Item — HN Reader

And this is the merit of Tor, that is content neutral because it has no other choice. This is good design.

When you're in an incredibly emotional place, you'll wish you had infinite power to crush the demons. But once the emotions subside, you'll remember that there are no demons, just other emotional people (like yourself) and be glad your calm-minded self put barriers around what extreme-emotion-you can do.

In a sense, it's worth asking if extreme-emotion is the root cause of modern violence (nationalism, us-vs-them, victimhood rhetoric [Nazi's perceived themselves victims of Jews]).

When we lean-in to our emotional reactions, it's easy for the emotional reaction (e.g. War in Iraq) to be worse than the original spark (9/11).

1 comments

War in Iraq was absolutely a nonsense response to 9/11.

At the same time, the ghosts of 6 million dead Jews and untold numbers of dead allied soldiers would like a word with you about whether or not they died in vain or if we maybe did learn a lesson.

That's my exact point, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but we all got so emotional we couldn't question. If you look at the civilian deaths it really becomes a big "Wait... are we the baddies?" situation.

(According to estimates over 30 times more innocent civilians died in the Iraq conflict than died in 9/11 attacks [1])

As for the holocaust, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. My point is that allowing yourself to get emotional, even when you think you're right, is how all of the tragedies of the world happened (including the Holocaust). Those German soldiers thought they were doing the right thing, because they were swept up in emotion. Not because millions of evil people were all born at once in Germany in the 1900s.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Ira...,

> That's my exact point, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but we all got so emotional we couldn't question.

Well, we could and we did but invading Iraq was something that was still on GWB's bucket list and so he did.

What people thought didn't really matter.

> If you look at the civilian deaths it really becomes a big "Wait... are we the baddies?" situation.

It was pretty bloody obvious. See Dr. Kelly.

> As for the holocaust, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

The point I'm trying to make, and I'll spell it out, just so that it is absolutely clear is that Neo Nazis are one step worse than the Nazis of old in that they are knowingly and willingly participating in a re-run of history that we should avoid at all costs, especially because we already know how that particular movie ends.

> My point is that allowing yourself to get emotional, even when you think you're right, is how all of the tragedies of the world happened

No, emotion has fuck all to do with this. It's simply logic. Nazis : bad.

> Those German soldiers thought they were doing the right thing, because they were swept up in emotion.

They were lied to and they were conscripted. Many of them would have backed out if that would not have led to a bullet to the head.

> Not because millions of evil people were all born at once in Germany in the 1900s.

No, but it only took a relatively small amount of those evil people to take over the country. Note how the GOP and all the other presidents men are standing by as Trump is destroying America as we know it and have come to cherish and respect it while we're watching.

How far it will be allowed to go down will be a big factor in how many casualties this round will bring. 10's, 1000's, millions? Who is to know as long as all the good little people are standing by the side it might go very far indeed.

> No, but it only took a relatively small amount of those evil people to take over the country.

And somehow I doubt they'd support the free flow of information.

> That's my exact point, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but we all got so emotional we couldn't question.

No, we all didn't, especially those of us who had already been pointing out, before 9/11 and even before the 2000 election, that Cheney, as well as others in the campaign and later administration, had been pushing for war with Iraq under a variety of different pretexts for years. And not the 127 Representatives and 23 Senators who voted against even conditional authority for the war. And, arguably, not many of the representatives and senators who voted for the conditions regarding determinations that had to be made for the war.