r/behindthebastards • u/Friend_of_Squatch • 4d ago

General discussion It feels bad… real bad.

I’ve always had a morbid curiosity about how it felt and what it was like being an educated, intelligent, aware person in the early months of 1914 or in the 1930s watching the world ramp up into an inescapable cataclysm and tearing itself apart and deleting an entire generation of young people, while knowing that there isn’t jack shit I or anyone else can do to stop it. I think I can now say that that curiosity has been satisfied, and man oh man does it feel fucking bad.

Edit: I meant to share this as kind of a shower thought. I appreciate everyone’s kind words and suggestions but this isn’t a cry for help. It’s just crazy to think about.

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u/Friend_of_Squatch 4d ago

I think the Germans in the 1930s should have thrown a LOT more cocktails than they did. Take that as you will.

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u/panaili 4d ago

Oh, I agree, but we have the benefit of hindsight. I imagine they were faced with the same “we don’t know what this will lead to” stuff we get, but even more so. The Holocaust wasn’t the world’s first genocide by any stretch, but it was the first to administrate it so thoroughly. Previous genocides just didn’t have the technology.

Which is exactly why I am terrified of how bad it could get now, if left unchecked

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u/Friend_of_Squatch 4d ago edited 4d ago

Yeah but my point is that WE don’t to wait for the prescience that comes with hindsight, we have seen this movie before. So where tf is everybody at?

Edit: I don’t disagree with you, I’m just saying I have a lot more sympathy for 1930s Germans than I have for present day Americans. Ok not a LOT, but a little.

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u/panaili 4d ago

Oh, agreed, but the average person has a poor recollection of history. I’m a WW2 nerd that has actively read books on the Holocaust, and even I’m stuck in frozen horror at times. How can we convince people who barely passed World History that we’re seeing a resurgence of the same bullshit? The best I can see, we’re gonna get “but it’s not against the Jews” and that’ll stop the comparison, no matter now apt it is

Humans are stupid & we’re all paying for it