Damn, if only there was someone in history other than Hitler to praise for investing in infrastructure, speaking charismatically, and being in power while other people built cool buildings. 🤨
Guess we’ll have to ignore the extremely obvious context of praising Hitler for any reason whatsoever, because it’d be terrible to be unnuanced about a mass murdering bigot.
I’m not praising Hitler at all. I’m only saying that people are deliberately ignoring that he didn’t do everything he did because he wanted to be evil, but because he had a (horrible) vision for the world. And not all aspects of that vision where inherently evil.
Humans just have the tendency to put everything into boxes of good or bad. It’s uncomfortable if something is not fitting 100% into one of those boxes. And from my experiences people almost never fit 100% into those boxes.
Even serial killers sometimes have grandmas they lovingly took care of.
Even child-rapists have friends they support when they need help.
Sure they still are monsters - but they still are humans, too
I’m not sure I’m particularly clear about the distinction you’re trying to make between wanting to be evil, and having a world view that requires you to do a ton of evil stuff.
If we humans have agency, then surely our worldview is at least somewhat a decision we’re culpable for.
Also, there are times it’s appropriate to discuss certain topics, and times it is not. A dissertation about the upsides of Hitler is not relevant to Trump being compared to Hitler, unless you intend to make the argument that Trump being like Hitler might also have some upsides.
There are people that get off on other people suffering and that want to create as much suffering as possible.
Those people are evil.
Hitler had an agency that saw people suffering as a means to an ends. That doesn’t excuse any of it and taking that route to get to that goal certainly is an evil decision, but that doesn’t automatically make the goal a bad one (in this case it was since the Holocaust was pretty much the goal and not just the way there).
Perhaps I’m using the wrong words as it’s not my native language but I think there are things he did that aren’t automatically bad just because it was Hitler who did them. That’s not praising the guy - it just acknowledges that even a broken clock is right twice a day and not always showing the wrong time by default.
I thought given the subject of the thread it was obvious that I was referring to Trump praising Hitler, not that I was accusing you of praising him.
And given the state of the world, I devote about as much energy to caring about the dehumanization of Hitler as I do for the welfare of Guinea worms. In a perfect world, sure, everyone should have an understanding that everyone is a person and not a cartoon caricature. And that world is never going to exist if you stand around letting presidents praise fucking Hitler.
Damn, if only there was someone in history other than Hitler to praise for investing in infrastructure, speaking charismatically, and being in power while other people built cool buildings. 🤨
Guess we’ll have to ignore the extremely obvious context of praising Hitler for any reason whatsoever, because it’d be terrible to be unnuanced about a mass murdering bigot.
I’m not praising Hitler at all. I’m only saying that people are deliberately ignoring that he didn’t do everything he did because he wanted to be evil, but because he had a (horrible) vision for the world. And not all aspects of that vision where inherently evil.
Humans just have the tendency to put everything into boxes of good or bad. It’s uncomfortable if something is not fitting 100% into one of those boxes. And from my experiences people almost never fit 100% into those boxes.
Even serial killers sometimes have grandmas they lovingly took care of.
Even child-rapists have friends they support when they need help.
Sure they still are monsters - but they still are humans, too
I’m not sure I’m particularly clear about the distinction you’re trying to make between wanting to be evil, and having a world view that requires you to do a ton of evil stuff.
If we humans have agency, then surely our worldview is at least somewhat a decision we’re culpable for.
Also, there are times it’s appropriate to discuss certain topics, and times it is not. A dissertation about the upsides of Hitler is not relevant to Trump being compared to Hitler, unless you intend to make the argument that Trump being like Hitler might also have some upsides.
Save it for where it belongs: a history book.
There are people that get off on other people suffering and that want to create as much suffering as possible.
Those people are evil.
Hitler had an agency that saw people suffering as a means to an ends. That doesn’t excuse any of it and taking that route to get to that goal certainly is an evil decision, but that doesn’t automatically make the goal a bad one (in this case it was since the Holocaust was pretty much the goal and not just the way there).
Perhaps I’m using the wrong words as it’s not my native language but I think there are things he did that aren’t automatically bad just because it was Hitler who did them. That’s not praising the guy - it just acknowledges that even a broken clock is right twice a day and not always showing the wrong time by default.
You very much are, just not praising him for the bad things he did
I thought given the subject of the thread it was obvious that I was referring to Trump praising Hitler, not that I was accusing you of praising him.
And given the state of the world, I devote about as much energy to caring about the dehumanization of Hitler as I do for the welfare of Guinea worms. In a perfect world, sure, everyone should have an understanding that everyone is a person and not a cartoon caricature. And that world is never going to exist if you stand around letting presidents praise fucking Hitler.