Democracy's Willing Executioners

I've written before about Hitler's Willing Executioners. The book makes clear that it wasn't true that most Germans didn't know about the Holocaust. (That is: they knew and supported the Nazis' efforts.)

This does not mean that Germans at the time were particularly evil. Good luck finding a society that has not done monstrous things. Stalin's purges, U.S. slavery & Civil War, China's Cultural Revolution, the Khmer Rouge, Rwanda, South Sudan, the UK and Bengal's famine, etc., etc., etc.

(Linking only to the last because I didn't know about it, just as I'm sure I don't know about many others. Not linking to the rest - not worth spending more time learning about how terrible humans have been, IMHO. But the lists are incredible, even ignoring the Eternal Treblinka we've created for non-human animals*. Yet more reasons I'm not a Longtermist.)

At least the Germans in the 1930s and 1940s had "explanations" for their behavior. They had been "humiliated" by the Treaty of Versailles and then suffered immensely with hyperinflation. 

Here in the United States, we "elected" someone who we heard say, "Grab 'em by the pussy." 

Then we watched him do everything possible to overthrow a legitimate election, including inciting a mob that killed police officers. He has promised to be a dictator on day one, and use his power for revenge against his enemies.

(This is ignoring books' worth of bad policies, stuff like this, etc.)

And almost half of voters want him to be president again.

Why? Because we have suffered under Joe Biden's policies? 

No. Because we are human. And thus tribal. And thus terrible when the situation allows.

This is not an angry or sad or pessimistic "everyone else is stupid except me" post. 

Rather, the lesson is that we should not extrapolate from ourselves and our fellow well-off, well-educated friends. 

History has not ended. Our nature has not changed. Humanity is not great. We don't want AI aligned with our "values." We should not populate the galaxy. 

What we should do is try to limit the suffering we cause.

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