Arguments I’m trying to stay out of, so I’m griping about them here, and also a dream report

[moon_custafer]

In a lot of what I’d consider moderate-left spaces, attitudes re the US election seem to have split into: 1. “Yes, it shouldn’t have been this close, but if Dems hold the House and win the presidency, that’s at least better than 4+ more years of Trump, and we have a chance of fixing some thing even if it will be the work of generations;” and 2. “The previous statement was gratingly naïve and saccharine in its optimism, why can’t you just admit that even if Biden wins, this is a Pyrrhic victory and America is doomed.”

I lean more towards the cautiously-hopeful-at-least-try side of things, but I also firmly believe you can’t argue someone out of a fit of depression, and I can’t stand watching the in-fighting; so I went over to a different forum and a different discussion, not directly about contemporary politics. Which is where I’m currently trying to resist answering someone who believes hunter-gatherer societies were if anything less egalitarian than agricultural ones because “their hierarchies would have been dependent on the ability to get along with other people,” with “oh come on how is that not true of all societies?”

What social skills I have are telling me I don’t need this kind of trouble, but the rest of my personality wants to construct arguments-- I mean, I think it’s one of the duties of a progressive society to build a safety net that protects even unlikeable or awkward people, but I also still think there are always going to be individuals who drive away everyone who makes their acquaintance, and you can do is try to find a balance between mitigating the damage and impinging on their freedom.

Anyway thanks for your patience (or if you skimmed over this, that’s ok too).

Meanwhile, one of my dreams last night involved working undercover as Hitler’s secretary in order to spy on him. In this dream, no doubt totally uninfluenced by current events, I kept thinking that while it was a good thing for humanity that Hitler kept making stupid decisions, it was also really painful to watch somebody constantly be that incompetent. srsly, he had a detail of highly-trained ninja bodyguards that he couldn’t resist showing off, so he ordered them moved away from their strategic positions so they could stand guard in front of his door, in full view and out in the open. Stupid dream Hitler.

Comments

[kore]

Not to focus on the Nazis, but I've always been amazed at how Goebbels got completely derailed by making that propaganda flick in which they used actual soldiers? Because clearly that was more important than trying not to lose the war!

[sovay]

Not to focus on the Nazis

Focus on the Nazis! They are just different enough from our current stressors to provide distraction as well as valuable reasons to scream in historian!

but I've always been amazed at how Goebbels got completely derailed by making that propaganda flick in which they used actual soldiers? Because clearly that was more important than trying not to lose the war!

Okay, that may be a piece of Nazi stupidity I didn't know about. What?

[kore]

I don't remember all the details (just woke up from a nap, haha) but it was something like, he wanted to do an uplifting propaganda film about the Glory of German History, one of those big set patriotic historical pieces he loved, and so the director actually used soldiers as extras and did things like ship in hundreds of barrels of salt to simulate snow and they blew some amazing amount of money, millions of marks, and they were filming this IN 1944 and they were editing the film WHILE Berlin was being bombed by the Allies.

[sovay]

and so the director actually used soldiers as extras and did things like ship in hundreds of barrels of salt to simulate snow and they blew some amazing amount of money, millions of marks, and they were filming this IN 1944 and they were editing the film WHILE Berlin was being bombed by the Allies.

I'm trying to remember who on my friendlist had the tag "nazis! evil and stupid," but it is crying out to be applied here.