2009-09-28, 05:21 PM
AIDS is more terrible than the bubonic plague. The bubonic plague is best compared with Ebola -- it can be stopped by a quarantine and good sanitary conditions. What is AIDS though? Afflicting a good part of Africa, and having no cure or education to stop it there, it is theoretically feasible that in a few decades each generation of Africa will live for 15 years at the most. Only the most fervent Klansman could think something like that as funny or a good thing.
So, why precisely are Klansmen or the Nazis worse than the bubonic plague? It's not just the Nazis, all Nazi-like entities in history are equally terrible, be in Genghis Khan, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, or Stalin. Is starving 30 million Ukrainians to death "worse" than Pol Pot declaring Year 0 and killing 1/4 of his own country's population? Numbers at this point are not a "better/worse" thing. At the extremes of depravity, all depravity is the same.
Depravity is worse than plague because it is a conscious, willful act. It is a CHOICE made by the human mind. The plague is like a flood or a quake -- it does not think. It didn't choose to be the plague, and you cannot attribute human-like feelings, emotions, or motives to it. Humans can be so attributed, wherein lies the difference. The separation between depravity and civilization can be dated to exceedingly ancient times. Socrates in his dialogues made the clear distinction between people that obey the laws of society, and may perhaps be seen as boring or conventional for it, and people that reject those laws, choosing evil, which perpetually seems "rebellious," "modern," and "new." Fast forward to the Nazis, and it's still that same old Socratic dialogue, except now, the "rebellious, modern, new" people are wearing very trendy SS uniforms, having adventures in torch-lit parades, and listening to Hitler rallies, which were so carefully constructed that even Jews that got caught in them were carried away by the moment, like drops of water caught in the torrent of a raging river.
Therein lies the horror of it all -- the Nazis weren't killing Jews or Catholic priests. They were killing what those people represented. If you talk to scholars of modern European history, they will tell you that Hitler wanted to kill Judeo-Christian civilization and replace it with an overtly evil neo-pagan world view. The more you study the Nazis the more obvious it is. Himmler gave a speech before the SS, saying "praise be to what makes us hard," that is the more they rejected morality, the more "decent" fellows they became. Goebells made no secret about his openly dishonest and malignant propaganda methods, teaching his followers to repeat lies until they became truth, and to dehumanize their enemies as fleas and mice until killing the enemy became as easy as squashing vermin. Hitler made treaties with countries only to break them a week later, to the point where Chamberlain went to the Brits and promised "peace in our time" weeks before war broke out. The Nazis didn't incinerate Jews, they incinerated the Ten Commandments. Fast forward from that to now, where blond-haired blue-eyed immoral rich people riding around in trendy VW Beetles even in America are held to be something to admire, and that's when you have to wonder if Hitler even lost. And forgive me for not laughing at that, but that is something beyond the realm of /b/-tardism, because it is in serious fact the scariest fuucking thing about humanity -- the fundamental contradiction that exists in almost everybody, on the one hand driving us to build and create, and on the other hand driving us to kill and destroy.
No offense, Ryan, but comparing all that to a plague, an entity that has literally no inherent evil intent, is more than a little off the mark. And making fun of the Holocaust on Yom Kippur is somewhat like choosing Easter to release a ribaldly documentary on Christians being eaten by lions. It is beyond bad taste, it is beyond childish fun, it is fucking sick and disgusting. I can't tell people not to do it, because I read Socrates and I know people that choose to do it aren't ones to obey "Jewish slave-morality" anyway.
So, why precisely are Klansmen or the Nazis worse than the bubonic plague? It's not just the Nazis, all Nazi-like entities in history are equally terrible, be in Genghis Khan, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, or Stalin. Is starving 30 million Ukrainians to death "worse" than Pol Pot declaring Year 0 and killing 1/4 of his own country's population? Numbers at this point are not a "better/worse" thing. At the extremes of depravity, all depravity is the same.
Depravity is worse than plague because it is a conscious, willful act. It is a CHOICE made by the human mind. The plague is like a flood or a quake -- it does not think. It didn't choose to be the plague, and you cannot attribute human-like feelings, emotions, or motives to it. Humans can be so attributed, wherein lies the difference. The separation between depravity and civilization can be dated to exceedingly ancient times. Socrates in his dialogues made the clear distinction between people that obey the laws of society, and may perhaps be seen as boring or conventional for it, and people that reject those laws, choosing evil, which perpetually seems "rebellious," "modern," and "new." Fast forward to the Nazis, and it's still that same old Socratic dialogue, except now, the "rebellious, modern, new" people are wearing very trendy SS uniforms, having adventures in torch-lit parades, and listening to Hitler rallies, which were so carefully constructed that even Jews that got caught in them were carried away by the moment, like drops of water caught in the torrent of a raging river.
Therein lies the horror of it all -- the Nazis weren't killing Jews or Catholic priests. They were killing what those people represented. If you talk to scholars of modern European history, they will tell you that Hitler wanted to kill Judeo-Christian civilization and replace it with an overtly evil neo-pagan world view. The more you study the Nazis the more obvious it is. Himmler gave a speech before the SS, saying "praise be to what makes us hard," that is the more they rejected morality, the more "decent" fellows they became. Goebells made no secret about his openly dishonest and malignant propaganda methods, teaching his followers to repeat lies until they became truth, and to dehumanize their enemies as fleas and mice until killing the enemy became as easy as squashing vermin. Hitler made treaties with countries only to break them a week later, to the point where Chamberlain went to the Brits and promised "peace in our time" weeks before war broke out. The Nazis didn't incinerate Jews, they incinerated the Ten Commandments. Fast forward from that to now, where blond-haired blue-eyed immoral rich people riding around in trendy VW Beetles even in America are held to be something to admire, and that's when you have to wonder if Hitler even lost. And forgive me for not laughing at that, but that is something beyond the realm of /b/-tardism, because it is in serious fact the scariest fuucking thing about humanity -- the fundamental contradiction that exists in almost everybody, on the one hand driving us to build and create, and on the other hand driving us to kill and destroy.
No offense, Ryan, but comparing all that to a plague, an entity that has literally no inherent evil intent, is more than a little off the mark. And making fun of the Holocaust on Yom Kippur is somewhat like choosing Easter to release a ribaldly documentary on Christians being eaten by lions. It is beyond bad taste, it is beyond childish fun, it is fucking sick and disgusting. I can't tell people not to do it, because I read Socrates and I know people that choose to do it aren't ones to obey "Jewish slave-morality" anyway.