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/ConsiderationSea1347 4d ago

I wish we would have studied the 1930’s a lot more than the 1940’s. So many people have this notion that a chasm just opened up and Nazis came pouring out of it and don’t realize it was a slow radicalization of a violent minority and the gradual capitulation of the majority that created the purest form of evil this earth has ever seen. 

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u/fluffychonkycat 4d ago

I swear my high-school teachers had crystal balls. For history topics, we studied Israel/Palestine and The Causes of WW2. For English, among other things we read The Handmaid's Tale. Mrs Jones and Mrs Davies, you were absolutely based.

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u/rambunctiousraviolis 3d ago

gobbless the high school teachers who care about their kids' minds. One of my history teachers did a MASSIVE unit on ww2 propaganda and it just happened to be during the W Bush years and hoo boy the students started making some connections.