“President Biden (a graduate of the Ivies if I'm not mistaken)”
You’re quite mistaken there: he did his undergrad at the very public University of Delaware, and went to law school at private but definitely not Ivy League Syracuse.
Some variation of “don’t take him literally, you silly goose, but take him seriously” is basically what the portion of my family who voted for him (i.e., most of them) have told me over the years.
This time, I’ll take him at his better-educated, clearer-thinking allies’ words, and prepare for the worst of what they publicly dream of while still hoping for better.
Much lower alcohol consumption is probably a big factor for the men. Women don't drink as much anyway (yes, there are plenty of women who drink too much, but it's not to the same degree as men)
I wish my home country could be as brutally honest with itself about its past and work as hard to make things right as Germany has been the last several decades.
The disturbing party coming up on the Right feels like Germany has blamed itself for too long. That “self-blame” is a lot of what has enabled modern Germany to be a much better place than it was before the war.
(I’m an American living in greater Nuremberg, and get to see monuments to Germany’s failures on a regular basis)
>I wish my home country could be as brutally honest with itself about its past and work as hard to make things right as Germany has been the last several decades.
Given how Germany is treating those protesting its support of Israel's ongoing war, some would suggest that Germany isn't being quite as brutally honest one might imagine.
German honesty regarding its past is a modern phenomenon, if not outright propaganda. During the Cold War they were a lot less honest; the Nazi regime was often used as propaganda against the other side. e.g. West Germany would downplay Germany's capitalist class's role in Hitler's rise to power and emphasize the racial nature of the Holocaust. East Germany[0] would do the opposite, emphasizing capitalism and de-emphasizing antisemitism[1]. These different spins on the same events were intended to downplay their side's role in the Nazi regime, shifting all the blame to the other.
This is especially true in the West. Large swaths of the German capitalist class actively backed Hitler and the Nazi party, and got away with it. How they got away with it is particularly appalling. One of the most common defenses at Nuremburg was "I was just following orders", an excuse that was usually rejected. But there was one very specific kind of order that would reliably keep Nazis (Hugo Boss, IG Farben, etc) out of the noose: shareholder duties. In the name of anticommunism, there was an active campaign in the First World[2] to downplay the war crimes of German capitalists after WWII.
The AfD is not a result of Germany being tired of remembering. They're a result of Germany's denazification being incomplete - and politically influenced by the exact same economic forces[3] that put Hitler in the chancellor's seat in the first place. States create liberal democracies with free markets, businesses figure out how to exploit those markets, they get unfathomably rich before someone can stop them, they coopt or overthrow democracy, and then replace liberalism with tyranny.
Overthrow is possible because society has vulnerabilities that can be exploited through propaganda and outrage porn. You socially engineer the public into abolishing their own liberty to hurt the other that they hate. In America, that vulnerability was African Americans. In Nazi Germany's case, it was deeply rooted antisemitism. In today's Germany, it's immigration[4].
[0] The Stazi wants to know about your dancing skill and computer memory speed
[4] German immigration policy - and, to a larger extent, most EU external immigration policy - is built entirely for rich, self-motivated knowledge workers who can navigate bureaucracy and do all the integration work themselves. As a result, it has lots of poorly integrated immigrant populations with lots of scary right-wingers that the German right can use to scare German liberals into, themselves, becoming scary right-wingers. Fnord fnord fnord.
Minor thing, its "Stasi" for "Staatssicherheit" (or "Ministerium für Staatssicherheit") not Stazi. But I know it should be Stazi - it sounds more like something Colonel Klink would say.
In general as a reply, I'm not sure where you grew up in Germany (or if, because of Stazi). I grew up in West Germany in the 1970 and 1980 and there was not one week where there wasn't a story about German war crimes, genocide etc. in one of the large magazines. It was also a large topic in school. But it seems where you grew up things were different.
"In Nazi Germany's case, it was deeply rooted antisemitism. In today's Germany, it's immigration"
No it's the same. Racism together with the special case of antisemitism. People don't change.
"The AfD is not a result of Germany being tired of remembering. They're a result of Germany's denazification being incomplete"
Interesting view point. I would assume it is wrong (though I do think denazification in the East was incomplete), it doesn't have anything to do with being tired of remembering or incomplete denazification. Its just that people don't change, and they are nationalists, socialists and racists (just like the Nazi party - (National Socialists)) and with the rise of the populist right in the US and all over Europe, they thought they should band together again. The internet removed all gate keepers. Before that all other far-right parties in the West like "Die Republikaner" didn't get lots of traction but faded away fast.
Germany is self-blaming only to some extent or for some definitions of this notion.
Yes, they are well aware of what happened in 1930s and that there was Hitler, etc.
And still they conveniently fail to see any connection with today times. It is some unclearly defined Nazis who took over the control of Germany and did all the killings and destroyed a few countries around. But not anyone's grandfather was involved. And supposedly the companies which built their wealth on slave work and death of thousands continue to prosper.
"And still they conveniently fail to see any connection with today times."
Who is they? The people who brought far right leaders to court because those were shouting SA slogans? Surely not those. And I would argue, that the new right indeed does see the connection, they want to have that connection to today times (see shouting SA slogans).
"It is some unclearly defined Nazis who took over the control of Germany and did all the killings and destroyed a few countries around."
Not sure what that sentence means.
"But not anyone's grandfather was involved."
You seem to have missed the 1960/70s where the topic exactly was that "The fathers did this and didn't talk about it" (In the West, East Germany just declared themselves victims of the Nazis) - which directly lead into the red terror (Red Army Faction RAF) of the 1970s as a reaction to "old nazis".
"And supposedly the companies which built their wealth on slave work and death of thousands continue to prosper."
Many companies have paid [0] (late, not enough IMHO) for using slave labor - at least that discussion led to every company pay a historian to write down that part of their history most ignored before. The biggest problem is not the companies but some rich people in Germany like the Quandts who are one of the richest families in Germany and own a large chunk of BMW - they got their money by slave labor, selling to the Prussian army and the Wehrmacht and by stealing from jews.
Compared to that, my (German) grandparents lost their large farms (not complaining, or accusing, but as a comparison) and everything else except their clothing and the clothing they could carry in two suitcases. They were not on the right side of "War Is a Racket".
I will take any day Germany self-blaming itself over Germany's Hegel and Nietzsche Kultur that killed tens of thousands of Belgian and French civilians in the first world war and millions of Jew, Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, etc... civilians in the second world war.
Germany's Hegel and Nietzsche Kultur that killed tens of thousands of ...
I know that sounds neat to say, but it has no connection to reality. Neither of those guys influenced the late German Empire or the Nazis (a few Nazi ideologues might have read Nietzsche, but they never understood him; meanwhile they absolutely rejected Hegel, and attacked people with accusations of Hegelianism).
Voting rights in parts of America before the Voting Rights Act depended on passing an arbitrary test that differed from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and may or may not have measured literacy and civics knowledge… if you were black (or native American, depending on state). You could be a well-regarded English literature professor at a black college and still have to subject yourself to what you knew was a farce being administered by someone far less literate than you in order to attempt to vote.
If you were white (“your grandfather could vote”), you were usually exempt, even if you could barely sign your name on your voter registration.
In Texas, there used to be DPS offices in most mid-sized towns and everyone just had to wait in line to get their driver’s license (principal ID for most Texans) or non-driver ID card.
Now, they’ve concentrated them into a few larger service centers that are often miles away from the cities they serve and require appointments, sometimes not available for several weeks… but with a few that spontaneously crop up at short notice.
Guess what does not work for people reliant on the meager public transportation infrastructure or getting rides from also time-strapped friends and family?
Germany, by contrast, requires every resident to register in the city or town they live in for an ID, whether they intend to vote or not, but even small towns have such an office, and as someone else pointed out, every citizen receives a letter 30 days before each election telling them exactly who/what is being voted on, where they are to go on Election Day (always a Sunday), and how to vote absentee if they’re not going to be in town that day.
>In Texas, there used to be DPS offices in most mid-sized towns and everyone just had to wait in line to get their driver’s license (principal ID for most Texans) or non-driver ID card.
They're still there, most mid-sized towns still have them.
>Now, they’ve concentrated them into a few larger service centers that are often miles away from the cities they serve and require appointments, sometimes not available for several weeks… but with a few that spontaneously crop up at short notice.
Yes they opened the big licensing centers and made them appointment only which is an improvement, you waste zero time. "Miles away" means nothing in Texas, the state is bigger than France.
>Guess what does not work for people reliant on the meager public transportation infrastructure
There is no public transportation infrastructure in most mid-sized Texas towns.
>or getting rides from also time-strapped friends and family?
Now with appointments you can plan ahead with family or friends that are time strapped.
Not sure which country you're talking about, but in Germany, the public health insurances cheerfully pay for annual flu and COVID boosters for everyone.
They're not only covered by the gesetzliche Krankenkassen (German public health insurance providers, mandatory if you don't meet the criteria for private insurance), mine gives me a little bonus if I prove I've gotten various vaccines, including annual COVID booster and flu.
The staff on board also contribute to keeping the train safe and pleasant - if there’s an unruly passenger, or a washroom malfunctions, I’m happy to have paid a bit extra for my ticket for a couple of people to be on hand to deal with the problem instead of being trapped for two hours.
Unfortunately I didn’t keep all those 80 Micros I got from my uncle when he gave me his Model 4 around 1992/93, but if anyone is interested, I have years of Computer News 80, an early sort-of retrocomputing thick newsletter/small magazine that was started right after 80 Micro ceased publication, best I recall.
Edited to add: I have January 1988 - February 1991 of Computer News 80. I have not checked if all the issues are there, but it looks pretty complete.
"Preview this magazine" is misleading in this case; entire issues are available including, the last time I checked some years ago, almost every issue from the 1980s.
You’re quite mistaken there: he did his undergrad at the very public University of Delaware, and went to law school at private but definitely not Ivy League Syracuse.
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