Divnoláska

Or, conversely, they correctly absorbed the core lesson that it is indeed very possible for large groups of people to fanatically desire the extermination of Jews and that these people need to be resisted by force.

The ends you desire cannot be achieved through mental coercion.

I think there is no way of getting around the retrospective quality in the hard sense, but I suspect there is a replicable general approach to formulating good questions, at least for some categories of problems.

Since Germany is the largest economy and the most populous country in the EU, we actually *need* Germans capable of moral agency, clear decision-making and leadership - not twisted neurotics unable to take a stance.

The amount of internalized shame and guilt foisted on Germans for their history is an order of magnitude above where American culture stands vis-à-vis slavery or the extermination of Native Americans.

You could tone it down a lot and still do all the proper remembrances and acknowledgements.

That is not a bad message. For 4+ generations, Germans have been subjected en bloc to literal cultural Ludovico treatment and put in an impossible position of maintaining a nation state they are also taught to be ashamed of. This warps people in a very unfortunate way and has to stop at some point.

Not sure if this adds any extra illumination, but it could also be phrased as "Good questions come from a fuller recognition of what kind of answers are you actually after."
Going one step above the object level of the problem.

Is somebody 3D-printing these guys from a single template? Dreher, Bannon and Dugin all look like first cousins.

🤔 That last point is probably an unsolvable nomenclatural (haha...) matter. Who outside the Party still counts as a communist in these situations? Since everyone is forced to vote communist and feign enthusiasm, any distinction rests on pretty inscrutable internal convictions.

One which reframes the problem in a way that allows you to find a useful answer.

Yeah - no question. The Great Leap Forward alone is probably an order of magnitude above all the casualties of these conflicts.

I just wanted to correct the perception that everyone in communist countries is automatically a party member. The Red Aristocracy is, in fact, usually fairly select.

Nope - (just like with the Soviet Bloc parties) not everyone is a member! It's usually somewhere between 5-10% of the population and highly selective. You have to apply, be vetted, go through a candidacy period and then be confirmed as a member by a local Party organization. The rest are Proles.

Answer with a simple ja oder nein!

Not entirely wrong...

Dialectic tendency of things to turn into their opposites undefeated 🤔

YouTube video by Henry West I do not care #singing

On anthropology, reconstruction and the importance of context:

Imagine future internet archeologists discovering only the audio track to this, in some long-forgotten cache, and trying to figure out what the video was about on that basis...

www.youtube.com/shorts/QAknP...

I mean... by the end of the 20th century, you felt comfortable enough to relinquish the electoral process to blackbox machines operated by a corporation called 'Dominion'.

Nope. We do paper. Which can't be reduced to 0s and 1s or remotely altered.

I understand the practical complexities of the politics on the ground... but to my Kafka-pilled, Competent-Austrian-Bureacracy-brained mind,

American standards of electoral rigor (vis-á-vis voter rolls and identification, ballot processing, vote counting etc.) are just incredibly loose n'lax...

Yeah... Coming from one of the smaller countries, I'm a little torn on that. It's probably strategically necessary for long-term survival; However, the price for it is less national autonomy, less distinctness, less space for doing things differently 😑

"Spicy Instagram for subscribers"?

It might now.

Speaking for Europe, we have been a little too busy with Ukraine, Greenland and the tariffs to dutifully compensate for your sociopathy on that front as well.

No, *you* are dancing on *his* grave and excusing it through projection.

Btw, I remember you complaining a while back about the pain in your feet and how all your bodily tensions seem to concentrate there...

Have you considered forming a male harem for the sole purpose of massages and pedicure? Men *would* pay for the privilege.

Why that explanation in particular?

She could have removed it (or moved it elsewhere) for a number of reasons, from "I don't want to be constantly reminded of his death" to "I want to keep it by my bedside."

Why does everybody feel the need to be a ghoul about this?

Random bits of Czech trivia & monuments for those in the mood for Something Completely Unrelated:

But it's soooo hard!