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Notes -
Pretty much everyone here has had the experience:
The point of that poem is that when anyone, left or right, starts narrowing the category of 'human beings who deserve to live', they don't stop, and they are likely to end up narrowing it to exclude you. I personally believe that it is morally wrong to have a category of 'human lives that don't matter' (if any exception exists, it is only those who are currently, wilfully harming others and refuse to stop), but even if you do not share this belief, the existence of such a category is not in your self-interest.
The Germans were not going to start genociding Germans. Someone has to leben in all that raum, after all.
Except for gay Germans, Communist Germans, Social-Democratic Germans, disabled Germans, Germans whose grandparents were Jewish, Germans who were Jehovah's Witnesses or Christian Scientists,....
Gay Germans do not constitute a gens. Communism isn't a gens, either, though I might grant you disability, depending. Religion is also closer to a gens, depending on the religion, but that's not your argument.
In all of those cases, however, there are other Germans to continue being German. You have very helpfully specified that they, in fact, are part of the same gens as the one doing the killing!
Genocide is a word with roots that has a meaning. Nobody misunderstands the - cide suffix. I will insist upon the geno- prefix holding equal meaning. You need to use a different word, like cull, but that wouldn't bypass critical thinking through association with the Holocaust.
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Fed the flower of Germany into the meatgrinder, though.
I do wonder, sometimes, what Hitler would have done if he'd known how his war would go. Would he have gone for death or glory? Tried something else? Allied with Europe against the Soviets, rather than the reverse? It seems clear he didn't know, from the Mannerheim recording:
Hitler: Absolutely, This is - they had the most immense armaments that, uh, people could imagine. Well - if somebody had told me that a country - with...(Hitler is interrupted by the sound of a door opening and closing.) If somebody had told me a nation could start with 35,000 tanks, then I'd have said: "You are crazy!"
Mannerheim: Thirty-five?
Hitler: Thirty-five thousand tanks.
Another Voice In Background: Thirty-five thousand! Yes!
Hitler: We have destroyed - right now - more than 34,000 tanks. If someone had told me this, I'd have said: "You!" If you are one of my generals had stated that any nation has 35,000 tanks I'd have said: "You, my good sir, you see everything twice or ten times. You are crazy; you see ghosts." This I would have deemed possible. I told you earlier we found factories, one of them at Kramatorskaja, for example, Two years ago there were just a couple hundred [tanks]. We didn't know anything. Today, there is a tank plant, where - during the first shift a little more than 30,000, and 'round the clock a little more than 60,000, workers would have labored - a single tank plant! A gigantic factory! Masses of workers who certainly, lived like animals and...
Another Voice In Background: (Interrupting) In the Donets area?
Hitler: In the Donets area. (Background noises from the rattling of cups and plates over the exchange.)
Mannerheim: Well, if you keep in mind they had almost 20 years, almost 25 years of - freedom to arm themselves...
Hitler: (Interrupting quietly) It was unbelievable.
Mannerheim: And everything - everything spent on armament.
Hitler: Only on armament.
Mannerheim: Only on armament!
Hitler: (Sighs) Only - well, it is - as I told your president [Ryte] before - I had no idea of it. If I had an idea - then I would have been even more difficult for me, but I would have taken the decision [to invade] anyhow, because - there was no other possibility. It was - certain, already in the winter of '39/ '40, that the war had to begin. I had only this nightmare - but there is even more! Because a war on two fronts - would have been impossible - that would have broken us. Today, we see more clearly - than we saw at that time - it would have broken us. And my whole - I originally wanted to - already in the fall of '39 I wanted to conduct the campaign in the west - on the continuously bad weather we experienced hindered us.
Our whole armament - you know, was - is a pure good weather armament. It is very capable, very good, but it is unfortunately just a good-weather armament. We have seen this in the war. Our weapons naturally were made for the west, and we all thought, and this was true 'till that time, uh, it was the opinion from the earliest times: you cannot wage war in winter. And we too, have, the German tanks, they weren't tested, for example, to prepare them for winter war. Instead we conducted trials to prove it was impossible to wage war in winter. That is a different starting point [than the Soviet's]. In the fall of 1939 we always faced the question. I desperately wanted to attack, and I firmly believed we could finish France in six weeks.
However, we faced the question of whether we could move at all - it was raining continuously. And I know the French area myself very well and I too could not ignore the opinions, of many of my generals that, we - probably - would not have had the élan, that our tank arm would not have been, effective, that our air force could not been effective from our airfields because of the rain.
...
Already in the fall of 1940 we continuously faced the question, uh: shall we, consider a break up [in relations with the USSR]? At that time, I advised the Finnish government, to - negotiate and, to gain time and, to act dilatory in this matter - because I always feared - that Russia suddenly would attack Romania in the late fall - and occupy the petroleum wells, and we would have not been ready in the late fall of 1940. If Russia indeed had taken Romanian petroleum wells, than Germany would have been lost. It would have required - just 60 Russian divisions to handle that matter.
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I just knew that either you or the other guy would bring it up that the "point" of that vomit was that nobody should come for anyone. While you're in that world, I would like a pet unicorn, his coat should be lavender. For the time being, residing in the kill or be killed world, I vastly prefer the left side of the equation.
And if someone does, it behooves everyone else to stop them now, before they become entrenched, even if they're starting with people you don't like.
And you are justified in defending yourself against individuals who are trying to harm you. What is not justified is going after people who share some characteristic with them but haven't done anything to harm anyone. Again, this applies to both left and right; the principle that states that the right having grievances against some people who happen to be gay does not justify them treating all gay people as disposable also states that the left having grievances against some people who happen to be white does not justify them treating all white people as disposable.
Friend, I was one of those who tried.
But yeah I have had the experience Steve mentioned (well, steps 1 and 2). Because IDK how "the left," which I was raised was "our side," managed to end up totally abandoning that principle, but my experience is that it really seems like it has.
For a while there I was able to say, "Hey! 'We on the left do not blacklist,' remember?" Then I started having to remind people what that was about (McCarthyism). Then they started in with "McCarthyism did it to us so we should do it to them now."
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Working to establish such a principle is unilateral disarmament, it's suicidal, it's insane. It's insane to such an extent that any attempt to convince me to adopt this course of action, like that revolting "poem" counts as an attack by a hostile interest.
I do see your point (see my other comment) but I want to point out that that's not originally a "poem," it's originally Pastor Niemoller's description of his actual experiences with the Nazis. It's valuable information from another time.
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No, it's telling both sides not to pull the triggers if they aren't being fired upon.
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The point is false though. Lots of groups have stopped. Pretty much every group has stopped short of omnicide, including the Nazis.
The point of SteveAgain's response is that sometime it's us or them. And sometimes it's us or them for no apparent reason. There's no apparent reason why the situation seems to be that either the "gay communists" get oppressed or the straight cis white men do, but it does seem to be the case.
They didn't stop, they were stopped, at great cost. If they had been stopped sooner, the cost would have been less; if they had not been stopped in 1945, they would have kept going.
Or, we agree to resist oppression by anyone, gay or straight, black or white, red or blue, man or woman, against anyone else, while maintaining the distinction between the individual perpetrators and those who happen to share characteristics with them.
It's a nice thought, but I've spent too long watching oppression against straight whites defined as "anti-oppression" and resistance defined as "oppression". Human biology and psychology just doesn't work like that, and neither does it deal well with serious moral / status / resource conflicts. There is no way to make a system where everyone gets what they want AND nobody is oppressed.
For example, my existence as a misgenderer oppresses trans people, and their attempts to force me to use their preferred pronouns oppresses me. You, the all-powerful tyrant king, can of course swoop down and force us to play nice, but then you're oppressing both of us. Likewise economics, if you want to switch away from the culture war.
Yes, oppressors tend to lie about what they are doing.
Which is why degrowth is a very bad idea.
Only because some people want to oppress others.
Misgendering isn't something you are, it's something you do, to other people.
A policy of "Thou shalt use the exact pronouns specified; using they/them for a nonbinary person who prefers ze/zir is a banworthy/firable offence"? I would agree with you. "They/them for everybody", or "he/him for male-presenting/identified, she/her for female-presenting/identified, they/them for androgynous/non-binary" ought to be considered an acceptable compromise.
A policy of "If Alice and Barbara are equally female-presenting, both identify as female, and both have stated a preference for she/her, you do not refer to Alice as he/him, or as they/them while referring to Barbara as she/her, merely because Alice happened to be born with a dangly bit" is not oppression, because it is not oppression for Alice's genitals to be none of your business.
Says you. If I disagree about how female-presenting Alice is, or if actually I think that the biological sex of the person is relevant, we're going to have to have a fight about it. This is what I'm getting at. In practice, everyone wants to force their values on (oppress) other people some of the time. You can say it shouldn't be like that, but it is like that.
Bumping that up a layer of abstraction to force your system of conflict resolution on everyone doesn't actually help, it just obscures, because in practice it means some win and some lose on the concrete level but now you aren't allow to fight on the concrete level any more.
Also, I would like to point out that my deep cynicism on this subject stems, like @HonoriaWinchester, @SteveAgain and I suspect many others, from having done my best to live up to that poem and then having people I'd stuck up for turn on me the moment they had the chance. I am not inclined to try it again.
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Your collapsing of all distinctions into "deserve to live" is notable, but it doesn't seem to me that it changes much, so let's go with it.
We observe that the category of "human beings who deserve to live" can both expand and contract. Your position, then, is that it should only expand? If it expands to include a category of people previously excluded, and then things get significantly worse, we just have to live with it because no takesie-backsies?
My position is that "human beings who deserve to live" should be coterminous with "human beings", as otherwise it tends to contract precipitously.
...the alternative, a society with mechanisms for declaring whole groups of people to be unworthy of life, sets a precedent which is very likely to end up biting you in the arse.
I disagree. Human beings who try to kill me no longer "deserve to live". Human beings who commit murder no longer "deserve to live". Human beings on the other side of a war no longer "deserve to live", even if they aren't trying to kill me at this moment and haven't killed anyone yet. Likewise, I no longer "deserve to live" for the same reasons; if one of them shoots me through the skull, they have done no wrong.
Nor does it end there. Honorable, sane men observe the Birkenhead Drill: "women and children first", and do not recognize claims that those called to perform it are excused because they "deserve to live". In war, we expect men to obey orders, even if those orders would result in their deaths, and again no excuse that they "deserve to live" is allowed.
But this conversation started not over killing people, but over whether it is acceptable to let people die of their own bad choices. And the answer is that yes, this is entirely acceptable. It is preferable to dissuade them from destroying themselves through bad choices, but some people will not be dissuaded, and it is deeply just for people to receive the consequences of the decisions they've made. To do so is to treat them not as sub-human, but as fully human. And this goes doubly so for "well-being". Humans do not "deserve" well-being in any meaningful sense; if a man does not work, he shall not eat, as even the Communists were able to recognize. Those who engage in selfish, destructive behavior to the detriment of those around them certainly do not "deserve well-being". Even those who engage in foolish behavior can find themselves no longer "deserving to live"; if I smoke a pack a day for twenty years, that is no great sin, but it would be foolish to grant me a lung transplant, and especially foolish to do so on the understanding that I will continue to smoke a pack a day in the future.
All the above ignores Mercy, and that is because Mercy is not deserved, nor can it be mandated, only freely chosen. Attempts to implement it through anything other than individual choice are profoundly destructive to any sort of human society.
It also tends to contract precipitously when stretched so far that people forget that the consequences of our actions are inescapable. People often make choices that intentionally inject pain and misery into the world. When they do this, they often suffer or die as a consequence; this is often an entirely acceptable outcome, and sometimes a straightforwardly preferable one. Pretending otherwise, and sacrificing value to give them an endless series of Nth chances is rarely a good idea.
You do a disservice to the author to use this as an argument for unlimited mandatory mercy. He is right that many are too eager to deal out death in judgement, but that does not mean that all men deserve to live, only that determining who does not requires humility, wisdom, deliberation, and a leavening of mercy.
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