Kuznicki: In Search of a Post-Godwin Politics

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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28 Responses

  1. notme says:

    Oh no, the world is ending. I’ll clutch my pearls and swoon.Report

  2. Damon says:

    Reasonable people can still have reasonable conversions, even if they agree. It means being an adult. It also helps if you don’t live in a bubble and know how to act “mature”. Anyone else doesn’t really deserve the time of day.Report

  3. Joe Sal says:

    Jason did a pretty good job of putting this together. Still would have liked to see the entire work posted.

    Whatever intrepid framing of the ‘Jade Helm people’ here, it’s really, really poor practice to have your military do ‘gray man’ training amongst the population. I don’t know which ‘very-smart-military-leader’ dreamed up that shit, but he should be hung by the balls.

    If something goes down in the interior, we have 200 million guns, we got this. There are reasons this nation was never meant to have a standing army, because you know, ‘trust issues’.Report

  4. Jaybird says:

    I read recently somewhere that Hitler is no longer a historical figure but a theological concept.

    That seems about right.Report

  5. Pinky says:

    Will was right to push back against the idea that “both sides do it” is an invalid observation. Someone may make the observation with good or bad intent, and it may or may not have real value in the conversation.

    I’m going to make a similar pushback against the anti-Godwin tendency I’ve been seeing lately. Put simply: sometimes Hitler is the right analogy. Not perfect; analogies never are. But Hitler represents something specific, and in our historically-illiterate times we shouldn’t give up on one of the few references we can make. On a recent board (for an article which did mention Nazis in passing) there were two occasions when a commenter made a Hitler reference, and both comments were responded to with eye-rolls.

    Can we agree on the following:
    – Hitler represents racism and authoritarianism.
    – It is in the spirit of the US to condemn authoritarianism.
    – The sweep of American history is away from racism.
    – To the extent that something is racist and/or authoritarian, it is reasonable to condemn it as like Hitler.

    That’s not to say that Will is wrong in his article. There are other things to be condemned.Report

    • Kimmi in reply to Pinky says:

      The sweep of American history is away from racism.
      Oh, lordy lordy lord! This is hilarious, and in so many different directions.
      Do you have any idea how much data can be pulled about a person? Ancestry and what not?

      Racism isn’t dwindling. It’s improving.

      And Hitler stands for Genocide, more than anything else. If you don’t want the connotation, use Mussolini.Report

      • Pinky in reply to Kimmi says:

        More data is available on everything. That doesn’t mean that people are using it for discrimination.

        Open question to others: what does Hitler mean to you? (Note that “hero and inspiration” is not an acceptable answer.)Report

        • Kimmi in reply to Pinky says:

          Pinky,
          What, you need the code as proof?
          Sucker.
          This is AMERICA, if there’s money to be made, someone’s making it.

          As things go, it’s hardly the worst thing in the world (we’ll save that for the people who pay good money to have their children killed “accidentally”)Report

          • Pinky in reply to Kimmi says:

            What Frog said. It’s not racist to market products to people based on race. It’s racist to make assumptions about people’s inherent worth based on race.

            Also, you mention parents having their children killed a lot. Like, a lot. Are you alleging that it happens frequently, that it’s an underreported story? That we should be talking about it more? If so, please back it up. If not, well, it makes you sound nuts. It’s like your own Godwin’s Law: the longer a conversation, the more likely that Kim will try to bring it around to parents hiring people to kill their children. (If this is all an allusion to abortion, btw, let’s have that discussion.)Report

            • Stillwater in reply to Pinky says:

              It’s not racist to market products to people based on race.

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLHZTNGyCpwReport

            • Kimmi in reply to Pinky says:

              Pinky,
              When you’re deliberately saying “i won’t give you a mortgage if you’re black” then it’s making assumptions on people’s inherent worth based on race.

              Yes, I could probably quantify inherent worth based on race in America, or worldwide if you like (The differences between the two are striking, in fact — blame selected immigration). Pick your index. You don’t REALLY think everyone’s goddamn identical twins, do you??

              Yeah, I do. And yes, it does happen frequently, and yes it is an underreported story. (and no, not abortion. Hell, I’m in favor of abortion. Hell, I’m even marginally okay with killing kids under the age of two, in dire circumstances). I mention it because it’s not getting anywhere near the police attention that would be required to shut it down. And because if I don’t mention it, we don’t have to deal with exactly how much we’re strongarming people into “child support.” 50 grand isn’t exactly cheap, most places in America, ya know?Report

            • Damon in reply to Pinky says:

              Is it racist to make assumptions about people’s inherent worth based upon their status as humans? ‘Cause I’m totally a racist then.Report

              • Kimmi in reply to Damon says:

                damon,
                Now you get to define human.
                When the AIs pass the Turing test, well, it gets a bit more dicey, doesn’t it?Report

              • Pinky in reply to Damon says:

                I’m not sure what you’re going for in that comment. I said that it’s racist to make assumptions blah blah race, not humans.Report

              • Kimmi in reply to Pinky says:

                Pinky,
                We all make assumptions. Some of those assumptions are based on race, as on everything else. The difference between racism and not-racism is exactly how flexible you are — how willing you are to say “well, that was wrong Singular” and also, “well, that was REALLY wrong, Plural and I’m never going to think that again.”

                I mean, for god’s sake, I can say that black people have thicker hair than white people do. That’s a big generalization, but it’s also true.

                One way or the other, I can say that Blacks are smarter than Whites, or Vice Versa. I’m going to keep mum on the actual results of that comparison, but people ain’t identicalfuckingtwins.Report

            • notme in reply to Pinky says:

              Really I’m not always sure that being human gives you an inherent worth.Report

      • Troublesome Frog in reply to Kimmi says:

        You know the US used to legally keep slaves based on racism, right?Report