The New Civil War (ongoing): The Lesson of pre-WWII Germany

One of the enduring questions from World War II is about how we got to that place. How did Nazism happen? Why didn't anyone put a stop to it before it happened?

We actually know the answer to all of those questions. We know them from an intellectual sense, anyway. We know that normal people, regular people, people just trying to live their lives and get by, people who were not Nazis or Nazi sympathizers, we know that those people didn't do anything to stop it. For whatever reason. Probably mostly because they just wanted to be left alone to live their lives and it all didn't concern them anyway. How can we blame them? They were "good" people, right?

That's not what we decided after the fact. That's not what the world decided, and that's not what they decided about themselves. For decades, the general consensus has been that they were complicit in the rise of Nazism for nothing more than that they stood by and let it happen. None of them spoke out.

Hey, I get it. Speaking out is hard. It messes with your life and, sometimes, there are consequences. And there were consequences in pre-WWII Germany. Some of the people who did speak out just... disappeared. And that served to keep everyone else quiet, as it was intended to.

And that's what happens when you don't speak out against injustice and evil. Injustice and evil not only continues but it gets worse.

So we know what they should have done, all those people in Germany, and, yet, we wonder why they didn't do it. Couldn't they see? And we tell ourselves, "If I was there, I would have spoken up!"

Really? Would you have? Would you?
I think there's a really easy way to know the answer to that question:
Are you speaking up now? If you're not, well, you would have been one of those Germans who just went along because you just wanted to be left alone to live your life. Or whatever.

Yes, we are in that same state as pre-WWII Germany. The state where white supremacists are growing in number and strength and boldness, and the have a man in our highest office #fakepresident who is supporting them. If you are not speaking out against them and what is happening, you are quietly joining them on their side of the line.

And, yes, there is a line.There has always been a line, but Trump #fakepresident very clearly and explicitly drew it when he failed to condemn the terrorist attack in Charlottesville. He made it clear that he is standing with the Nazis, white supremacy, the Alt-Right. He made it clear enough that they knew it and rejoiced. When you have David Duke singing your praises and are not sickened by it, well, something is wrong. And if you can side with the guy that Duke is praising, well, something is wrong.

Because this is where we are:
If you are still in support of Trump #fakepresident, you are explicitly in support of the white supremacy agenda. You are in support of Nazis. There's no waffling around the edges of things any longer as you try to proclaim how you're not really racist and that you just support Trump's #fakepresident economic agenda. [And, by the way, Trump #fakepresident has no economic agenda other than to enrich himself while he's in office. If that's not abundantly clear to you at this point, your ability to support cognitive dissonance is amazing.] If you are still in support of Trump #fakepresident, you are one of the Germans who stood silently by while Hitler committed genocide.

But genocide? Really?
Ethnic cleansing is a goal of the white supremacist groups. What do you think that means?

At any rate, the line has been drawn. This is the time to disavow Trump #fakepresident and step across the line and stand with those who oppose Nazism. In all its forms. If you're still with Trump #fakepresident, your message is loud and clear: You're okay with Nazis and white supremacists running things, which, you know, makes you a Nazi and white supremacist.

Remember:
Today is a good day to punch a Nazi in the face.

I wish I could say I meant that figuratively.

It's Not You I Have a Problem With...

...It's people.

Back in 1964 a woman named Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death near her home in Queens. Reportedly, that murder was "witnessed" (not necessarily seen but heard) by dozens of people and none of them called for help or reported the crime. The entire attack, during which Genovese was raped and repeatedly stabbed, took about half an hour. It wasn't until then that a neighbor finally came to see what was going on, only to find Genovese dying and her attacker gone.

Although it turned out that the neglect of the people that "witnessed" the crime wasn't as bad as it was reported to be (for instance, neighbors heard the disturbance but thought it was only a lovers' quarrel or something so never went to see what was happening), the bystander effect (which is a very real thing where people do nothing because they are waiting for someone else to do something) has come to be known as Genovese Syndrome.

It all has to do with "diffusion of responsibility," which is to say that the more people who are present, the less likely any one specific one of them will do anything as far as standing up for someone else. It's the same kind of behavior that possible made what the SS did in Germany leading up to and during WWII: People are disappearing but no one is going to say anything because, hey, at least it wasn't me. Right? Someone else can do something about it. Not me.

It was the New York case that really prompted the psychological study of this social condition, and it has been repeatedly shown in tests that the likelihood of someone to offer help of any kind to someone is in inverse proportion to the number of people present. For instance, one of the studies dealt with a woman falling down and being "hurt." When there was only one person present, that person would offer assistance to the woman about 70% of the time. [70%! What the freaking heck! That means that 30% would just walk past! Wait... this sounds like a familiar story.] As more people were involved to witness the woman fall, the less likely it was that anyone would offer help, so, with two people, someone offered help only 40% of the time.

To me, this is insane behavior, and it gets worse the more complicated the situation is, like if someone is being aggressive or attacking someone else. Also, it is this same root phenomenon, just reversed, that leads to mob behavior.

To make things even more interesting (or baffling about how humans have managed to survive for so long), there were some recent studies done on how this phenomenon affects online behavior. In the studies, two people were planted in chat room situations: one to bully and one to be bullied. In these simulations, only 10% of the other people in the chat rooms would come to the defense of the person being bullied. 10%! Let me put that another way: During these simulations where one person would bully and verbally abuse another person, 90% of the participants would act as if nothing was going on. 90%!

These were basically anonymous environments where there could be no actual repercussions from the abusive person, and only one person in ten would do the right thing. After all of the media coverage of online bullying and teenagers committing suicide over it, this is amazing to me. Not in a good way.

I get it. People pretty much suck, but this takes the suckitude of people to a whole new level. I don't know; maybe, science is wrong. Maybe we didn't survive as a species because of our ability to work together. Maybe we survived by always throwing the other person under the bus. Um, I mean the tiger. Or the bear. Or whatever. Or, maybe, we've just gotten worse over time because of our tendency to breed assholes. I suppose the past doesn't matter that much in that respect. What I do know, though, is that if we don't start, as a species, looking out for the other guy, globally, pretty soon, there won't be any of us left. Globally.

The Imitation Game (a movie review post)

I'm going to start by saying that The Imitation Game is a great movie; however, it takes a lot of liberties with the subject matter. The broad sweeps are okay, but the details were, shall we say, exaggerated, no, actually, twisted to make the movie "better." It's a little unfortunate, because I'm sure the movie could have been just as good if they had kept to the straight facts (and, yes, I realize the irony there) rather than the dramatic "truth."

That said, Benedict Cumberbatch was incredible. He is really setting himself up as the go-to guy for any anti-social genius type of character. It would be unfortunate if he ends up being typecast as that guy and never gets any other kind of role, though, as good as he is at it. I think I may be becoming convinced he's more than just that.

It's actually very interesting what Cumberbatch did with the part. He started out with a kind of Sherlock level of human interaction and descended into a kind of Frankenstein's monster thing like he did in the National Theatre Live presentation of Frankenstein. It's too bad Alan Turing wasn't actually like that. Eccentric, yes, but he wasn't unfriendly and without the ability to operate in a social setting as the movie showed him to be.

Keira Knightley was also quite good. Well, she was mostly what you'd expect of Keira Knightley, but it was good. She was a good foil to Cumberbatch's portrayal of Turing, which is to say that her character was not quite accurate, either. Joan Clarke was probably quite a bit more socially awkward than she was in the movie but, then, in the movie, it's Joan who mediates between Turing and his team and enables him to work with them, so she had to be socially savvy for that work.

The other actors I really liked were Mark Strong and Matthew Goode. Strong played Stewart Menzies, a person that Turing probably never actually had any contact with, but he was a great movie character and added a bit of a spy edge to everything. Goode played Hugh Alexander, a chess champion who was on Turing's team. Even while I was watching the movie I didn't buy that Alexander was really as charismatic and charming as Goode played him to be, but he was fun to watch in the role.

Of course, the most interesting thing about the movie to me is not the movie at all; it's that the British government kept all of this secret, everything that Turing did during WWII, stuff which helped to end the war, for 50 years. 50 years! And, then, what they allowed to happen to him after the war was just... horrendous. And he was only posthumously pardoned in 2013. It's kind of unbelievable.

The main thing is, though, if you like those little electronic gadgets that you carry around everywhere and use all the time, you have Turing to thank for them. It was what he did during the war that lead to computers. Thinking machines were his thing. In fact, computers were originally called Turing machines.

Basically, I'd say to see the movie; it's worth it for Cumberbatch's performance alone, accurate or not. He might even deserve the best actor Oscar for it, though I haven't decided that for sure, yet. However, once you've seen it, check up on your Turing facts. It's all really quite fascinating.