I said the same thing to my wife several times. I feel like I'm actually learning about the past living through what we're experiencing now. There WAS so much that was weird and hard to understand about earlier (similar) eras that I currently say to myself "oh...I get it now." A case study indeed.
It definitely does inform on how the past came to be. However I feel like social media is just like rocket fuel to this phenomenon. It feels to me as if it’s on a shorter time line that would have been a good deal slower without social media. Fox news back in 2001-2010 was tame compared to now
I keep thinking about Germans watching their country fall to Nazism and wondering, "Did they also struggle with how ridiculous it is?" I expected scary but not embarrassing.
It has also hammered the point home that the people of the past didn’t know what was going to happen. Hindsight is highly distorting.
Yeah, I went through a WW2/Hitler phase as a teenager and although I had read the word "reactionary" a thousands times I never really understood it until interacting with my friend's dad (who I'd known since I was a teenager) who had gone ultra-MAGA and suddenly it clicked. Complete Id.
This morning I was thinking of the people (especially the women) in burned villages throughout all time who had just finished a craft, or left bread to rise, or finally got the baby to sleep -- in the moments before the end.
The fact that all this is happening when we have the benefit of easily accessible, well documented examples of why all of it is just awful is a truly damning indictment of humanity as a species.
I’m sure you’re familiar, but every episode of Real Dictators pod is like a prequel scene—over and over—of what we’re living thru currently. Doesn’t matter who, the playbook is like a mirror, reflecting a mirror, reflecting a mirror… Or maybe this is the sequel 🤔
I've found myself frequently relistening to Radical Thoughts recently, and it just seems to feel more and more real as the weeks roll on While I'm surely lower down on the "fear scale" compared to peoples of the past, this anxiety is probably the closest I'll ever get to waiting during a siege
The dancing plague of 1518 doesn't seem so fanciful any more.
Or gleefully repeating the mistakes (and sins) of old bsky.app/profile/elis...
bsky.app/profile/fetc...
As you say in your podcast about stuff “Nothing new under the sun”. More I read about history, the more I find how true that is.
Ya seeing how much people can fool theirselves into denying reality and accepting partisanship warps peoples minds. Some of the crazier things ppl have deluded themselves into believing makes me realize humans arent as rational and intelligent as we we think we are.
Really puts things into perspective, especially the “how could they not do anything to stop Hitler?” question. I guess now we know.
Or a thousand others that were similar. It's telling us something about both governing systems...and people. Especially large groups of people when taken collectively. The only new element is the tech/communication...but even without it, it feels like we've been in this movie before.
I read "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-1945" last year and it's quite something to read their perspectives and reflect on all this.
I keep thinking about this one guy, just thinking along the lines "even if my suspicions were ever confirmed, what could I do? I'm not some great man like a political leader or from a wealthy family... I'm just a regular person and I have to go to work and keep my job to feed my family..."
which is why people really have to do the sort of normal accessible activism that is still available to us. Show up at rallies, call your electeds or volunteer in a local race, organize your tenant organization, adopt a picket line etc. Because you dont need to be a leader to do any of that.
This quote from They Thought They Were Free really strikes me and now I totally understand.
And right now, today, I feel that… My son needs a roof over his head and food to eat, but he also needs to grow up in a country that’s at least as good as the one his father did.
The use, and abuse, of contemporary mass media seems like a common denominator here.
Seeing the characters in the "Who Goes Nazi?" essay reflected so directly in Vance, Miller, etc. is incredibly creepy too.
This would make a great Common Sense episode.
The past is a different country. They do things...oh no actually we just do the same exact same thing here. Again.