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A question about morality and media

#183
Stewie26 said:
Historians say if Hitler would have died around 1937 or so he would have been remembered as a great leader. He and the party turned Germany into a powerhouse and Germany
was one of the most sucessful countrys during the great world wide depression. As we all know it went south after 1937 and things got very ugly. By that time the population
was under total control of the Nazi party and if you spoke up aganst the party you were toast. That put a lot of good people between a rock and a hard place.
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So let's see these are the actions of a great leader?

1) Organized a boycott of Jewish owned shops 1933

2) Forced the sale of one of Germany's most popular publications because it was owned by Jews 1934

3) Passed the Nuremburg laws forbidding Jews to marry and ending their rights of citizenship. 1935

While Kristalnacht didn't happen until 1938 to consider one of the most hateful monsters of history a "good leader" in his early years a "good leader" brings our Nazi defenders to new heights.

The reality is this, Germans either knew and ignored Hitlers hatred or they didn't want to know either way it was for selfish reasons (their own economic advancement many times at the expense of Jews). I'm sorry, if you were in Germany between 1933 and 1945 and didn't stand against Nazism you were part of the monster crowd. :(

Here is a public statement from the "great leader" in 1933

The Communist and Marxist criminals and their Jewish intellectual instigators, who, having made off with their capital stocks across the border in the nick of time, are now unfolding an unscrupulous, treasonous campaign of agitation against the German Volk as a whole from abroad. Because it became impossible for them to continue lying in Germany, they have begun, in the capitals of the former Entente, to continue the same agitation against the young national uprising that they had already pursued at the outbreak of the War against the Germany of that time.

Lies and slander of positively hair-raising perversity are being launched about Germany. Horror stories of dismembered Jewish corpses, gouged-out eyes, and hacked-off hands are circulated for the purpose of defaming the German Volk in the world for a second time, just as they had succeeded in doing once before in 1914. The animosity of millions of

innocent human beings, i.e., peoples with whom the German Volk wishes only to live in peace, is being stirred up by these unscrupulous criminals. They want German goods and German labour to fall victim to the international boycott. It seems they think the misery in Germany is not bad enough as it is; they have to make it worse!

They lie about Jewish females who have supposedly been killed, about Jewish girls allegedly being raped before the eyes of their parents, about cemeteries being ravaged! The whole thing is one big lie invented for the sole purpose of provoking a new world-war agitation!
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#184
The American government imprisons citizens and foreign nationals indefinitely without trial, everyone who voted in a government that supports such things is a monster.

(see how broad strokes don't really work or make an arguement...)


I'd also say that nobody here has been a "Nazi defender", we're just saying that life isn't black and white and not everyone associated with the Nazi's (ie, a fair proportion of Germany at the time) was a monster.


Going back to the original post, what about childhood TV where things were muddled? Ever watch a Tom and Jerry cartoon? Tom is portrayed as the bad guy in that, yet I'm pretty sure most of us aren't too keen on having (non-pet) mice in the house.
 
#185
i_got_a_mohawk said:
The American government imprisons citizens and foreign nationals indefinitely without trial, everyone who voted in a government that supports such things is a monster.

(see how broad strokes don't really work or make an arguement...)


I'd also say that nobody here has been a "Nazi defender", we're just saying that life isn't black and white and not everyone associated with the Nazi's (ie, a fair proportion of Germany at the time) was a monster.


Going back to the original post, what about childhood TV where things were muddled? Ever watch a Tom and Jerry cartoon? Tom is portrayed as the bad guy in that, yet I'm pretty sure most of us aren't too keen on having (non-pet) mice in the house.
Click to expand...

Maybe I'm wrong on this one as I haven't watched a lot of kids programing in years, but I suspect that's changed a bit too. And if things are declared to be wrong in Kids programing (if our education system is any indication) they are things like having a big carbon footprint, being a bully or sexist to your first grade LGBT friends, or drawing a picture of a gun.:rollno:

Sadly there are absolutes that we teach our kids, they just are just a different set of absolutes than we use to teach. For the record, I'm convinced that everyone has some absolutes, even the most assured situational ethics purveyor. A contridiction in and of itself, having the absolute that there are no absolutes requires a certain amount of mental gymnastics that I'm not willing to engage in. :D

Because moral outrage is clearly by any reasoned standard impossible in a world of no absolutes.

I suspect that many of the people here suggesting to me that there are only shades of grey are absolutely incensed at wasteful carbon use, high CEO pay, or corporate greed for instance. They are absolutely convinced those things are immoral.
 
#186
burk48237 said:
......One of the things I've noticed growing up is how morally ambiguous our mass media's choice of stories has become. I remember as a grade school kid watching Twelve O'clock High, Rat Patrol, Daniel Boone, Gunsmoke, the Rifleman, and Combat. All of those shows were about war or serious physical conflict. And while it is true the violence was less graphic (everything was less graphic) their was still a lot of it. And yet thru-out society we didn't seem to have near as many deranged acts of senseless violence........
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I grew up watching those shows. Also I remember the Richard Speck murders in Chicago, Charles Manson's stuff, riots in every major city in the summertimes, the assisination of several national figures, military action against students on at least 2 campuses who were protesting a war that many people felt was illegal... leading to the drafting of many young men who were trained and to kill and be killed. The list could go on.

What I'm saying is that it's very easy to have selective memory on a topic, especially when that topic is brought up in specific terms. We are violent. And we will express that violence WHEN ALLOWED. There is no better labratory example of that than the Nazi's.
 
#188
burk48237 said:
So let's see these are the actions of a great leader?

1) Organized a boycott of Jewish owned shops 1933

2) Forced the sale of one of Germany's most popular publications because it was owned by Jews 1934

3) Passed the Nuremburg laws forbidding Jews to marry and ending their rights of citizenship. 1935

While Kristalnacht didn't happen until 1938 to consider one of the most hateful monsters of history a "good leader" in his early years a "good leader" brings our Nazi defenders to new heights.

The reality is this, Germans either knew and ignored Hitlers hatred or they didn't want to know either way it was for selfish reasons (their own economic advancement many times at the expense of Jews). I'm sorry, if you were in Germany between 1933 and 1945 and didn't stand against Nazism you were part of the monster crowd. :(

Here is a public statement from the "great leader" in 1933
Click to expand...

These mean anything to you?

1. Trail of Tears

2. The slavery and brutal/unethical treatment of millions of Africans and African Americans

3. Internments Camps of WWII

4. The dropping of two nuclear bombs on cities in the Japanese mainland

A lot of these willingly happened under the leadership of some of our best Presidents. A lot of these acts were well known by millions of Americans, too. You can't just pick and choose the bits of history that support your argument.
 
#189
jmattbassplaya said:
These mean anything to you?

1. Trail of Tears

2. The slavery and brutal/unethical treatment of millions of Africans and African Americans

3. Internments Camps of WWII

4. The dropping of two nuclear bombs on cities in the Japanese mainland

A lot of these willingly happened under the leadership of some of our best Presidents. A lot of these acts were well known by millions of Americans, too. You can't just pick and choose the bits of history that support your argument.
Click to expand...

So what youre saying is that Americans are Monsters?

Yeah, Im inclined to agree.
 
#192
burk48237 said:
Because moral outrage is clearly by any reasoned standard impossible in a world of no absolutes.
Click to expand...

Even in a world of shades of grey there's still "darker" and "lighter", which is enough to discuss choices. Was the choice the "better" one or the "worse" one? Isn't outrage still justified if the "worse" choice is sufficiently so?

In other words, the black-and-white absolutes move to the ends of an infinitely long line (as none of us are totally good nor totally evil) and we judge acts by the direction they move the world in.

Of course, if we're not comparing options there's no morality as free will doesn't get involved.

Maybe. Just another model to consider.
 
#196
burk48237 said:
Because moral outrage is clearly by any reasoned standard impossible in a world of no absolutes.

I suspect that many of the people here suggesting to me that there are only shades of grey are absolutely incensed at wasteful carbon use, high CEO pay, or corporate greed for instance. They are absolutely convinced those things are immoral.
Click to expand...

I don't think anyone is suggesting that there are only shades of grey. There is also black and white, which happen to be two endpoints on a the grey scale continuum.

I'm pretty comfortable saying that subjugation/murder of people because of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc. is solid white (white can represent pure evil just as well as black can) on the grey-scale. In your world of black and white absolutes, Nazi Germany is solid white because of it. However that also means that the Antebellum USA is solid white, the bible is solid white, etc. It is a ridiculous proposition.
 
#197
If you have never pondered any of the following things raise your hand. Ramming the guy on the freeway who is driving like a jerkwad, tapping your neighbors spouse even though you know it will cause major damage and heartbreak, screaming at you baby who has been crying for the last three hours through the night, running over your neighbors cat who has been defecating all over your yard, etc, etc, etc. Okay raise your hands, anybody, anybody, Buehler. You see we all have these horrible monsters luring in our ID. Ever seen Forbidden Planet?
 
#200
Wow has this thread actually turned into a debate over whether Hitler was evil or not? Seriously?

A couple of thoughts -

1) It may well be that a few members of a group are not completely evil in every respect and have some redeeming qualities. That is irrelevant to whether the group as a whole, and the principles it bases its actions on, are evil.

2) The fact that we can think of other evils besides those perpetrated by one group does not make the evils perpetrated by that group any less evil.

3) Item 1) notwithstanding, not every member of a group bears personal responsibility for the actions of all other members of the group, especially if they did not contribute or consent to those actions.

Seems like these ought to be common sense, no?
 

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