Remix.run Logo
crabbone a day ago

Well, if it's inevitable, then we are facing a long stretch of history when everybody is having a bad time... And by that I mean that it's going to be worse than it is today. War will become a new normal for most people in the world, just like it was before the world wars.

iamnothere a day ago | parent [-]

War is the historical norm. The relative quiet of the Cold War across Western Eurasia, Japan, and Anglo nations was an aberration. Most of the world still experienced major conflicts during and after this period, including Africa, South America, Southeast Asia, Central and South Asia, the Philippines and Indonesia, and of course the Middle East. After the Cold War, conflict spread into Russia and Eastern Europe.

The false “norm” of peace and quiet in Western suburbs will finally be ending, that’s all. We may even have our own Yugoslav moment, although I hope that’s not the case.

crabbone a day ago | parent [-]

I'm not disagreeing with you. I just don't like where this is going :)

Oh, and I have an anecdote, somewhat relevant to the situation.

So, my grandma lived through the Nazi occupation of the Western Ukraine. She died in the early 90s, so, the events I'm describing must've happened some time between the Chernobyl disaster and the fall of the Soviet Union. I was an elementary school student and had a very simple picture of the Great Patriotic War: Nazis were bad, we were all around good, and we showed them...

One day she took me to the local farmers' market. On our way there we had to come by a liquor store, and there was, prostrated on the ground alcoholic who must've fallen asleep waiting for the store to open.

Holding her nose, my grandma uttered "had Germans been here, this would never have happened!"

Her admiration for Nazis came to me as a bit of a shock, but I made this mental trick, explaining it away by describing my grandma as "strict and law-abiding" and didn't think much of the incident until much, much later. Eventually, by talking to others who lived through the occupation and trying to understand what was so attractive about the Nazis that a lot of people welcomed them with open arms, I realized that the Nazis, beside the bad things they are known for today, leaned heavily into upholding law and order. In a Doctor Doom sort of way, but still. A lot of people were willing to give away their freedoms in exchange for the very "radical" law enforcement... And this is the aspect that doesn't get a lot of attention when the Nazis are mentioned in the history class...

So, there's a part of me that wants law and order at any cost, be it the US bombing the shit out of some country (it could be my country, if necessary! although, understandably, I'd rather it be some other country, better yet none at all). Just so that, by and large, there'd be peace and stability... On the other hand: fairness and all that... :)