Intent to Kill

>> 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.

>> Democracy only works if the participants understand that it is
NOT simply a more complicated set of rules by which power
is seized and retained. <<

Or enough of them understand that, anyway, and are sufficiently effective to keep the irreducible number of powermongers out of the center of command. Unfortunately a lot of people, not just the worst powermongers, tend to view ALL governments as "a set of rules by which power is seized and retained." (Not to mention the people who view religions, economies, and other organizations the same way.) This is why, to date, we have not discovered a form of government that continues to perform reliably and decently after the addition of human beings. Very frustrating.

>> The participants in a democracy must use it
as a means of equitably distributing dissatisfaction.<<

I would prefer a more positive approach: finding solutions that most people can live with, that don't crush anybody. Because a government that just makes everyone equally dissatisfied is going to suck.

>> That is allegedly what German POWs learned in the US.<<

*ponder* Not impossible, I suppose. It's in the founding documents, in various phrasing. Some people have always practiced it.

>>Democracy in the US is malfunctioning now
because political parties increasingly misuse it,
making it a set of rules to be gotten around.<<

I agree. So do corporations and radical special-interest groups, which also causes serious problems.

>>To paraphrase the JewsSchool article I linked to this morning,
Our loyalty is not to the United States,
but to the principles by which and for which it exists.<<

That's reasonable.

My first loyalty in this world is to the biosphere of the Earth, to which I belong; and to the human species, which form I approximate. I am not strongly motivated by connection to a nation, political ideal, etc. I am quite attached to the land I inhabit. I have my own morality to consider, which is a conglomerate influenced by many cultures; my reasons for being in this life and the talents I have as tools; and my relationship with assorted deities, which has its give-and-take. Those are somewhat more flexibly woven into the priorities. And I tend to consider both the ethical and the practical aspects of wrong/right, reasoning, and troubleshooting.

This often gives me a substantially different perspective than other people when it comes to analyzing and solving problems.

>>The proverbial bottom line is that we cannot please
all the people all the time.
If any one group is always displeased,
they will resist/revolt/cause trouble.<<

This is certainly true.

>>So long as no one group is consistently shortchanged,
a political system will continue to function.<<

I think that this is partly true, but not wholly true. A society must be able to meet the needs of its members, at least most of them and most of the time. Otherwise they will flee, or smash it and replace it with something more effective. So if a political system merely spreads the displeasure evenly, it may wind up displeasing everyone, which has the same end effect as displeasing a particular group. It has to be able to provide satisfaction and security on a fairly wide basis, not just avoid heaping too much doom on one group. This is much the same issue as "peace is the more than merely the absence of war."

>> Democracy is usually better able to keep the conflicting interests
of various groups balanced.<<

Yes, it tends to do better than most other systems.

>>I've never heard of a single American POW
returning to Germany after the war
and becoming a German citizen.
There were dozens of German POWs who returned to Nebraska
after the war and became US citizens.<<

Fascinating! That would be a trend worth tracking.

>> That wouldn't prove that the prisoners here
were treated better, but it's certainly the inference I've drawn.<<

Not proof, but strong evidence in favor.

I think this, and other aspects of Germany's regrowth, are worth studying closely because Germany is one of the few cases where a nation has gone through extreme evil and then really put their shoulders into getting out of that sinkhole. If they succeed, if they can sustain the positive change over the long term, then it is imperative to understand how they did that. Or at least we need to have a record of what they did, and were thinking, and whatever else we can scrape up, so that even if we can't figure out why it worked or how to duplicate it, we'll still have the data for the example so that other people aspiring to the same goal will have somewhere to start.

>> 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.