Ship of Fools: What has gone wrong with the human race?

Thread: What has gone wrong with the human race? Board: Hell / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :

The news story says it all.

What in the name of all that is holy has gone wrong with us? When will it end?

Will it end?

Posted by roybart (# 17357) on :

Sometimes, when I get in a brooding mood, I find myself rewriting Eliot: "This is the way the world ends. Not with a whimper but a bang." Trump, Orban, Duda, Duterte, et al., exploit an ancient vein of fear, hate, brutishness, self-righteousness, and short-fuses. Our leaders increasingly give us what sociologists call "permission to hate."

Posted by roybart (# 17357) on :

I meant to add -- " And encouragement to shoot first and ask questions later,"

Apologies for the TRIPLE (!) posts.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

This isn’t “a world gone mad” and has naught to do with the current political atmosphere. Swatting has been around for nearly 20 years, apparently, and functions because of the online gaming community. Its peculiar psychology nourishes this shit. That pulled with guns leads to this.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

If it's the swatting itself that's supposed to be the indictment of humanity here, I don't know if we're really floating through unchartered waters of depravity. Young people have been doing stupid things likely to cause serious harm for millenia. When I was a kid, mid-80s, some asshole from my school through a rock, from across a parking lot, at my head, missing my temple by a few millimetres.

That doesn't show quite the same degree of technical sophistication as swatting, but it's the same basic deal of someone doing something that, if he wasn't an absolute fucking moron, would realize could get people killed if it went the wrong way.

Posted by roybart (# 17357) on :

But this story is not just "about" swatting. It is more significantly about yet another police shooting of someone presumed, unjustifiably, to deserve it.

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

It is, it seems to me, a combination of several things:

1. Pranks and jokes that are serious and dangerous.
2. The level of fear and tension in the world.
3. The fact that the US seems to have a problem with guns.

Prank calls have never been funny. Prank calls to the emergency services are stupid and dangerous. People making them should be subject to serious penalties.

Those on the political right like fear and tension. It enables them to take control. That is what we have seen in the last year or so.

The tension is part of the reason that so many police are trigger happy - they will shoot because they genuinely fear someone will shoot them.

What is wrong with us? We are fucking stupid. We always have been, but these days we are fucking stupid and armed. And scared.

"Come O Meteorite, come quickly." We don't deserve to survive.

Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :

Copied across from the duplicate thread

Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:

quote:
I could have put this in the guns thread, but thought it had enough different features to make it worthy of its own discussion.

So here's the story. In the online video game "community" there is apparently a practice known as "swatting" - calling in a false report about some kind of hostage situation at some other game player's home, in the hope that a police SWAT team will be sent out. I gather that some people video themselves playing online video games and stream the video of that online, and in those cases it's such an amusing joke to have a SWAT team burst in to Mom's basement on video and hold the guy at gunpoint.

So, to the present case. Two video game players get in to some kind of dispute. Player A says "here's my address - come and show me how hard you are" or something. Player B gets in touch with a third player - 25-year-old Tyler Barriss - who phones in a false police report claiming to be a male resident of player A's address who has killed someone, is holding the rest of his family at gunpoint, and might just burn the whole house down. Player A didn't give his own address, but the address of some unrelated third party, apparently chosen at random.

A SWAT team shows up at the house, and in what is pretty much standard practice for US cops (see "Fucking Guns" passim), randomly shoots and kills the man who answers the door because "they thought he was going for his waistband".

There's lots of things wrong with this story, but can anyone give me a good reason why Tyler Barris isn't guilty of felony murder?

Originally posted by lilBuddha

quote:
Different enough to generate Two threads.
This happening was only a matter of time, sadly.
If he is charged with murder, it will likely put off jurers. The most they are likely to get is manslaughter. Since this fucker has a history of calling in fake threats, I do hope he revived an extra long sentence. If only one could also prosecute the community that enables this.

Originally posted by Doublethink.

quote:
Also, the guy giving the address in the first place.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

Perhaps it will be comforting to reflect that police intensely dislike being played like this. Being jerked around by an online asshole -- you would dislike it too.
It is psychologically damaging to shoot innocent people; the officers involved will need counseling even if they don't lose their jobs. All law enforcement persons will have heard about this incident in the fullest detail. They certainly be more wary in future. And therefore we may hope (although there is no guarantee) that it won't happen again.

Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
They certainly be more wary in future.

Number of people shot by US police:
2015: 995
2016: 963
2017: 976

I'm not getting an indication of wariness from those numbers.

(numbers according to the Washington Post - the Guardian The Counted programme figures are higher 2015:1146, 2016: 1093)

[ 31. December 2017, 18:52: Message edited by: Doc Tor ]

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

I mean to say, they will become more wary about being played by gamergate trolls. The larger issue is a different thing.

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
I mean to say, they will become more wary about being played by gamergate trolls. The larger issue is a different thing.

I agree with you - they will be more wary for a while. Until there is another incident where they become more concerned, and then it is likely to happen again.

This is the problem - these people know how to get a response, so they will get a response. the response is becoming - because of the increased tension and fear in the country (and the world) - more violent more instant.

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
I mean to say, they will become more wary about being played by gamergate trolls. The larger issue is a different thing.

How will the poor police dispatchers know they're being played? The reason these pranks "work" is that those receiving emergency calls have no choice but to deal with all calls as though they're genuine. Failure to attend an incident where there have been reports of someone with a gun, especially if that leads to more people being shot, is inexcusable. As long as people pull these pranks, whether it's considered to be "a laugh" or to cause harm to another, then emergency services will respond, and in a country where the chances of anyone you meet being armed are high the police will respond with an expectation that a gun might be used against them, and behave accordingly.

The fault is squarely with the prankster. It probably won't do much good calling for gun control, though there are plenty of good reasons to reduce the number of guns in circulation in the US, this incident isn't one of them. Even in the UK if there was an emergency call about an armed person then the police will respond with armed officers expecting there to be an armed person present who poses a risk to the police and members of the public.

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Swatting has been around for nearly 20 years, apparently, and functions because of the online gaming community.

Swatting is not confined to the gaming community. I have heard of cases of swatting simply because one person disliked or was angry with another.

Moo

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

While it is not a case to call for gun control, I think in the UK, the expectation that the other person will shoot is less, so the speed with which the decisions have to be made is less.

And yes, the prankster who does this sort of thing because it seems like fun is the one to blame. To do this without considering that the response may be with lethal force is idiotic.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Moo:

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Swatting has been around for nearly 20 years, apparently, and functions because of the online gaming community.
Swatting is not confined to the gaming community. I have heard of cases of swatting simply because one person disliked or was angry with another.

Moo

It isn’t, this is true. But the gaming community, more specifically a subset of streaming gamers, have created a different set of circumstances than just phoning the police. They spoof numbers and hide the caller’s ID. As well as fight for anonymity that allows them to hide more effectively.

Posted by Ian Climacus (# 944) on :

I consign CNN's view-this-ad to hell...

Wrong thread.

I live a sheltered life. I never knew this was a thing. I can just about imagine a cheated husband calling the police on the lover, but due to a game???

What is the peculiar psychology of the gamer community lilBuddha mentioned? From GamerGate I got the impression it was rather masculine, and sexist. Are these "worlds" people inhabit becoming so real due to time (and money?)?

My mind boggles. And heart breaks. For the victim, plus the police officer. I fear these acts may lessen for a while but then ramp back up.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ian Climacus:

What is the peculiar psychology of the gamer community lilBuddha mentioned? From GamerGate I got the impression it was rather masculine, and sexist. Are these "worlds" people inhabit becoming so real due to time (and money?)?

It is sexist, but not only sexist. It is an insulated community that can create a hyper-real aspect to situations that would normally be let go by more of the participants were it in a face-to-face environment. The psychology exists off-line, but online allows for an extra layer of disconnect for one's actions.

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

Here is an account of a swatting that had nothing to do with gaming.

Moo

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by roybart:
But this story is not just "about" swatting. It is more significantly about yet another police shooting of someone presumed, unjustifiably, to deserve it.

The police are not meant to shoot people "because they deserve it". We're not living in MegaCity 1 yet.

There is a wider phenomenon of innocent people getting shot by police, that seems to happen when the victim had no reason to suppose he was about to be challenged by armed police. If you're engaged in an armed robbery, the possibility of coming up against armed police is in your mind; you can decide whether to try to shoot it out or surrender, but when you hear "armed police!" you know what is happening.

If you're just walking around carrying a table leg ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Harry_Stanley ) or running for a tube train ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menezes ) , then you're not expecting to be challenged by armed police. Your reaction at that point, whilst your brain is still trying to process the incoming information, can result in your death.

I think this phenomenon is under-researched. All police firearms procedure seems to work on the assumption that the person being challenged is who the police think they are and is doing what they think they're doing.

It scares me because I can be very slow to take in what's going on around me. I can see how it could happen to me.

(fixed links)

[ 01. January 2018, 13:33: Message edited by: Doc Tor ]

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

I think there's a lot of truth there.

You see the police, their guns drawn shouting "hands up!". You know there's no reason they're shouting at you, you've done nothing wrong, there must be someone else they're shouting at.

You're pulled over by the police, you don't think you were speeding, but perhaps you were. You expect them to be asking for your licence and id, that they're telling you to keep your hands in sight doesn't register because it's unexpected, you do what you think they want and reach for your wallet.

How do we train police to deal with the real possibility that everyone they encounter could be innocent and behaving accordingly? As well as the possibility that they're the real deal, armed and dangerous?

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

The police, especially the generally undertrained American police, also go into that situation with a mindset that doesn't allow for proper perspective. They go in adrenaline up, thinking that the target is a threat.
It is a catch-22 situation, made worse by the poor training and prevalence of guns.

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
The police, especially the generally undertrained American police, also go into that situation with a mindset that doesn't allow for proper perspective. They go in adrenaline up, thinking that the target is a threat.

The police are acting on the basis of information to the effect that someone has killed or is threatening to kill at least one other person. The police see it as their job to prevent further carnage.

The problem is that the report is false.

Moo

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Moo:

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
The police, especially the generally undertrained American police, also go into that situation with a mindset that doesn't allow for proper perspective. They go in adrenaline up, thinking that the target is a threat.
The police are acting on the basis of information to the effect that someone has killed or is threatening to kill at least one other person. The police see it as their job to prevent further carnage.

The problem is that the report is false.

Moo

I disagree. Not that the false report isn't a huge problem, it is. And the perpetrator(s) are responsible for the man's death.
But police are part of the problem as well. Part of it solvable, part of it not.
American police, as a whole, are woefully under-trained. This is a fact. If you expect people to go into potentially dangerous situations, they should be as prepared as possible. For their own safety as well as the public's. This part could be made better.
The part that cannot is that one must be prepared to respond to a threat quickly and that will result in necessary fatalities. Our brains are not built for the speed in which these situations can occur.
Proper training can reduce unnecessary deaths. It will never eliminate them, but fewer is better.

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Moo:

The problem is that the report is false.

That is one of the problems, certainly, but it is also the case that the police fairly routinely shoot and kill people who aren't actually armed and posing an imminent threat to anyone. People who are having a mental heath episode, people who are holding a wallet or cellphone, children with toys, people who are deaf, or people who just don't react in exactly the way that Officer Hair-Trigger is expecting them to react.

It's also not unheard of for the police to stage a full-scale raid on the wrong house, because someone screwed up the address.

In all these cases, the police have an act first and ask questions later approach. Their training is entirely about dominating any interaction by force and shouting, and not to engage the brain at all until the member of the public that they are interacting with is subdued.

As you can perhaps tell by my tone, I am not convinced that this is the optimal model of policing.

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

Yep. I think swatting is the tip of an iceberg. Below that relatively small number of incidents of malicious false-reporting there's a much larger issue of acting on incomplete information and simple mistakes.

Posted by Pigwidgeon (# 10192) on :

On a lighter note (no one was harmed), we had a case of bounty hunters rather than a SWAT team who were sent to the wrong address -- the Phoenix Chief of Police.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
"Come O Meteorite, come quickly." We don't deserve to survive.

Hear.

"I've been wading through all this unbelievable
junk and wondering if I should have given
the world to the monkeys." --God, as reported by Elvis Costello

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
In all these cases, the police have an act first and ask questions later approach. Their training is entirely about dominating any interaction by force and shouting, and not to engage the brain at all until the member of the public that they are interacting with is subdued.

For values of "subdued" up to and including "dead." And there is no way to hold them accountable. The Big Blue Wall keeps them from testifying against each other, and the various attorneys general are professionally reluctant to bring charges, and judges and juries are reticient to find guilty. All the makings of a police state, except -- well, except fuck-all. We live in a police state. America is now a third-world country. Travel here at your own risk.

Posted by RuthW (# 13) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
In all these cases, the police have an act first and ask questions later approach. Their training is entirely about dominating any interaction by force and shouting, and not to engage the brain at all until the member of the public that they are interacting with is subdued.

This is a massive over-statement. Police training isn't uniform across the country, and in many places police training is not in fact entirely about dominating through force and shouting. Plenty of police departments emphasize de-escalation as a policy, and a retired LAPD cop I know says that's pretty much what he did on patrol all the time. I asked him what he thought about the Pasadena police officers who beat the crap out of a black guy during a minor traffic stop, and he said it was a bullshit stop to begin with that they went on to handle all wrong -- they shouldn't have been shouting at the guy and man-handling him. But he also said that as soon as the guy grabbed for an officer's baton, policy says they needed to counter that with strong force, and that's why they weren't disciplined. I think they ought to have been disciplined for creating such a bad situation, and obviously there is plenty to criticize about the way we are policed in the US. But when I was assaulted on the street, I was grateful for the cops who showed up within minutes and calmly and entirely without incident arrested the crazy drunk woman who had punched me in the back of the head.

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
This is a massive over-statement.

An overstatement, probably. But I really don't think it's a massive one.

I agree with you that police training varies significantly around the country, and am happy to hear your retired LAPD cop saying that de-escalation is pretty much what he did on patrol all the time.

And yet just up the road in Pasadena: "they shouldn't have been shouting at the guy and man-handling him. But he also said that as soon as the guy grabbed for an officer's baton, policy says they needed to counter that with strong force, and that's why they weren't disciplined."

So the cops start assaulting someone, and when he tries to defend himself in any feeble manner, policy says they have to counter with strong force.

Which has nothing at all to do with de-escalation.
You know what is de-escalation? Grabbing the stick someone's hitting you with so they can't hit you any more. That's de-escalation. And you know who was doing that? The victim.

I've met any number of perfectly pleasant cops, in various parts of the country, and had sensible polite interactions with them - if I've stopped them to ask for directions, or some other interaction that I have initiated. But when they start issuing instructions, it's entirely different. There's no please and thank you, no politeness, just aggressively-barked commands. That's not de-escalation.

Now, cops shouting at people in a rude and uncivilized fashion doesn't in itself get people hurt or killed, but it's usually the small, frequent actions that speak to attitude, and this attitude is one of aggressive command.

Posted by simontoad (# 18096) on :

I have another take on the OP's title question. Yesterday I read a story in Haaretz about a dinner party held by a noble family during the war in Hungary I think. After dinner, some of the guests got into a truck and drove across a field where they executed 180 Jewish slaves. This was pre-arranged, as the slaves had spent the afternoon digging a trench which became their graves. The guests then returned to the party I think.

Nothing has gone wrong with the Human Race. We are the same as we always have been.

Posted by Ian Climacus (# 944) on :

Good Lord, that is horrific. I'd hope some of us have moved on since then...but I guess we'll never know unless we're put in a situation. God help me.

And I thought this was sinking fairly low.

Posted by simontoad (# 18096) on :

There is hope. There is light. There is good. I saw it again watching a play last night. People deserve chances at redemption precisely because there is the potential for evil in all of us.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

quote:
Originally posted by simontoad:
There is hope. There is light. There is good. I saw it again watching a play last night.

Ah! Exactly! It is the calling of the artist to show us the light. Quick, Robin -- to the manuscript. The Batsignal is in the sky!

Posted by Ian Climacus (# 944) on :

quote:
Originally posted by simontoad:
There is hope. There is light. There is good. I saw it again watching a play last night.

There is. But it seems just a flicker in today's world. Perhaps 'twas always thus...and I was once idealistic.

quote:
Originally posted by simontoad:
People deserve chances at redemption precisely because there is the potential for evil in all of us.

Oh, indeed. It is that potential for evil that scares me, though. If a Hitler, or Trump, can exist, and thrive, what the hell am I capable of? And what would tip me over?

Posted by simontoad (# 18096) on :

I don't know. But if I was at that party, and my comrade asked me, I'm not sure I can say with 100% certainty that I wouldn't have got on that truck. That doesn't in any way lessen the moral culpability of those who committed that awful crime. It just puts it in perspective.

The byzantines regarded it as a mercy to put out the eyes of internal enemies, rather than kill them. They wanted to give people a chance to repent. I like that idea.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

Good and evil. Stupid. Really stupid. Even those who believe in good and evil should not think in these terms in regards to behaviour. Much of what we do is influenced by how our brains evolved. Most Nazis weren’t evil. Not even all those who did atrocious things were evil. They were led to those behaviours. Not that this absolves them, of course.

Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Most Nazis weren’t evil.

That's some serious shit you're smoking.

Even the Nazis realised they were the bad guys.

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Good and evil. Stupid. Really stupid. Even those who believe in good and evil should not think in these terms in regards to behaviour. Much of what we do is influenced by how our brains evolved. Most Nazis weren’t evil. Not even all those who did atrocious things were evil. They were led to those behaviours. Not that this absolves them, of course.

Those behaviours were utterly evil.

There is no such thing as an evil person, just evil behaviour. So we must be held account for what we do, not who we are (nobody, except ourselves, knows who we really are)

Posted by simontoad (# 18096) on :

Great sketch Doc Tor. One of my faves.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

The tabloids usually print EVIL next to stories about notorious killers, along with GO TO HELL. I still don't really understand what they mean in either phrase, except I suppose, 'we don't like you'. The large print size gives it an extra kick.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Most Nazis weren’t evil.
That's some serious shit you're smoking.

Even the Nazis realised they were the bad guys.

Boogie gets it, I think. It isn’t rocket surgery. The Germans were not possessed by demons or particularly bad, neither were the Khmer Rouge, etc. Ordinary people can be got to do horrible things in the right circumstance. Hitler didn’t wield power given the devil, he manipulated psychologically/sociology. Yes, there were Nazis who could only be described as evil, regardless of the supernatural. But most of them were not. More people would do the same in those circumstances than think they would. The same people who go to church, donate to charity, are kind to strangers in good circumstance might do horrrible things in extremis. And it isn’t evil influence, but human nature.

Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :

"The Germans weren't particularly bad."

Yeah, okay. Of course, I could post a dozen pictures of laughing off-duty guards at Auschwitz, or smiling U-boat crews or that clip of film of Hitler doing a little dance.

No. They were particularly bad. The average Wehrmacht soldier didn't go to war in 1939 not knowing what the Nazis wanted, and only return home in 1945 to discover that his Jewish neighbours had mysteriously disappeared and no one knew where they might have gone.

You might be able to argue that "The British weren't particularly bad", and debate the merits of carpet bombing and Dresden and Bomber Harris. The British and their Empire allies did do terrible things in the aim of winning the war against fascism, but 'not particularly bad' is a pretty decent description of what happened.

The German population? Nope. They gave their lives in service to a great evil, and in doing so, did evil, became the agents of evil and spread evil in the world. To say they themselves weren't actually evil is semantic sophistry. They were indeed, the baddies.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
world. To say they themselves weren't actually evil is semantic sophistry. They were indeed, the baddies.

Doc, you are not stupid. But sometimes you say stupid things.* I'm not saying that Germany didn't do horrible things. I'm saying that you, you Doc Tor, could easily do the same things in the same circumstance. If PapaDoc Tor had placed you, BabyDoc Tor, in a time machine and you were taken to early 20thC Germany, you could have been a guard at Dachau. You wouldn't have been 'infected" by evil, just reacting how normal people do.
Thinking in terms of good and evil ignores why people do what they do and our susceptibility to influence.
Thinking in terms of evil makes people think that merely praying and trying to be "good" can fix things or keep them from straying.

*Does the analogy help to see how it works?

Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
If PapaDoc Tor had placed you, BabyDoc Tor, in a time machine and you were taken to early 20thC Germany, you could have been a guard at Dachau.

No.

I'd have been in Dachau, you blind idiot, because PapaDoc Tor was a fucking Jew.

Seriously. Go and sit in a corner and think about what you've done.

Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
You wouldn't have been "infected" by evil, just reacting how normal people do.

I remember reading about an experiment that was done with a pool of college students. I don't remember the exact details, but they went something like this:

The pool was arbitrarily divided into "guards" and "prisoners". The "prisoners" were again arbitrarily divided into a group that the guards were told was being punished for heinous crimes, and a group that the guards were told was being given protective custody so that they could testify against some truly heinous crimes. Both groups of prisoners were housed in substantially similar cells -- sparse, but not overly uncomfortable.

The experimenters observed that the guards who were watching the prisoners who were being punished treated them with cruelty, and the guards who were watching the prisoners who were being given protective custody treated them with kindness.

There was nothing intrinsically "evil" about the cruel guards. They acted the way they did because they were led to believe that their charges didn't deserve to be treated otherwise. This, even though they all well knew that it was only an experiment, that the prisoners weren't really criminals or witnesses.

The same may be true for Nazi Germany. The people were told that the Jews had cornered banking and commerce and so were directly responsible for the miserable state of society. A "final solution" had to be applied.

Certainly in our present day, there are plenty of people who sincerely believe that all their troubles are due to "entitlements" doled out to the undeserving poor, or special treatment given to blacks, Muslims and (even still) Jews.

Even so, I do find it hard to believe that a death camp guard would not have felt even some small pang of remorse over a feeble grandmother's sigh of despair, or a small child's crying for its mother, as they were shoved into the furnace.

Posted by RooK (# 1852) on :

Perhaps you're thinking of the Milgram experiment. Humans are horrifying.

Posted by Ian Climacus (# 944) on :

No, the Stanford Prison Experiment. Das Experiment was a German film I saw "recreating" it.

Your example is pretty screwed too.

edit: German film added

[ 04. January 2018, 20:59: Message edited by: Ian Climacus ]

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha
The Germans were not possessed by demons or particularly bad, neither were the Khmer Rouge, etc. Ordinary people can be got to do horrible things in the right circumstance.

All the Germans who were adults when Hitler came to power had at least part of their schooling while the Kaiser was on the throne. They had been taught that they belonged to the government and their highest duty was to obey the government.

The fact that the Gestapo would descend on people who didn't see it that way also provided a strong incentive to go along with the regime.

Moo

Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :

quote:
Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart - and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us it oscillates with the years. And even within the hearts overwhelmed with evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains…an un-uprooted small corner of evil. Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions on the world. They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person. And since that time I have come to understand the falsehood of all the revolutions of history: they destroy only those carriers of evil contemporary with them (and also fail, out of haste, to discriminate the carriers of good as well). And they take to themselves as their heritage the actual evil itself, magnified still more.

Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

Good and evil sits in every one of us, and we have to make the daily effort to constrict the evil inside.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
If PapaDoc Tor had placed you, BabyDoc Tor, in a time machine and you were taken to early 20thC Germany, you could have been a guard at Dachau.
No.

I'd have been in Dachau, you blind idiot, because PapaDoc Tor was a fucking Jew.

Seriously. Go and sit in a corner and think about what you've done.

Seriously, go sit in a corner and think.
What the Germans did in WWII was horrible and horrifying and there is no excuse. However there are reasons that people, ordinary people, could be complicit in that. If you think it was a characteristic of being German, you are a fool. It was a characteristic of being human and it isn't "evil lurking inside". The capacity to do good or bad things does reside in all of us. But what brings it out is often much more mundane than "teh evilz".
Thinking that way can allow a complacency that can aid those who would pull people into acts of a terrifying nature.
In short, if you think God can protect you, you might not think critically of what is happening around you.

Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :

No, I don't think it was characteristic of being German. It was a characteristic of doing what a fascist tells you to do and doing it.

Meanwhile, you conveniently skip past the point where you told the son of a Jew he could be a guard at Dachau.

Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. If you ever want to think about where evil lies, think about that part where you elided your own boorish error and tried to make me feel bad instead. Evil comes from inside you.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:

Meanwhile, you conveniently skip past the point where you told the son of a Jew he could be a guard at Dachau.

It isn't something I could know without being psychic. If you have mentioned it on this site, I missed it.

quote:

Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. If you ever want to think about where evil lies, think about that part where you elided your own boorish error and tried to make me feel bad instead. Evil comes from inside you.

I was not trying to make you feel bad, but to illustrate my point.
Though, I will admit in my focus on my point I did not think about how you feel about what your father went through. And that was insensitive.
Nazis are a goto example of how bad we humans can be, so I used them. I should have switched examples after you mentioned your father.
And I apologise for that.

What I am trying to illustrate holds true regardless of who is abusing who.
I could have used personal examples, but the most demonstrative would require more than just time travel. The idea is the same though, I could abuse people in the way my ancestors were abused. I could could treat people as I am treated. One thing that makes me different is opportunity. I hope that I would still stand for what is right, that I would still advocate for equality. But I cannot know. Understanding why we do what we do is one of the few hopes we have of not succumbing to the worst of what we can be.

ETA: Regarding opportunity. I have been a bully. Not intentionally, but there are situations I have abused what power I've had. Not egregiously, but still abused power.

[ 05. January 2018, 00:12: Message edited by: lilBuddha ]

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :

Doc Tor--

Respectfully, was there any way for lB to know your father was Jewish?

{cross-posted with lB.}

[ 05. January 2018, 00:19: Message edited by: Golden Key ]

Posted by Nicolemr (# 28) on :

To get back to the OP, I think it's fairly obvious that nothing has "gone wrong" with the human race. We are as we've always been, with capacity for great good and great evil built into us. Anyone who thinks that people in the past were in any way less inclined to evil than people are today doesn't know much history.

Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
I have been a bully. Not intentionally, but there are situations I have abused what power I've had. Not egregiously, but still abused power.

Oh, that's bollocks. You are a bully. You're a bully here on this site. It's been pointed out to you often enough here in Hell.

Your capacity for self-delusion together with your knee-jerk offence trigger makes you - on occasions - a genuinely unpleasant poster for others to have to deal with.

The difference between us is that I recognise my capacity for evil. Most days I keep a lid on it. Some days I don't. But recognising I'm a monster is part of the solution. For all your supposed wokeness, you're blind to the monster inside you.

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

The ‘evil lurking inside you’ is part of being human. It’s the animal, reptilian brain.

We are all using the different words to describe the same thing.

Any one of us could revert to that reptilian ‘kill’ mode given the right (awful) circumstances.

Dogs don’t have human brains, they have mammalian brains which do experience feelings of love, joy fear and disgust - ‘tho not the more complex feelings of guilt, pride and shame.

I see exactly the point that normal dog interaction turns into ‘prey drive’ and the primitive responses reappear. It’s more subtle with humans and we have all the capacity to then rationalise and justify every action.

Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Doc Tor--

Respectfully, was there any way for lB to know your father was Jewish?

{cross-posted with lB.}

lB might not have known but, as they say in court, ignorance is no excuse. She certainly can't pretend it doesn't matter.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Oh, that's bollocks. You are a bully. You're a bully here on this site. It's been pointed out to you often enough here in Hell.

A bully needs power, what power do I have here?

quote:

The difference between us is that I recognise my capacity for evil. Most days I keep a lid on it. Some days I don't. But recognising I'm a monster is part of the solution. For all your supposed wokeness, you're blind to the monster inside you.

Not completely blind. I have mentioned many times that I’ve an anger problem. I also am stubborn and have difficulty letting things go. I’m far too blunt and confrontational. Well, the list goes on. This is absolutely not an excuse for anything. It is the opposite of an excuse.
But it is the point. I know what triggers me and the reasons behind it. And still find it difficult to keep it under control all the time. Most people don’t and that is one reason ordinary, generally good, people can be complicit in atrocity.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:

quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Doc Tor--

Respectfully, was there any way for lB to know your father was Jewish?

{cross-posted with lB.}
lB might not have known but, as they say in court, ignorance is no excuse.

This doesn’t make sense in this context.

quote:

She certainly can't pretend it doesn't matter.

I didn’t say it doesn’t matter. As much as I obviously don’t mind being a bitch, I don’t deliberately go for a poster’s sensitive issues.

Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :

LB uses the words 'I apologise' in a single sentence. Not something I thought I’d live to witness.

Many of Lb's posts are informative but for some unknown, (possibly tangible), reason a good proportion of those contributions are tainted with a latent fury and spite. As the popcorn was being munched it did appear a legitimate argument was being used by LB, one which I might agree with, but when she blindly reversed into DT a good deal of rethinking time was required for the tone to be altered.

Going back to Godwin and death camps.
At the Nuremberg trials there was one camp commander who, being proper and 'honourable', said he was resolute in not allowing any cruelty or humiliation to those being held there to be murdered. He was laughed at by the Courtroom. I do though wonder where that individual comes in on the 1 to 10 scale of evil when put beside others who delighted in torture.

In terms of the human race as a whole, if there is any detectable difference in our potential for cruelty then what can any human do but look into her/his own heart.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by rolyn:
LB uses the words 'I apologise' in a single sentence. Not something I thought I’d live to witness.

Seriously? I've done it many times here. Too many times really, because it means I need to slow down and think before posting.

quote:

Many of Lb's posts are informative but for some unknown, (possibly tangible), reason a good proportion of those contributions are tainted with a latent fury and spite.

Fury is a legitimate charge. Spite. I can think of one person to whom it might be fair to say I interact this way with. But generally, no. Fury covers most of it.

quote:

As the popcorn was being munched it did appear a legitimate argument was being used by LB, one which I might agree with, but when she blindly reversed into DT a good deal of rethinking time was required for the tone to be altered.

Legit. Straight up, I fucked up there.

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by rolyn:
At the Nuremberg trials there was one camp commander who, being proper and 'honourable', said he was resolute in not allowing any cruelty or humiliation to those being held there to be murdered.

He was saying that it was his job to run the death camp, with all that entailed. However, it was not part of his job to allow gratuitous cruelty.

I do not subscribe to this point of view in any way, but I understand it. The German people had it drilled into them that they owed obedience to those in authority. The commandant was under orders to send these people to the gas chambers, but he was free to act as he saw fit as far a the treatment of prisoners before they went to the gas chambers.

I was a student in Germany in the mid-1950s, and I gradually came to understand the attitude of most Germans toward authority.

Moo

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :

Sioni Sais--

quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:

quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Doc Tor--

Respectfully, was there any way for lB to know your father was Jewish?

{cross-posted with lB.}
lB might not have known but, as they say in court, ignorance is no excuse. She certainly can't pretend it doesn't matter.

I've never believed that "ignorance is no excuse".

In calling lB a "blind idiot", Doc Tor sounds like the truth is right in front of her face, and she hasn't noticed it.

Doc Tor has every right to feel pain and anger about the hypothetical situation of being in a concentration camp (or being a guard, for that matter). If he had said, one or two posts before lB's, that he's particularly sensitive to the problem of evil because of Jewish ancestry...and lB had read and understood that...and purposely said what she did...then yes, she would've been very much in the wrong.

I've read many of Doc Tor's posts over many years, and had no idea of any Jewish ancestry. Of course, I do lose track of people's backgrounds and beliefs here. And we generally know very little about any particular Shipmate.

Yes, lB's posts can be difficult. BUT IMHO they've been much better over the past year or so.

I just don't think she should be blamed when she didn't know.

FWIW.

Posted by simontoad (# 18096) on :

I enjoy much of what LB posts, though I've really only been active since 2016. She applies a blowtorch to error which can be hurtful, but she also usually has the saving grace which comes from being correct. I believe she's been sufficiently contrite here, and I doff my hat to her for that.

Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Moo:

I was a student in Germany in the mid-1950s, and I gradually came to understand the attitude of most Germans toward authority.
Moo

When looking at Germany from the 50s onwards up to the present day, I can't help but have respect for a people capable of bouncing back from the ravages of two world wars and the Iron curtain.
Productions like Das Boot and Downfall reveal much of what you say as to the German attitude to authority in wartime.
Maybe the nation needs to search it's conscience a little deeper over the actual atrocities committed in wartime? Maybe many of us need to try forget about the whole 'effin business, I really don't know.

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by rolyn:
Productions like Das Boot and Downfall reveal much of what you say as to the German attitude to authority in wartime.

That attitude was not just in wartime. It was there long before. I don't know whether it is still there.

Moo

Posted by ThunderBunk (# 15579) on :

Any register of wartime atrocities needs to record also those committed by the Allies. I'm thinking particularly of the bombing of Dresden, which was sheer needless, vindictive destruction. The war was already won at that stage.

Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :

Dresden was done as a show of strength, it was done to assist the Russian advance, it was done to send an unequivocal message to a Country which had both threatened war and waged war for 70 years.
The bombing of civilians was a strategic method initiated by Germany in WW1. The fire-storming of cities was a method tried on East London in 1940, and given the resources Germany would have relentlessly pursued those tactics in order to defeat Britain.

Two wrongs and a right? Maybe so. Takes us back to the OP title.

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

Another reason for the bombing of Dresden is that the Allies were very tired of the war, and wanted to end it as soon as possible.

Moo

Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :

Moo--

When you were in Germany and trying to understand it later, did you find that the acceptance of authority varied in different parts of Germany?

There's a saying I learned (possibly in German class): Northern Germans say "the situation is serious, but not hopeless", whereas Southern Germans say "the situation is hopeless, but not serious". I don't know how much of a stereotype that is.

Just wondering how those attitudes might have played out re authority.

Thx.

Posted by simontoad (# 18096) on :

I also wonder to what extent German attitudes to authority have changed as a result of the East German experience and re-unification. It's on my long list of thinks I'd like to know. I read a Merkel biography, but it was basically a panegyric. I'm girding my loins to read another one, but this time I will try to find one in a bookshop (could be tough) so I can make an assessment of what the author thinks of her. Maybe that bloke who did the hatchet job on Trump will do her next...

Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

The Germany my father left just pre-war is nothing like the Germany my cousins live in now. Authority is questioned all the time. But the culture is also one of politeness and not being a jerk about it. German lack of subtlety and lack of nuance has something also to do with the structure of the language; I won't suggest that psycholinguistics are pivotal, but there's an influence. The obedience to authority thing had truth in it, but it does not explain well the genocidal practice of the Nazi regime. This, I think had more in common with more typical historical European anti-Semitism and racism than most want to admit. Just add complete devastation of the economy and, yes it could happen here. Understanding that Black people in the USA and Indigenous people in Canada were both subject to policies on a continuum with the same foul human nature at the time and both refused admittance to Jewish refugees.

The trumpian Muslim banning and anti-Hispanic rhetoric is an appeal to the same gutter emotion and bully boy feelings of triumph and elation as was 1930s Hitlerism. I'm also remembering hearing of Rwandan "cockroach" characterization of ethnicity, and gook body counts of the Vietnam war era.

What's wrong with the human race is written well in Joshua. Where the people of god receive not just the approval of God to exterminate the Canninites but express orders to do it, at least in their post-genocide writings to justify it. Which of course is BS but it provides ready justification for killing off anyone different or because your people want some other people's land, their stuff, and usually in the heart of the killing to rape before killing. Are we progressively confronting the foul aspects of our given characteristics? Making choices? Or perpetuating them? // both I think, with a particularly bad patch in the 20th centuries and the start of this one, though the body count is dropping.

[ 07. January 2018, 01:50: Message edited by: no prophet's flag is set so... ]

Posted by simontoad (# 18096) on :

Hear hear no prophet. That's a very good post.

[Overused]

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Moo--

When you were in Germany and trying to understand it later, did you find that the acceptance of authority varied in different parts of Germany?

Not really. There are tremendous differences between various parts of Germany, but principle of obeying authority was entrenched everywhere. ( I love Swabia, where I spent a year.)

I'm not sure that the 'question authority' is an improvement. From what I've seen of it, it's practiced as 'reject authority'. Some people think that all authority should be disobeyed always.

Questioning authority is good; automatically rejecting it is not.

Moo

Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
Another reason for the bombing of Dresden is that the Allies were very tired of the war, and wanted to end it as soon as possible.

Indeed so.
Harris believed a Country could be bombed into submission. He was eventually proved right because this was how Japan came to surrender some months later. His only error was try it out on a death or glory regime with an extraordinarily tenacious population behind it.

Some may well ask, —What was the message embedded in the Allied terror bombing campaign in 1945, (of which the Dresden attack was part)? I suspect it was the following:

Dear people of the Central Powers,
We the Allies are entirely pissed off at having paid a massive and terrible price by pushing you back to your borders in 1918, only to be attacked and invaded again 22yrs later.
War is HELL. If you continue deal in war then HELL is what you will receive in return.

Posted by simontoad (# 18096) on :

Rosa Luxemburg? She was almost an anarchist I think [Smile]

Posted by RdrEmCofE (# 17511) on :

quote:
His only error was try it out on a death or glory regime with an extraordinarily tenacious population behind it.

Surely Japan under its military government was just such a regime with just such a population behind it, yet it eventually had the desired result, albeit only after two such bombs and Russia declaring war against Japan on another front.

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

Japan might have folded because of extreme transportation problems. Before the war, most transportation was by coastal steamer. Submarines put paid to that. Only ten percent of the roads were paved; the rest did not lend themselves to heavy traffic. Most of the railroads hugged the coast which made them vulnerable to offshore enemy ships as well as planes.

Without the ability to move food and ammunition to where the army needed it,it's not certain whether they could have repulsed an invasion.

Moo

Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

Japan is interesting. My father's family quit Germany for Indonesia and then Singapore. They also lived in Manila. The American story before the Japanese invasion in the Philippines isn't positive; liberation from them along to Ukrainian hopes on Germany's invasion was anticipated by some.

Back to Japan: America had expanded into the Pacific with the coup and annexation of Hawaii, conquest of Philippines. Russia had threatened from the North. Japan felt it had no option as America controlled and then cut off oil and steel trade with them. Which would suggest that the cause of the Pacific war in WW2 was economic. America and Japan fought to dominate the Pacific and southeast Asia. America for profit, Japan for the real prospect of failure off the country as a country. Now we have both working things out with China which is more patient to understand that econmics will dictate the eventual outcome of conflict whether by arms or by trade. But then I had a Marxist economics teacher at univ in the days following the discreditable and idiotic failure of America in Vietnam.

So with pseudo Marxist analysis I will suggest that the next big confrontation is the EU versus USA, and the UK is Poland. Russia takes more of Ukraine and gets fully integrated with Turkey and a Russified Turkey. More deaths will mean more movies and novels later.

Posted by Rossweisse (# 2349) on :

quote:
Originally posted by rolyn:
Dresden was done as a show of strength, it was done to assist the Russian advance, it was done to send an unequivocal message to a Country which had both threatened war and waged war for 70 years....
Two wrongs and a right? Maybe so. Takes us back to the OP title.

Dresden was a war crime, pure and simple. To firebomb a city known for its art, with no strategic significance, which was filled with refugees, was simply inexcusable. Bomber Harris should have been put on trial himself.

Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

On the other hand the fire bombing of Dresden gave us Kurt Vonnegut's magnificent Slaughterhouse Five.

Which says among other amazing things that if you lynch someone it's better that they aren't well connected like Jesus, that no one should take glee in massacres, that the gospel is about don't kill or shit on nobodies because this really aggravates God. But it's still people who do all the wrathful stuff. The fuckers.

He also said the only sounds after the fire bombing of Dresden was birds.

Posted by Ian Climacus (# 944) on :

Back to the human race...

Terrible result of bullying.

Posted by simontoad (# 18096) on :

That girl's Dad still wears a Merv. He looks like Chopper Reid in a cowboy hat! Chopper Reid was part-Sudanese I'm told.

There's an election in my state this year, so the Liberals and their allies in the press are ramping up the fear factor concerning black teenagers. One politician, the despicable Peter Dutton, recently alleged that Victorians were afraid to go out to dinner for fear of being followed home and attacked. African-Australians constitute less than 0.5% of Victorians, but commit about 2% of the crime. That's a bit high, so there is a problem, but as the stats in this ABC article show youth crime is not really about black kids.

Anyway, you don't need to go to Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot to find examples of humans behaving badly.

Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :

posted by Rossweisse

quote:
Dresden was a war crime, pure and simple. To firebomb a city known for its art, with no strategic significance, which was filled with refugees, was simply inexcusable. Bomber Harris should have been put on trial himself.

1. War crimes may be many things but the one thing they aren't is pure or simple.

2. Dresden wasn't "firebombed": the proportion of incendiaries dropped compared to HE was small. What couldn't be foreseen was that those incendiaries dropped - ironically most to mark specific targets - would be so close together they'd combine with the prevailing winds and street layout in the centre of the city to create a fire-storm.

3. Cities known for their art/ heritage - so you're thinking Exeter, Bath, Norwich, York, Canterbury I assume. All of those were heavily bombed and, unlike Dresden, none of them had any strategic significance, unless you count the railway hub at York. And Exeter and Bath had large concentrations of evacuees (refugees by another name) who were moved there to escape bombing in other places such as London.

4. Dresden was highly industrialised and was also very much a nazi-supporting city - it is reckoned to be the first to have turned all of its non-essential manufacturing capacity onto a war-footing in 1939, before the invasion of Poland. At the time of the fire-storm raid there were 70,000 workers engaged in producing munitions and other war essentials - and that figure doesn't include those "workers" (slaves in reality) who were brought in from occupied countries or were forced labour from the camps.

5. Dresden was strategically vital for the war in the East. in February 1945 at the time of the raid it was less than 120 miles from the front of the Russian advance and there were good reasons to try to destroy the rail network that was keeping the German army suppled with men and materiel.

6. You may consider Harris a war criminal but clear-headed examination of his decisions doesn't bear that out. And, unlike either Goering or Hitler, Harris didn't operate in a vacuum but as part of a proper, functioning command structure. If Harris had been indicted for war crimes then logic would have dictated that all the other people who agreed the raids be in the dock with him: Churchill, Portal, Eisenhower, etc.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

To the OP. Nowt.

"What in the name of all that is holy has gone wrong with us?"

Er, nothing.

"When will it end?"

When we transcend.

"Will it end?"

In the end.

Posted by Rossweisse (# 2349) on :

quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
1. War crimes may be many things but the one thing they aren't is pure or simple. ...

We will have to disagree on this. Even a World War II of my acquaintance who thought dropping the atom bomb on Nagasaki was justified (something else with which I disagree) couldn't excuse Dresden.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:

5. Dresden was strategically vital for the war in the East. in February 1945 at the time of the raid it was less than 120 miles from the front of the Russian advance and there were good reasons to try to destroy the rail network that was keeping the German army suppled with men and materiel.

The Allies purposely chose city-centre, civilian targets and ignored industrial, areas on the outskirts of town. Regardless of any other thing, they killed more civilians than necessary. The purpose was to demoralise the civilian population.
Harris never hid this. You can agree with his reasoning or not, but Dresden was never just a tactical target.
Dresden was strategic. But terrorising the population was part of that strategy.

Posted by Ian Climacus (# 944) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Rossweisse:
We will have to disagree on this. Even a World War II of my acquaintance who thought dropping the atom bomb on Nagasaki was justified (something else with which I disagree) couldn't excuse Dresden.

Perhaps a simple answer, but I remember attending a Catholic Spirituality Course and the topic came up...perhaps via a question. The priest pondered and said it would've been better for them to drop the nuclear bomb on a nearby inhabited island first to show what the US could do. And then go from there. That did make me think.

Just thankful I will never be, or ever was, in such a situation to make such a decision.

Posted by Rossweisse (# 2349) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ian Climacus:
...Just thankful I will never be, or ever was, in such a situation to make such a decision.

Ahh-men.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ian Climacus:
The priest pondered and said it would've been better for them to drop the nuclear bomb on a nearby inhabited island first to show what the US could do. And then go from there.

The intent was to have the civilian population see and fear the capabilities of the US and therefore pressure the government to surrender. If you agree with that, a major city was the logical choice. If you do not, no place inhabited was morally acceptable. Since the first bomb did not produce a surrender, they made the correct choice in terms of their goal.
The morality is a whole separate argument.

Posted by Ian Climacus (# 944) on :

Sorry, I meant UNinhabited. And I did preview post.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ian Climacus:

quote:
Originally posted by Rossweisse:
We will have to disagree on this. Even a World War II of my acquaintance who thought dropping the atom bomb on Nagasaki was justified (something else with which I disagree) couldn't excuse Dresden.
Perhaps a simple answer, but I remember attending a Catholic Spirituality Course and the topic came up...perhaps via a question. The priest pondered and said it would've been better for them to drop the nuclear bomb on a nearby inhabited island first to show what the US could do. And then go from there. That did make me think.

Just thankful I will never be, or ever was, in such a situation to make such a decision.

It wouldn't have changed a thing. Except extend the war. There'd have been no Nagasaki. No surrender. There was no fourth bomb. Able and Baker were in the pipeline for '46.

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
The intent was to have the civilian population see and fear the capabilities of the US and therefore pressure the government to surrender.

It would have had no effect if the civilian population tried to pressure the government. All war decisions were in the hands of the military leaders. Nothing could be done without the consent of the War Minister in the Cabinet, who was an army general on active duty. If the other army high-ups didn't like what he did, they could remove him from active duty, which meant that he had to resign as War Minister.

The military were quite willing to sacrifice the lives of any number of civilians. They weren't important.

In the spring of 1945 (a few months before the Japanese surrender) the secret police arrested several hundred people "on suspicion of harboring a desire for peace".

Moo

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
It wouldn't have changed a thing. Except extend the war. There'd have been no Nagasaki. No surrender. There was no fourth bomb. Able and Baker were in the pipeline for '46.

Don't think this is true. You're right that the Able and Baker tests happened in 1946, but there was at least one other Fat Man core ready to go, and it would have been possible to have another pair of Fat Man bombs on Tinian island about a week after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the event, no further fissile material left the US.

Conversely, it would have taken several months to produce enough U-235 for an additional Little Boy. (Little Boy was dropped first because it was a dead cert to go off, whereas there was more uncertainty about Fat Man's trigger mechanism. Assuming it worked, Fat Man was much more desirable as a weapon because it was easier to produce plutonium in quantity for the core.

The key is that there was only one Little Boy, so only one bomb that was guaranteed to work.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

I sit corrected, thank you Ell Cee (or is it Enn?!). I'm amazed that it could have been only a week. I've lived with understanding otherwise for decades.

What ghastlier inevitability awaits us relearning the lessons of history?

[ 15. January 2018, 14:33: Message edited by: Martin60 ]

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Moo:

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
The intent was to have the civilian population see and fear the capabilities of the US and therefore pressure the government to surrender.
It would have had no effect if the civilian population tried to pressure the government. All war decisions were in the hands of the military leaders. Nothing could be done without the consent of the War Minister in the Cabinet, who was an army general on active duty. If the other army high-ups didn't like what he did, they could remove him from active duty, which meant that he had to resign as War Minister.

The military were quite willing to sacrifice the lives of any number of civilians. They weren't important.

In the spring of 1945 (a few months before the Japanese surrender) the secret police arrested several hundred people "on suspicion of harboring a desire for peace".

Moo

Exactly Moo. Korechika Anami was hell bent on national (and personal, which he performed on surrender) suicide AFTER Nagasaki. Thank God for the Emperor and Anami's loyalty to him above all. Otherwise the Kyūjō coup would have worked and millions would have died.

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

Here is an update on the news story mentioned in the OP of this thread.

Moo

Posted by Pigwidgeon (# 10192) on :

Another horror story, this one about supposed parents: A California couple is accused of holding 13 of their children captive, some shackled to beds. A 17-year-old escaped and called the police.

How??? Why???

Thank God (literally) that the one girl managed to get away and get help. But what next? How can any of the 13 live a normal life after this?

[Mad]

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

I thank Him for His provision of emergency calls through defunct phones by way of creating the universe.

UBB.classic^TM 6.5.0