I remember thinking (while reading that post about the Nazi concentration camp doctor who executed a particular prisoner because he thought his skull would look great on his desk) that there must be potential people like this all over the place.

It's not that (for example) pre-War German or Japanese society suddenly produced lots of murderous grinning maniacs in such numbers that they could seize control of government and turn their fantasies into reality. They're always there, in every society like a kind of creepy background radiation.

It's not that the British were somehow naturally more moral than Germans. There must have been lots of potential vivisection doctors in Wartime Britain as well, who could have easily been terrifying war criminals if the society conditions had been right, but instead lived out their lives as that neighbourhood weirdo.

So it's no surprise that when the conditions allow for it, there are doctors in the US ready to take opportunity.

You are not alone in that thought. I tell people that what makes Nazis scary is that they are NOT some kind of special super evil. Nazis were regular people. Regular people have the potential to do horrendous things, either because they already wanted to, are easily corrupted, or can be bent by the former groups with the narrative of "unfortunate but necessary".

The Nazis helped compel people to those acts not by saying they were good or virtuous, but by agreeing they were awful, and it was unfortunate that these things were necessary. Necessity gives people a moral pass, and helps them commit to actions they otherwise wouldn't because as evil as it seems, really, it's heroic.

When we elevate Nazis to some mythical villain status, we make it that much easier for it to happen again, because we don't think our neighbors or ourselves could ever be Nazis.

It's just funny to think that difference between someone becoming a murderous war criminal or becoming the local creep that children laugh at, is just the extent to which society happened to enable them.

My comment was that it doesn’t seem surprising in hindsight. I guess that’s the lesson we didn’t learn from the Nazis. You don’t expect people to be brazenly evil “these days”. And yet here we are. And if you look at the signs, this is the obvious path and the path forward is just as obvious. It’s just a path we don’t want to believe is the one we’re on.

The Right appears to be in ascendant across the world.

I feel like screaming at the Internet "Why have you done this?! You were supposed to make things better!"

Don't underestimate Russian interference and people who are generally shitbags. I watch debates among the self proclaimed left wing online and I see people take extreme left positions that can never be satisfied while condemning any other action. Some people have truly embraced this ideology while others are probably foreign and working to ensure there can be no rational discourse and no joint effort towards an achievable goal.

I've hit a point where I call out and ultimately just block people who are obviously not looking for answers or working to solve anything because they are counter-productive and have nothing to offer.

Then you get the conspiracy theories, the right wing blogs... it's a mix of foreign interference, trolls in our own societies who don't truly understand the harm they do, horrible people who do, and true believers. We made information more accessible but never stopped to think it would make ALL information more accessible, even negative information (that is, to say, information that makes you less informed than if you'd seen nothing at all).

Sounds familiar. I don't know if you are aware of who Ted Rall is - but he used to be a pretty respected editorial cartoonist at the LA times before he managed to fuck that up all to hell.

Now he spends his days spamming everyone on his facebook friends list with made up anti-Biden scandals of the day, and goes off on anti-democratic party rants at times that would make Mel Gibson go "dude-WTF??" I always wondered why, given his propensity for bragging about how he is about "all things pure and left," why he never seemed to have a bad thing to say about the current resident in the White House. Well - it turns out he is a contributing writer and editor at RT (Russian Times).

I swear, the extreme right and extreme left have gone and stretched their respective ideologies out so far into wackadoodle land, that they are both standing together and holding hands.

I forget exactly where I heard this, but someone else said it before me:

"Turns out disinformation wants to be free too."

For anyone that's not aware, reddit is becoming increasingly right wing in the stories being allowed in the major subreddits. Unless something is specifically anti-trump in it's criticism of the US it's often being ignored or flat out removed. Meanwhile unsubstantiated stories on foreign nations are catapulted to the top.

Makes sense. Spez is a nazi.

So how to do you police the world police?

That's the biggest hurdle.

It’s not “experimental”.
These are our uighur camps.
America should know better within living memory of WW2.

Just when you think it can't get any worse. I have this horrible feeling that Trump's going to steal the election too.

Speaking of people suffering from dementia...

I mean, if you've seen how Trump speaks and acts in front of live audiences, it's pretty clear he has functional dementia.

Mediterranian news:

Refugees demand rescue from Lesbos after Moria camp blaze

Greek authorities struggle to persuade former camp residents to move to a new temporary site as protests continue

More male heteronormative bullshit, blaming everything on the lesbos.

:-(

So much for anyone still saying "it can't happen here". It already is.

Was. California was sterilizing its female prisoners as late as 2010 | US crime | The Guardian

Were male prisoners also sterilized?

For this specific time period in Cali, I don't know. But recently, throughout the US? Yes.

The U.S. Is Still Forcibly Sterilizing Prisoners - Talk Poverty

Our Long, Troubling History of Sterilizing the Incarcerated | The Marshall Project

Why is this legal?

Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck