"Rape is bad" seems to have similarly fallen out of fashion.Originally Posted by Some Stupid Japanese Name
He drew some sunglasses.
This Mishima kills fascists
"Rape is bad" seems to have similarly fallen out of fashion.
And ate a phallic corn dog.
Have you actually read all of that wiki link?
Many academics consider the Holodomor to be a genocide. Russia mishandled the food supply of the Ukraine resulting in the death of 3.5 million people. Do you think Russia admits intent and fault?
Wiki also lists the Trail of Tears as a genocide with only 4,000 deaths. Do you think the government at the time admitted intent to kill when they forced them to move? Or they didn't give a shit, wanted them gone, and they died as a coincidence, but not deliberately? Does ti matter? Historians still label it a genocide.
It doesn't really matter what you call it and I don't know why you decided to die on this hill. The fact still remains that Trump and company currently do know how deadly the virus is and continues to say dumb shit on tv that gets people killed and makes decisions that are going to get people killed. The New York Times estimates that as many as 1.7 million Americans could die.
But hey, lets worry about if its a genocide because Trump probably didn't write a mein kampf about hating 90 year olds and probably doesn't have rallies purposely to spread the hate of 90 year olds.
For what it is worth, I almost don't blame you for perceiving this this way. Hollywood has spent a lot of money to make the holocaust the only genocide in the minds of Americans. They don't want you to think about what we did to the Indians, Africans, Hawaiians. And they don't want you to have pity for what our allies have done in the Ukraine and other areas. They want you to focus on the holocaust because its overtly evil, and done with, and the dragon is slain and the Israel is now our ally. Double kudos if you draw a link between ending the holocaust and D Day which aren't actually related (but darn it if video games and films don't try to build that link).
i drink it up!
Most sane non-internet contrarians would expect there has to be a deliberateness to the actions that kill a group of people for something like this to warrant dropping big G in earnest. Soviets orchestrated Holodomor to increase power by removing Ukraine’s independence, and spread their ideology to the East. Stalin was a conqueror. Conquerors gonna conquer.
That being said I agree with applying the term here. Why should we be careful with a term that means thousands of people in a specific group die (elders) just because it’s due to incompetence rather than design? Trump certainly didn’t make adult leadership choices to minimize an environment where anti-science and propaganda-as-news which has only helped cause more deaths. It’s a genocide. Good term for it.
US needs universal healthcare or insurance. It’s insane to not.
Last edited by Drewbacca; 07 May 2020 at 01:02 AM.
Sausage King
I don't care what we call it. Pandemic, genocide, quarantine, whatever. What's important is to acknowledge that all the slow/poor/dumb responses to this virus – like the President's unending lies camouflaged as sarcasm, the governor of Georgia reopening too soon, the misguided protests – are 100% intentional.
Bully President says whatever pops into his head because he's a dick, and he has other people to clean up the messes he makes. He signals the dimwitted assholes who worship him, Fauci or someone else then contradicts and is forced to make up a bullshit reason for that signal. Lupus meds, availability of PPE, sunlight, testing, whatever else he wants to ramble about and then his idiot followers never hear the clarifications.
Reopening too soon is so blatantly a dodge of the CARES act and a punch in the stomach to both small businesses and those struggling to get by that it doesn't need explaining.
And the shitheads in ill-fitting body armor and loose jeans, toting guns, both rationalizing away concern for the deaths and falsely equating preventative measures to socialism are acting out a fascist power fantasy – sheltering in place is "weak" and "effeminate" so we should just go get sick and let nature sort it all out the "manly" way.
Greedy, selfish, machismo-fueled bullies & lazy, entitled wealthy people who know (consciously or not) that they don't make their own money and are seriously worried there will be a reckoning. Which, technically, they should be worried about. But this isn't a land of revolution any more. Once this is under some semblance of control, we'll go right back to a slightly modified version of the exploitative system we had. Some people might be a little louder about their calls to dismantle capitalism but that'll be it.
I don't know if intent was ever proven. Were they taking the food for mainland Russia? Or were they trying to supress the ukraine? Was it apathy? Ignorance? Or did they actually plot it?
But we call it genocide. It probably was. Around 1 million dead people, they had to have known they were killing ukrainians with their actions, and didn't care. They kept taking their food, killing them. At some point it became deliberate.
And we are nearing that with Trump. At some point, when he is alone, eating his chicken nuggets, he has to role a thought around and realize some of his decisions have gotten people killed. If he doubles down after that, it would be fair to call it genocide. If he still doesn't consciously know he's getting people killed, he's even dumber than we thought.
Drew, This is the first time you and I agree on something! Topsy turvy land.
IP, again, perfectly stated. I have nothing to add because you guys are all really eloquently reiterating excellent points that aren’t just wiki-jocking. You’re spot on about the Spielbergification of portrayals of genocide - in fact, that’s what I wrote a good portion of work about this past year! There’s very big money invested in keeping the ideal of genocide focused on a Hollywood ideal (mainly Holocaust focused,) where there are clear cut good guys and bad guys, and survivors are awarded heroic redemptive narratives. A moderate deep dive into genocide perpetrator/survivor testimony (Holocaust and otherwise) reveals a pretty different reality: both the regimes that genocide occurs in, as well as the victims who suffer, have very complex and nuanced ideas about what occurred.
Genocides are not simple black and white, despite the media portrayals of such, the “bad men” are not always men wearing swastikas and carrying guns, just as victims are not always the emaciated bodies that we see in old photographs. These are “myths” - not in the “didn’t occur” way, but in the way that they have become caricatures of history. Thus, when an actual emergency occurs, people will point at it and say “this is not what a genocide looks like, because I have seen genocides on media before and they don’t look like this. therefore we need not truly panic.”
It’s a very dangerous mindset to have, and I very much place some blame on the Hollywoodization of the Holocaust for this. Good observation!
Last edited by Satsuki; 07 May 2020 at 01:51 AM.
Sausage King
It's a helpful way to describe the problem. And this doesn't just go for the portrayal of unspeakable acts like genocide. The people who are legitimately upset about their governors ordering shelter in place recognize this is some kind of "apocalypse" scenario but instead of a The Road landscape with them being able to justify shooting whomever they'd like and becoming the law, people are being courteous & helping & caring for one another. (Sorry, there are plenty of better references for shitty apocalypses, The Road just came to mind first.) They were expecting roving bands of people coming to take their shit (and let's be honest here – they're projecting) and got people doing their best not to infect others.
For one he's a functioning human with the ability to collaborate with others. Two, he's going to fill the positions around him with capable, experienced people rather than rogues gallery of fringe lunatics and corrupt campaign donors. Three, he isn't going to make decisions based on a child-like understanding of what he saw on Tucker Carlson last night.
No one here is arguing he's going to make a good president, but we shouldn't understate what a once-in-a-lifetime terrible president he is running against. I don't need a hero, I just need an adult.
If Mitt Romney was on the fucking democratic ticket in November, I would vote for him too. I don't care. Just anyone who isn't Trump or a member of his death cult.
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