US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2071

On June 29 2015 03:57 KwarK wrote:

I dunno, vast majority of Germans fought for Germany. Also most soldiers in that war were colossal racists. You can still honour the dead although there is a cutoff when you're Japanese and honouring war criminals.

On June 29 2015 04:43 Yoav wrote:


There's a difference between "honoring dead" (or empathizing with soldiers in a shitty situation) and flying the flag of a wicked cause that decent people may have gotten caught up in though family or national loyalty. Would it honor the German war dead to fly the Nazi flag? No, it would dishonor them by celebrating the evil that caused their suffering and death. The same is true of the Confederates. And let's be real, if the Confederacy had lasted to the 1940s, it wouldn't have been on the right side of that war.

On June 29 2015 04:43 Yoav wrote:


There's a difference between "honoring dead" (or empathizing with soldiers in a shitty situation) and flying the flag of a wicked cause that decent people may have gotten caught up in though family or national loyalty. Would it honor the German war dead to fly the Nazi flag? No, it would dishonor them by celebrating the evil that caused their suffering and death. The same is true of the Confederates. And let's be real, if the Confederacy had lasted to the 1940s, it wouldn't have been on the right side of that war.

On June 29 2015 05:49 WolfintheSheep wrote:

I highly doubt that.

People seem to forget how incredibly racist the Allies were during WWII, how anti-Jewish their countries as a whole were, and how much of WWII was driven by nationalism and not saving the world from the evil Germans (most of the world didn't even know the concentration camps were real until after). Remember, WWI happened because all of Europe wanted a war, and WWII was only feared because most of the major powers were still recovering and in a serious depression.

Really, if a Union-won US can still have the lasting effects of the Confederates, then a Confederate-won US wouldn't have killed the North. At worst the US would've been even more isolationist during the wars than they were.

On June 29 2015 07:04 Yoav wrote:


An isolationist US seems to me the likely outcome. I'm assuming that a CSA victory would have entailed a peace where the Confederacy simply became independent, and perhaps got some of the Western territories, but probably not even that. As a result, you would have had two countries instead of one, far weaker as a force in global affairs. Slavery would have had a better chance to persist elsewhere and democratization would have been dealt a terrible blow.

World War II might not even have happened in the fashion we know it; US intervention in WWI would have been less certain, given that the Zimmerman telegram would never have happened. The Mexico intervention would have had a different story, as would US colonial/anti-colonial enterprises generally.

But if something like the Nazis risen up, the South would have been very sympathetic to their rhetoric. After all, holding "inferior races" as slaves was something they could come to terms with. Heck, Hitler was personally quite impressed with many aspects of Jim Crow, and in this alternate future something much more complete and sinister would have been in place.

Would the CSA have declared war on the Free World (if the "Free World" would have come to exist at all) and joined the Nazis? Probably not. The USA would always have been stronger, and the threat of military conflict with their larger northern neighbor would probably have detered them. But the potential threat from the South would also have affected US politicians decision-making. That and the probability that the US would have had fewer or no overseas possessions would have meant that conflict with the Japanese was less a sure thing. Conflict with Germany become even more unlikely.

And a world where the US had never joined WWII would be a dark place indeed. Best case, Soviet rule would have destroyed Europe's future, and Japanese rule would have turned Asia into a continent ruled by a racist military totalitarian regime. Worst case, the Nazis would have won.

On June 29 2015 07:00 KwarK wrote:

I don't disagree. I was just arguing that Germans weren't necessarily fighting for Nazism and Nazism didn't have a monopoly on distasteful racial views. You can honour your WW2 German veterans without invoking Nazism and the Nazi flag.

On June 29 2015 04:43 Yoav wrote:


There's a difference between "honoring dead" (or empathizing with soldiers in a shitty situation) and flying the flag of a wicked cause that decent people may have gotten caught up in though family or national loyalty. Would it honor the German war dead to fly the Nazi flag? No, it would dishonor them by celebrating the evil that caused their suffering and death. The same is true of the Confederates. And let's be real, if the Confederacy had lasted to the 1940s, it wouldn't have been on the right side of that war.

On June 29 2015 07:25 Nyxisto wrote:

Not really. Almost all people here who had grand- or great-grandparents fighting in the war either don't talk about it or condemn it. The war shrine stuff that Japan has would be completely unthinkable. If you're honouring ww2 war veterans here there's a 99% chance that you're a far-right history revisionist.

A senior U.S. official acknowledged Sunday that Iran nuclear talks will go past their June 30 target date, as Iran's foreign minister prepared to head home Sunday for consultations before returning to push for a breakthrough.

Asked about the chances for a deal, Federica Mogherini, the European Union's top diplomat, told reporters: "It's going to be tough ... but not impossible."

Iranian media said Mohammed Javad Zarif's trip was planned in advance. Still, the fact that he was leaving the talks so close to the Tuesday deadline reflected his need to get instructions on how to proceed on issues where the sides remain apart — among them how much access Tehran should give to U.N. experts monitoring his country's compliance to any deal.

The United States insists on more intrusive access than Iran is ready to give. With these and other disputes still unresolved the likelihood that the Tuesday target deadline for an Iran nuclear deal could slip was increasingly growing even before the U.S. confirmation.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met in Vienna for their third encounter since Saturday. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius are also in Vienna, and their Russian and British counterparts were to join later. China was sending a deputy foreign minister in a building diplomatic effort to wrap up the negotiations.

On June 29 2015 09:45 KwarK wrote:

That sucks. Your average German soldier was, I suspect, motivated by the exact same things as the Russian, British and American soldiers. If anything as members of the military they were more removed from Nazi society and politics than civilians.

On June 29 2015 15:06 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
https://www.chrischristie.com/

This introductory video is basically Comedy + Appeal to Emotion (mother had cancer). Nothing about politics.

On June 29 2015 15:06 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
https://www.chrischristie.com/

This introductory video is basically Comedy + Appeal to Emotion (mother had cancer). Nothing about politics.

On June 30 2015 05:34 farvacola wrote:
Yeah, like when Walker signed a bill into law that weakened Wisconsin's gun laws.......on the day of the Charleston Massacre. Does that count as a carry-on or should Walker just go ahead and check that?