It's gruesome, isn't it? When I was young, I used to believe that people were, for the most part, decent. Misled, often, stupid, very often; but good at heart. Now, I'm convinced that a good third of our society is broken and a third of our society is blind to anything that doesn't affect them.
I kinda hate this framing because it makes it seem inevitable and ever-present. Even on the right it's more like 5% true hate, 28% normal Republican who does not find true hate disqualifying. There's plenty of reason to discredit that or disagree with it etc but it's not the same as being in the 5%.
I was just listening to an interview with an evangelical who was lesser-of-two-evils on Trump, he'll vote for Trump but he's not a True Believer.
Nah, ain't no one woke up to anything. Every decade proves that human beings are capable of bad shit. Even those you would consider good, are going to have dark thoughts about someone or something. I guarantee you that there's some hidden darkness in Mr. Rogers, Levar Burton, and Bob Ross that never got revealed. Probably stuff they never even told another person. There exist people who know they are capable of really bad shit and have enough forethought to keep it inside them.
I take it as a wild ride to know that while I may not be the smartest or any kind of -est, that I have enough awareness to know that blind anger will never lead any place good. It may get results and even last centuries, but it's a hollow victory. Along a long enough time line, the victims are likely to become the oppressors. The watchers become the watched. And, the powerful become weak.
While it's no doubt a cool quote, it's also kind of condescending. Somehow, a horrific moment in history has turned into an arrogant warning. And even at that, it's a warning to a country that Germany modeled upon for its concentration camps. It reads like, "Don't do what you've already done (that we copied), you dumbasses." I don't disagree with the implied dumbasses vibe, but the naive arrogance takes away a lot of momentum of this quote for me. That is to say, the U. S. has already messed up on a massive level before, to the point that Germany borrowed from them to do the terrible things that Germany did, yet this reality has seemingly been forgotten. Why did he forget this? Were those exterminated in the U.S. not important enough to be remembered in his view of history? In other words, the plight of millions of indigenous, enslaved people of color, and many others aren't even accounted for here. The warning has eliminated them from history.
It's a sideways glance at the quote, but now I can't stop reading it from that angle.