterhouse" by rights groups, thousands of people are said to have been detained, tortured and executed at this secret prison since the Syrian civil war began in 2011.

---

pic.twitter.com/qwRzzwBjqqpic.twitter.com/6g35z9nUGOpic.twitter.com/Oip7vDPtAHpic.twitter.com/zmzR6H61fQAssad's Prisons!This IS exactly what fascism and dictatorship looks like. I could throw-up.Upon viewing these videos, I might mistakenly imagine the uninformed supporters of tfp would also act like the righteous priest in the play. They would find their humanity and declare this an abomination.But when I consider the supporters’ past actions (their unconcern over the deaths and democracy in Ukraine, their apathy regarding cruel separation of children from their families at the border, and their righteous attitude in Palestinian woman and children's deaths), I think the supporters would merely double-down with their insistence that maximum cruelty must be called for all the 'enemies' of america.Alas, art doesn't always mimic life.

Similarly my visit to Auschwitz. Do not underestimate ordinary people's ability to harm others not like them."Never Again" is a hope not an expectation.

I don't think I could ever visit such a place.I went to a land-mine museum in Cambodia. And then saw some of the population without limbs, . . . because active american land-mines still exist.It's soul-crushing.I don't know how Ill make it through another four years.

It's hard, but I think it should be obligatory for everybody. Well not obligatory, I believe in democracy and freedom of action, but encouraged and made cheap and easy.1.5 million people were killed in the holocaust - that's a minimum evidenced figure - impossible to imagine so you need to see the process, the institutions and the mechanisms that made it practically achievable. This in a modern, Western, Christian democracy. We're still such primitives.

There's an episode of the Twilight Zone where aliens experiment on a neighborhood by cutting off the power and isolating it (I think cars wouldn't start, either). Within an evening the neighborhood had devolved into paranoia and violence, I think turning on the one guy whose house's power the aliens turned back on.We're still the same people we were thousands and thousands of years ago. Gilding us with the trappings of modernity, culture and education changes nothing. It just makes us complacent and convinces us that we're better now than we were. There will always be people like General Curtis Lemay, who became head of the Air Force during WWII and said, "There are no innocent civilians, so it doesn't bother me so much to be killing innocent bystanders." He also said, "I’ll tell you what war is about. You’ve got to kill people, and when you’ve killed enough they stop fighting." While the AR-15 was under development (the military version is the M16) General Wyman advocated the development of guns that fired so rapidly and could be reloaded so quickly that they allowed advancing infantry to create a wall of bullets in front of them.To his credit General LeMay acknowledged his immorality, saying, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals."--Percy

And this is why I wouldn't want to visit Auschwitz now. Tfp's re-election is a clear acknowledgment that we are not better then we were. With intimate knowledge of cruelties in both the WWII years and the previous administration, we still enthusiastically voted for . . . more.We are worse.

Well at least you say *we*. Dont conflate Hitler and Assad with tfp just yet.There is still time. *we* are not a dictatorship.

And if we are smart, we will still acknowledge a higher power than ourselves.

The degradation of morality in WW II on the part of the Allies is often looked past. We started the war with at least an attempt to stand on the moral high ground by doing day bombing focused on actual military targets. This led to massive casualties among the bomber crews. The response was to bomb at night which removed any notion of accuracy, and then degenerated into purposeful firebombing of civilian populations with Dresden and Tokyo being the two most often cited examples. It is a stark reminder of how susceptible we all are to dehumanizing people during war and conflict.

If we were smart we would acknowledge there is no higher sentient power than ourselves. We are beholden to no entity than ourselves for our thoughts and our actions. There is no one else to blame.

I was a student well versed in WW II. From what I recall, the Americans did in fact do most of the high altitude pinpoint bombing while the RAF did the majority of the saturation bombing at night.We (the U/S.) were responsible for Tokyo at least. This led to the decision to use the Atomic Bombs. You(we) can always sit back on our academic high horse and judge the rest of the citizens and the government, but being Left Wing progressive does not give anyone a pass out of responsibility. . Keep saying *we*. The Right Wing will never be indicted by the Left Wing any more than the Left Wing can be indicted by the Right Wing. It is very appropriate to unify the nation by always saying *we*.

If we were smart we would acknowledge that there is a higher power than ourselves. Without Him we will destroy ourselves.

I also believe politicians should be held accountable for their actions. Don't you believe that?

Yes I do. The problem in today's world seems to be that everyone is always looking backward to indict the previous guy without bothering to question the guy that *we* voted in. More attention should be paid to the current "hero" before later discovering that he or she may have skeletons in their closet.Another problem with that, though, is that humans tend to verify the data that supports our foregone conclusions and reject the data that casts our candidate in a bad light.

You follow a ghost; something that isn’t real. Neither you nor anyone else can show any higher intellectual and spiritual powers than H. sapiens.Your higher power is us, Phat. And, yes, we are destroying ourselves. Your reverence for your violent ghost, and everyone else’s reverence for their competing blood violent ghosts, are a major cause of that destruction.There is nothing dumber than taking your life’s directions from your emotional delusions. Such is the cause of so much evil in this world. It is smart to avoid that … to stop that … to tax that, to fine that and, in every social manner available, to ridicule that.Your need, your intellectual and emotional surrender to some higher power, Phat, that is an evil meme that needs to be driven from the human memepool.