Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
computerthings | on: Trump wins presidency for second time
To me the Holocaust is a gaping abyss in the history of Europe we still can't even fully fathom, much less process. The trauma from it, of the suffering, of the sheer vast absence, and even of the guilt, lingers on, shapes us today in ways we can't even fully see, much less escape.

I don't mean this as finger-wagging at you or anyone; it's so easy to tell people to stay and fight somewhere where you're not. The Nazis could have prevented early on, later on staying couldn't really change anything, it was just another life destroyed in the maw. So yes, good on those who got out. But also good on those who stayed and fought. Personally, as much as I would love to run away from my own country sometimes, I know that wherever I end in, I will have even less influence than here, as infinitely little influence as that may be. And wherever I'd end up, it would just be an even smaller ship in the same rough waters that seem to be engulfing the world.

In the case of the US, it's arguably the most powerful country that is still somewhat free. The Nazis were stopped in a world war, which they started with no real need. If they hadn't started the war, or if they had won it, or if there hadn't been any other power that isn't also totalitarian that could have conceivably challenged them -- as is the case with the US -- then they might still be in power.

It was close enough back then, if the US falls into that hole, with all the weapon and surveillance tech that exists today, I just don't see any "outside" that could help, or be safe. There could be countries poor enough in resources that get left alone long for me to get old in them, at best, but should I have children, they'd be be up for grabs by whatever is being cooked now. That's basically why I even care about US politics as non-American. When that particular tower falls, it might blot out the sun. If not forever, then for long enough that it simply must never be found out IMO.

Sorry I didn't mean to be this dark, but I mulled this stuff over so much, and this is what I think about it, what I can't help but think about it.

shiroiushi | parent
To be fair, I honestly don't believe the US is going to be a repeat of Nazi Germany, at all. I think it's going to resemble Argentina more. Nazi Germany was a warmongering, expansionist society that literally wanted to take over and annex eastern Europe as "lebensraum" ("living space") and turn its peoples into slaves. The MAGA US is much more isolationist; if anything, it's an echo of post-WWI US. So no, I don't think some kind of repeat of the Holocaust is coming (at least not in the US), just some really lousy economic times and a generally unpleasant society to live in (which, to me, it already has been for some time: mass shootings, political division, etc.).

I got tired of dealing with that, and found a society I enjoyed living in much more, so I found a job there and moved there. If someone wants to stay in the US and try to make it better, more power to them, and I hope they succeed. I'm not that young any more and just want to live in a nice place in relative peace, and the US was no longer that place (and, in my view, stopped being that place around 2000).