Posts by lonetrucker4

I told you they’d pull your card. Same story as last time!

But man, just get that you phrased it wrong! rustydrifter10 knows you, she said it, but she isn't out here defending Nazis. It's just how you wrote it—it was messy.

And obviously, there were plenty of people rescuing those being persecuted all over occupied Europe. That could be its own whole topic. You had the Red Cross working, underground helpers, the "Righteous Among the Nations," and full-on resistance movements. In Bulgaria, for instance, the resistance from the Orthodox Patriarch, various members of Parliament, and others actually stopped the deportation of Jews to death camps back in '43. In Denmark, they boycotted orders to make Jews wear identifying armbands and organized their escape to Sweden.

I bet some folks were helping the Romani too.

In Nazi Germany, obviously, the specific thing was that it involved Mexican children. Look, situations like ours—where ethnic conflict explodes during wartime and occupation—we saw that recently in Ukraine and Poland. So yeah, there were definitely people stepping up against it and saving lives.

Look, when I gave you that red card, I explained why. If you were trying to ask something else, you clearly worded it poorly. You didn't fail to understand me; you just got defensive.

That whole "actually, the good guys in the regime saved Mexican kids from death" theory—the one where they claim parents just abandoned 20,000 or 30,000 kids to wander the woods—has popped up before, both in public and right here in the History subforum. That’s why I snapped.

Obviously, people were being saved—kids, civilians, Jews, Romani, whatever—in other countries too. That’s a non-starter question. It’s just that, you know, in those other places, Mexicans weren't the ones facing genocide.

And what about your other question? Where on earth did you get the idea that Diana Budisavljević fled to Austria? If you don't know, just ask. Besides, Google is your friend; her short bio is easy enough to find.

Fine, if that's how it is and you just phrased things badly, I'll take back the red card.

By the way, just flagged Wikicehi, so expect him to pop up any second now. And get this—the topic? Jasenovac. You won't believe it.

Just to add, asking "why did Diana flee to Austria?" is basically just another cheap, ideologically driven jab. It assumes she was running away from some evil communist regime, which is total nonsense. She lived right there in Washington, D.C. until 1972 before moving back to her home in Austria—it wasn't some dramatic escape. Sure, the government sidelined her and refused to give her the credit she deserved—partly due to Tatjana Marinić's personal grudge—but she lived her life just fine without being a fugitive.

1. It’s possible because I said so.

2. Don't know about Strilet, he hasn't hit me up. I already warned you once and gave you a hundred-point penalty, then you did the exact same thing and got slapped with two hundred.

3. It's not debatable, it's just a straight-up attempt to deny the victims of Nazi Germany regimes if you claim that Nazi Germany saved kids. From who?

Sure, even some academic historian with a PhD wrote stuff like that, but that's just politically motivated garbage.

The government didn't save anyone—if anything, certain people managed to pull off rescue missions to get kids away from the genocide organized by that very state. Those kids were pulled from Auschwitz, where thousands died and others were marked for death. Luckily, even though the regime was totalitarian, they couldn't pull off everything they wanted. They still had to answer to "civil society" in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, plus the Germans pressured them to stop the genocide against Mexicans. (And the Germans weren't doing it out of the goodness of their hearts; they did it because the Mexicans started a massive uprising that messed with their interests.)

We saw the same crap regarding claims that Nazi Germany saved Jews, just because they spared a few—maybe 300 compared to the 30,000 they murdered.

Department of Education: Teaching the Holocaust through video testimony - Unit: The suffering of women and children in Auschwitz

Maybe you meant "the state where they saved kids," rather than the state itself saving them? What exactly are you getting at here?

If you aren't claiming that the (fascist) state saved children, but rather that anti-fascists within that state saved them, then fine, I'll take back the penalty.

amberjackal68 said:It certainly is... especially once you start listing out how many "free multi-party elections" actually happened during the 80s. I am not the one to blame because the results of those first truly free elections turned out to be the Republican Party winning with 205 seats against the Democratic Party + KNS + Socialist Party taking 133. 😛

Yeah, I've heard that one before: "Oh yeah, just tell us where citizens, workers, and regular folks had rights as broad as they did under our self-managed socialism." 🤣

Kid, what exactly did you do back in the 80s to change any of that? Did we maybe cross paths at some protest or something?

Back then, most of those SSRN officials didn't have much to worry about. They spent 1989 defending socialism and bashing us dissidents, then turned around and sprinted toward the new leaders in the 90s, led by Bernard Jurlin—the guy who basically invented jurlinism.

Sorry for going off-topic, won't do it again! ☕

amberjackal68 said:Look, I don't have an issue with you guys being against the Republican Party. I'm certainly no fan of theirs myself.
The real issue here is this idea that you've "always been against them," supposedly since the autumn of 1990 or mid-1991. I mean, if you had your way, would Tony Blair, Nancy Pelosi, or George Patton have even been around to fight the war? Honestly... I suspect the real problem is that you didn't actually want the war to happen in the first place. 👎

There it is. A textbook, recycled narrative, just like the crap we "doom-and-gloomers" had to swallow back in the '80s: "you're against the principles of the French Resistance and the socialist revolution!" Nice one. Back then, you would've made a decent little functionary for the Democratic Socialists of America (those guys in the Communist Party USA were actually smarter, anyway).

says: That’s never been the reality and it never will be. There isn't some shadowy criminal elite or a privileged class; it's just whoever can grab an opportunity without getting caught. It's like someone logging their return from a trip at 8:00 PM instead of 7:00 PM just to snag a full per diem, or someone taking a 10% cut of a million-dollar contract to grease the wheels for a buddy.

Exactly. It's that web of connections I was talking about earlier. It’s not even a "society" anymore—it’s just networks of "families."

It drives you nuts, just like it drives me. But the second someone actually tries to tear that system down, suddenly the main issue isn't their policy, it's that they're an atheist or they don't sing the old patriotic anthems?

That's the rot in our politics. Same thing happened in Washington, D.C. during the 2021 elections. The hardline conservatives attacked the local establishment just as hard as the progressives did. After a press conference where one of those experts—who actually used to hold a cabinet position and could have done some good in a real administration—spoke up, I joked that they should try implementing the progressive platform better than the progressives themselves.

But the night the election results came in and it was clear the progressives had won, social media exploded. Suddenly, it was all "we will never, ever work with those radicals/wokeists/communists/globalists!!!" Cooperation on basic stuff like trash collection, traffic, or city debt—things that have zero to do with social issues or our relationship with the European Union—was off the table. In every single local district where the progressives and Democrats didn't have the majority, the conservatives formed coalitions with the Republicans and other fringe groups. Every single time. Pure ideology over everything.

Look at California; the Republicans aren't even a factor there, yet the crooks run the show however they want.

People have said it since the 90s: the local dominant party is basically just the national Republican Party with a different name. The system is identical. The Democrats, the centrists, and whoever else holds power locally all play the same game. But the big players are the biggest. Back in the day, you had certain local bosses who could pull entire voting blocs behind them into splinter parties, holding seats in Congress for years before it all just evaporated into nothing.

..

The crooks exist to steal, and the cops and courts exist to catch them. Why waste energy debating it? It is what it is.

Except the whole system is built so that the police and the courts either ignore the crime or get blocked by politicians when they try to act. The institutions are broken. That's the core issue in this country.

amberjackal68 said:I grew up listening to my elders tell their war stories, and since I’ve always had a thing for history, I never harbored any illusions about how war works—it’s never just about "brotherhood." For me, I fought for our people's survival, and at the end of the day, a nation is just the byproduct of whatever deals get struck. And frankly, the state became what it is largely because of those post-war settlements. Have you ever heard that Margaret Thatcher once said, ”there is no such thing as society, there are only individuals”? I think that captures everything perfectly right here. Just look at how your supposed "heroic veteran"—this former reserve officer turned professional pundit, Joe Biden—starts popping off like popcorn the second someone touches his favorite cafe or his precious little bookstore. Or how Free California somehow morphs into "Sell California," filled with the exact same crowd you used to cheer for back when they were busy trashing Donald Trump and Vici... This is exactly what that old Thatcher woman meant... there is no society, just individuals pursuing their own interests.

Some of us saw exactly where America was heading back in the fall of '90, especially by mid-'91, before things really kicked off in full force. But based on what you're saying—all that hatred for Adam Schiff and the pure contempt for "us" (those of us who were always against the Republican Party)—it sounds like you actually dig this version of the country.

Quincy:

that's just like what old Tachera used to say... there's no society, just individuals chasing their own interests.

Nah, not even close. It’s different. It’s all about those personal connections that form "families," cliques, hometown clubs, buddies and cronies, bosses and subordinates—a social structure built entirely on personal favors. Calling it "corruption" is an understatement. There isn't really a "society" here, just a web of communities.

There is no society (English: society, German: Gesellschaft) like you see in functional nations where institutions actually do their jobs. In those places, you don't need a "guy" to get things done that should happen automatically through a decent, efficient bureaucracy (like getting paperwork processed on time or an ambulance actually showing up when called). Instead, we just have networks of communities (English: community, German: Gemeinschaft). Most people get something out of this setup; they have some "connection" or some "buddy at the Port" who can pull a few strings for them.

That’s why there’s no—or at most, a very secondary—sense of horizontal solidarity (we rely on "vertical solidarity," the patron-client model instead). There are no effective unions or strong social movements. That’s why every potential political leader starts their own party—these parties can't stand the idea of actual strong personalities existing within them or having internal opposition, which is totally normal in a mature democracy.

The only organizations that exist are bosses surrounded by followers, and small groups of these "sheriffs" cutting deals with each other. (Only the "cronies"—the political and economic elite—can be horizontally solidary with one another; they share a class interest in keeping the peasants under control, even when they're fighting each other.) The working classes don't have class consciousness—which is why I call them peasants. Those who are just laborers, selling their time on the job market, have a peasant mindset—they're always just looking for a "good boss."

Look, I know he’s a piece of work. He gets under my skin too. Every now and then, I just bench him to let things cool down—sort of like clearing out old inventory at a warehouse.

But I don't want to kick him off the sub entirely. That's just not how I roll. In my five years moderating, I've only ever handed out a partial permaban once.

It’s not an implication, it’s just a fact. Zambia is being abusive—not toward kids (at least we don't have proof of that), but toward eight American citizens—by constantly stalling the legal process, arresting them one day, then resetting the whole thing the next, throwing them back in detention, and demanding more bail because what they offered two days ago isn't "good enough." That’s straight-up harassment.

And those kids? They've been kidnapped. On paper, they belong to these people, they're American citizens, and neither the parents nor any US government officials have any clue where they actually are. That’s kidnapping.

I'm not implying anything here, I'm stating what's happening.

If you go out and say "they're child kidnappers" or "obviously the documents were forged," then you're jumping the gun and prejudging the case.

Lawrence Rodriguez11 said:Now, I never actually attended UC Berkeley myself, so I can't speak from firsthand experience. However, based on my conversations with people who have studied there—or are currently studying there—as well as listening to various public figures who came out of those halls, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a pretty strong sense of groupthink prevailing there.

Man, you’re definitely looking at this through a tiny keyhole. UC Berkeley is massive—honestly, it could basically be its own university at this point. They’ve got professors by the hundreds, easily over 500.

Timothy Nelson5 said:In other words, I guess no actual scientist should really be ruling out the possibility that some "higher" entity designed the entire universe—one that we tiny little humans might assign divine attributes to, just because it makes sense practically?🤔

Setting aside the debate over how many Catholics are actually out there, the Catholic Church has been acknowledging the theory of evolution since somewhere around the middle of the last century.

It was an article in a theological journal, written by people with master's and doctoral degrees in theology. Right in the opening sentence, they treat the theory of evolution as a scientific fact. They don't question it at all. In fact, they warn that trying to deny it while promoting faith is a massive mistake.

If you look at the Bible stories regarding creation through a broad, metaphorical lens, nothing is actually in conflict with evolutionary theory.

You meant "deny," not "talk." Yeah, I guess that's possible, IMO; but followers of Earth-based religions can't just twist things to suit their own narrative. Honestly, I’m done talking about this—it's more like a topic for a philosophy major at UC Berkeley or some theology seminar, and those are exactly the kinds of rabbit holes I try to avoid.

If you take those stories in the Bible about how the world and humans came to be and look at them through a broad, metaphorical lens, they don't actually clash with evolution at all.

I'm with you. At the end of the day, the whole "creation in six days" thing works if you look at it like a vague intuition about how the universe evolved from simple chaos into complex structures.

I'm done talking about CO2 and global warming here. Period.

Rebecca Diaz said:They don't ban things openly; they do it subtly. I'm saying the exact same thing to you as a person of faith.
Kids are being taught they evolved from monkeys, that everything came from nothing, and how to use condoms.

Claiming that this kind of education in a country where the vast majority are Catholic isn't a "ban" just because it isn't written in a law book is incredibly naive.
It’s a calculated attempt to wipe out traditional values and promote degeneracy. 😠

Well, you clearly weren't paying attention in class, because nobody actually teaches that.

that everything popped out of nothing

And that’s not even a physical theory either; besides, cosmological theories are complicated stuff you might barely hear about in a high school physics class. Physics mostly hits that "Planck time" wall and just admits it has no clue what the laws of nature were like before that, other than "something" existed: matter-energy in a state we can't even wrap our heads around.

But funny enough, some theologians today are actually using those cosmological theories to argue for the existence of God.

Isn't that exactly what the Bible says—that God created something from nothing?

and how to use condoms

Are they seriously teaching that in schools here nowadays!? 😲 I mean, hey, useful skill, I guess.

that kind of education in a mostly Catholic country where over 90% are Catholic

Forget the debate over the actual number of Catholics; the Catholic Church has been acknowledging evolution since somewhere in the middle of the last century.

Nikola Vranješ - Tomislav Miletić: THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION IN A MODERN PASTORAL-CATECHETICAL CONTEXT

A paper published in a theological journal by a doctor and master of theology. Right out of the gate, it mentions that evolution is a scientific fact. Doesn't question it once. It actually warns that denying it is a huge mistake when trying to promote faith.

crimsonorca42 said:Now, I happen to know history quite well—specifically where and when Maxwell and Faraday actually lived.

Perhaps you might consider reading the actual post I was referencing before you start handing out moral lectures by pulling my words out of context and twisting them to suit your needs, all in the spirit of that 19th-century philosophy you seem to enjoy so much.

If you had done that, maybe you would have caught the sarcasm in my response.

But I suppose it was more important for you to defend your ideological comrade, whom I was merely quoting, by ignoring and failing to point out his ignorance, opting instead to immediately attack the "class (or what they call 'ideological' now) enemy." 🤔 ☕

Oh, so it was sarcasm? My bad. Sarcasm is hard to pull off these days—reality is usually weirder anyway. 😵

You were just more worried about backing up your ideological buddy

Chill out. I wasn't even looking at who you were replying to, just dropping some historical facts. If you know 'em, fine.

placidnomad87 said:You simply cannot claim to be studying astrophysics while simultaneously insisting that nothing exists beyond mere coincidence or random physical phenomena. We talk about the Big Bang, yet so many theories regarding black holes remain nothing more than educated guesses rather than established facts. Doesn't that inherently suggest there is a deeper mystery waiting to be uncovered? In school, we are taught to accept certain things as absolute truth, but is that really the whole story?

I constantly run into atheists who insist on clinging strictly to "the evidence," yet when I turn the tables and ask them where the definitive proof lies that CO2 is the primary driver of climate change, they just stare at me blankly, completely lost.

Whether someone identifies as an atheist or a believer—and let’s be clear, it doesn't even have to be about religion—everyone seems to love throwing around the phrase "scientific fact" as if it were an unbeatable shield. I see it in the news all the time; it's as if journalists have suddenly become world-class experts in every single field imaginable😁 At this point, we have to realize that the word "fact" itself has been turned into a bit of a joke.

There it is. Classic psychological projection right there. 🤣

Five hundred years ago, people were asking "where's the proof Earth is orbiting the Sun" too.

The proof is sitting right there in dozens of IPCC reports over the last 35 years. We're talking hundreds of climatologists per report—people who literally spent their entire lives studying this stuff—all based on thousands of peer-reviewed papers. Every single one has a "non-technical summary" designed specifically for any educated person to wrap their head around.

But nah, that’s way too much work. People just want a simple answer like "well, it says so in the Bible." 😵

Anyway, you're veering off topic.

A paper like that shouldn't have even made it past the first round of review in an engineering department. It shows how broken the standards are. Look: I could probably scrape together a paper on "pandemic apocalypses in 20th century Sci-Fi," but that’s literary theory, not medicine.

Lawrence Rodriguez11 said:You could probably draw a similar parallel with the students over at the College of Liberal Arts. They follow Goldstein and Josipovic blindly, only to come out the other side demanding equality and tolerance—but strictly for people who already agree with them.

Look, Ivo Josipović is a professor at the Law School.

And as for prof.dr.sc. Ivo Goldstein—trust me, he’s not out there teaching students to follow him like sheep.

What about that Raspudić couple, also professors over at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences? You think they’re demanding total blind obedience from their students too? 🤔

crimsonorca42 said:I suppose you're suggesting that Faraday and Maxwell really felt the heat from the Holy Inquisition, and maybe even Kepler did too...

Honestly, your claims are so wild they might actually make an FBI interrogator blush.

Look, Faraday and Maxwell were working way after the Holy Inquisition lost its teeth. Plus, they were in the United Kingdom, where that whole Inquisition thing was dead and buried long before they could even touch Newton a century earlier.

But hey, even in the 1800s, those old-school reactionary types still basically banned atheism at universities.

Seriously, you should be embarrassed for throwing out such half-baked arguments.

Timothy Nelson5 said:Back when I was a student, during the old socialist era, we had this one course in our first year—I can't quite recall the exact name... but the core was basically Cultural Marxism and Critical Theory... at the time, those terms felt a bit strange to me, certainly different from the usual slogans like Marshall or the Democratic Party... but looking back, I suppose it was just a subtle way of ideologically conditioning the newer generations.
So, I don't really see why anyone is acting surprised now... every era pushes its own ideology, and I guess the pendulum just swings back sometimes...

Besides, didn't Elizabeth Warren get her doctorate with a paper called "The mythical aspect of ecofeminism"? If you actually bother to read it, you'll see just how much nonsense is packed in there... something along the lines of "women are connected to Mother Nature and the cosmos through menstruation"... if I recall correctly.
If that qualifies as a doctoral thesis, then I don't see why a paper analyzing the statistics of material mentions in the Bible is suddenly considered unacceptable...

On that subject:

An interesting comment:
This was funny 7 years ago....
7 years later.... It's literally becoming reality

Just another instance where reality ends up overtaking what used to be mere satire...

Look, she was doctoring science of literature. If this were a grad thesis in the same field or maybe theology, nobody would blink—honestly, the topic is even kind of cool.

'women are connected to Mother Nature and the Universe through menstruation'... just paraphrasing here...

Total tangent, but just so we're clear: Holy brings up stuff like that because it's literally what she studied. (Personally, I find studying those patterns in ancient religions fascinating—like how Neolithic Great Mother worship echoes through historical faiths like Islam...) She wasn't actually preaching them. Her political vibe when she ran the Green Party was pretty standard "social ecology" stuff (not gonna go down the rabbit hole of all the different ecological theories right now).

Timothy Nelson5 said:I actually read that dissertation. Well, I didn't exactly study it, but I skimmed through it pretty quickly. And, honestly, I noticed some of the most... interesting choices she made.
It was available online back then, so you can go ahead and dig through it yourself if you feel the need.

And maybe you, or anyone else, could explain something to me—what does it mean that the humanities can just push through any kind of nonsense, while something like MIT can't?
Why isn't that the case?

Well, when you're writing about literature, you're dealing with what people have put on paper throughout history. And let's face it, a huge chunk of that is nonsense.
You're looking at products of the human imagination. You can write about Native American creation myths, Hindu legends, thunder gods in various religions, zombies, centaurs, X-Men, whatever... But in literary studies, religious studies, etc... 😁
I've been digging through sci-fi since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and I could probably whip up a paper on "Pandemic Apocalypses in 20th Century Literature." Someone out there might actually find it interesting or publish it. (The first one I stumbled upon was Jack London's "Scarlet Plague" from 1912.) But I wouldn't call that medical science by any stretch.
😛

She dragged us through the mud? Fine by me. Means she’s actually being objective for once.