Intent to Kill

>> I'm leaving out my views on Israel because I think that's all that's going to get commented on, <<

Yeah, people are going nuts over that. I've got a coffeehouse meeting this morning, so I'll have to pick up the rest of the comments later.

>> but I would like to weigh-in in that Germany has a very liberal and to me, civilized social system in very many ways when in comparison to ours.<<

You're actually one of the more consistent people pouring beans onto the "civilized" side of the scale for me.

>> I firmly believe its no longer accurate to look at it as "...even Germany". It suggests that Germany is behind other Western European nations (the Swiss minaret scandal, anyone?) or a bunch of racists. <<

I have studied history enough to be leery of Germany. It's had its liberal periods and then gone apeshit again, more than once, although to be fair that whole chunk of Europe has that problem. So the history has dug itself a pretty deep hole. The contemporary culture, especially the last ... hmm, ten or twenty years? ... has been making steady improvement. I was startled the first few times Germany did something that I found worthy of respect and admiration (outside of things it's been historically good at, like certain types of organizational and technical aptitude) but I've gotten to where I watch for those. Nobody should be weighed down by their history forever, it's just hard to overcome the inertia. (This applies to America, too, but I think Germany is working harder.) As for whether Germany is behind the rest of Europe, hmm ... I probably wouldn't place them at the bottom of that barrel.

So over time, my opinion is changing gradually in a respectwards direction. I still say "even Germany" but not as often as I used to. My view on the contemporary culture is, perhaps, in the neighborhood of guarded hope. I am just too much of a student of history ever to be quick in deciding that a country with a vile past has truly outgrown that. (This is why I didn't expect Obama's election to solve racism here; it was a great leap forward, but it was pretty obviously going to cause an ugly backlash.) On the other hoof, I also know enough about social evolution to understand that such growth is possible. Sometimes cultures learn amazing things. I'm watching to see what Germany is learning, and whether they'll figure it out well enough to make it work and like it (or be wary enough of their own history) to keep it permanently. That's probably not something that can be determined within the scope of a human lifetime, but ticking off the generations is a good start. (Remember that history goes back for centuries, counting for regional and cultural history in contexts where national borders are malleable.) If Germany keeps going in this direction for another 3-4 decades, and I'm still here to see that, I'll be in the "pretty sure" range. And that would be enormously cool.

>> But on the flip side, marriage and immigration equality, enforced and very thorough recycling programs, control of HFCS, health care for everyone, and free/mostly free university... well, I'm a fan.<<

Yes, those are all points that are very much in Germany's favor. In fact, they're points where Germany is ahead of America, though I think there are some other places that may have better programs in some of those areas.

I think all of those are contributing factors, to a degree which may not be discernible.

*ponder* I wonder how much of Germany's fiddling around these days is an attempt to dismantle various social functions and reassemble them into something that works better. Because that would be one damn fine application of their structural knack. Not enough data to be certain yet, but I am freshly reminded that they did have an awful lot of spare parts to be looking at.

>> Anyway,
the assertion would be that the Weimar Republic failed
because the Germans failed to learn how a democracy ought to work.
All sorts of ways to shoot that one down.<<

Just because something is workable doesn't mean people will figure out how to make it work immediately. I think there are different ways for a democracy to work, because several effective variations have been employed over the years. If Germany was missing part of the picture, that may have contributed to their problems, though there were definitely other problems going on at the time. Democracy is hard; right now America isn't doing too well with it.

>>IIRC, the original article that mentioned it
was primarily about the disaster of mistreating prisoners
as the US is doing now.<<

Mistreatment of prisoners is indeed a disaster and a disgrace. It's high on my list of "uncivilized behavior," along with mistreatment of other helpless or disadvantaged persons. This is a key reason why my opinion of America is lower now than it has been in the past. When one's ambient government starts saying that torture is moral, all kinds of red lights and warning flags should go berserk.

>> Germany WAS a civilized nation.<<

Germany HAS BEEN a civilized nation and an uncivilized nation (counted both by locale and by culture) through multiple cycles through history. It's ... kind of bipolar, that way, I think, in that it's had some resplendent highs and horrifying lows.

>> What caused them to be what they are today was their utter shock and horror at realizing what they managed to become under Hitler. They took a good hard look at themselves and threw up a lot, and, in abject shame and horror, decided to be better.<<

In my observation, that is a substantial part of the influence. I doubt that's all there is to it, though. Broad cultural changes rarely spring from a single source. In particular they picked up some new memes, and those almost never spontaneously generate; they're much easier to get from someone else.

>> German POWs weren't treated any better by Americans than American POWs were treated by Germans.<<

I'm dubious of that, although my information is not as complete as I'd like. It's known that at the time, Germany was mistreating people en masse, was running the "nonpersons" meme, and didn't care what other nations thought of its behavior. Those are not typically precursors of human POW treatment. (Some Germans disagreed vehemently with those things, but they were not in power at the time, which was the problem.) Meanwhile America was in one of its saner and more decent phases in terms of setting a good example on the world stage. It was actively trying to be a good role model and make the world a better place; didn't always work out so well, but was a far cry better than today's floundering morass of hypocritical doom. I've read accounts claiming that German (and other) POW's were treated honorably by Americans. One example that particularly stuck in my mind was a TV documentary about several German POWs who escaped from a stateside prison, and after several months ... went back and turned themselves in. Their treatment there was more appealing than starving freedom. For anyone to put themselves willing back into enemy hands is remarkable, and speaks strongly for humane conditions therein. (I find it hard to imagine someone escaping from Abu Ghraib or similar places being willing to go back. It was a distressing comparison.) And that wasn't an isolated incident; apparently that happened more than once. What I would really like to complete the picture is a German accounting of their POWs and the conditions in American care.

How much of an impact this had on Germany ... is debatable. We're not talking about a small number of POWs going home, and Germany had lost a lot of people so that influx would've made a splash. Whatever they learned, whoever they became, sum total, would ripple through society. That includes the racking regrets and the newfound insights alike. Meanwhile all sorts of other influences were shaking what was left of Germany's culture. What has regrown since, as best I can tell, is not yet complete; shows clear antecedents both in Germany's own historic culture base and borrowings from elsewhere; and has hints and glimmers of things emerging that don't yet closely match anything else, so may be completely new.