I'm Now Officially a Racist Bigot! WOOT!

[IndyDave1776]

Explain this?

You'll find douchebag leftists strutting around in these today.

Explain it? The best I can offer is that some people were born with their brains up their asses and sh*t them out.

 

[rhino]

Ah, indeed, we have 2 perspectives.

For me, crazy and evil are very different. Crazy people aren't (usually) evil. Something is wrong with them that prevents them from perceiving the world in a rational way. I've known people with schizophrenia and it is really a different reality.

I don't think Hitler was crazy. That is too easy. He was simply more evil. In your construct, his actions were so evil that they must've been crazy. To me, that confuses different spectrums. (Although, the product of "crazy" can also be evil, particularly if you believe the death penalty defenders who say that all of the capital murderers are crazy, not evil.)

Hitler was absolutely rational and calculated. He cultivated entire logistics operations to achieve his evil. Now, so did Stalin and Mao, of course.

But, you did not address the other practical aspects of my post. We can certainly discuss relative evil - we are probably both right. But what would justify NOT fighting Hitler, but fighting one of the others instead? Or the Khmer Rouge?

I absolutely agree that crazy and evil are different things. I also acknowledge that most crazy people are not inherently evil. However, the two are in no way mutually exclusive. Hitler was both evil and crazy in the kind of mixture that is rarely seen. I know more than one person who is both insane and evil and they are frightening on a level that makes me avoid them completely. I do not intend to compare the impact they could have on the people of the world to what Hitler did, but rather to convey that I know and understand that evil and insanity can coexist in the same person.

You mistake my acknowledgement of Hitler's insanity as an excuse for him. That is far from the truth. He was entirely accountable for his evil, as are those who acted with him and to some extent, those who did nothing to stop him. You also mistake that I do not think Hitler was very calculating and methodical at times. However, had he been as rational as Mao or Stalin, I think he would have done more damage to more people over a longer period of time.

Perhaps we view things differently because as an attorney you live in a world where legal definitions of insanity determine outcomes and that status can mitigate or absolve someone of responsibility. Those are not standards I'm applying my opinions.

Also, I never suggested that I would pick fighting one over the other. In a world in which I had the resources and a willing populace, I'd probably fight all of them. How I'd choose to fight each of them would probably be very different. With limited resources, my equally limited command of history would lead me to believe that of the three, Hitler would be the easiest to defeat.

 

[IndyDave1776]

Why can a person not be both unstable and evil? Being a sociopath seems to take in some elements of both even though the instability seems to come in form of erratic behavior as opposed to the 'lock him in a padded cell' type of crazy.

 

[Expat]

Why can a person not be both unstable and evil? Being a sociopath seems to take in some elements of both even though the instability seems to come in form of erratic behavior as opposed to the 'lock him in a padded cell' type of crazy.

Charles Manson seemed to embody both.

 

[miguel]

Stolen from a post by Kirk in another thread...

 

[BugI02]

Was trying to stay out of this particular go-nowhere derail, but both Stalin (whose purges started before WWII) and Mao benefited from a war-weary world, with that weariness starting with the fight against Hitler. And, Hitler exported his evil outside his borders, which Mao didn't do, and Stalin only did a little bit (and even that depends on which historic borders you want to use).

Suffice it to say, of all those evils, if I had to pick one to fight, I'd pick Hitler every time.

Sorry. You waited too long to denounce Hitler, thus we must conclude that you are a Nazi sympathizer (or play one on INGO)

 

[BugI02]

Search of your post history from 77 years ago commencing now

 

[BugI02]

Ah, indeed, we have 2 perspectives.

For me, crazy and evil are very different. Crazy people aren't (usually) evil. Something is wrong with them that prevents them from perceiving the world in a rational way. I've known people with schizophrenia and it is really a different reality.

I don't think Hitler was crazy. That is too easy. He was simply more evil. In your construct, his actions were so evil that they must've been crazy. To me, that confuses different spectrums. (Although, the product of "crazy" can also be evil, particularly if you believe the death penalty defenders who say that all of the capital murderers are crazy, not evil.)

Hitler was absolutely rational and calculated. He cultivated entire logistics operations to achieve his evil. Now, so did Stalin and Mao, of course.

But, you did not address the other practical aspects of my post. We can certainly discuss relative evil - we are probably both right. But what would justify NOT fighting Hitler, but fighting one of the others instead? Or the Khmer Rouge?

Nothing. Even the ability to travel in time would only confirm the knowledge that the other two were necessary to help defeat Hitler and that Hitler was by far the greatest danger to the world of that time

I find Hitler to be an excellent real world example of absolute power corrupting absolutely

 

[two70]

Why can a person not be both unstable and evil? Being a sociopath seems to take in some elements of both even though the instability seems to come in form of erratic behavior as opposed to the 'lock him in a padded cell' type of crazy.

True sociopaths are incapable of empathizing with other human beings, they are willing and capable of doing anything to get what they want with no concern to any harm it might cause to others. Harming others is viewed little differently than most people would look at stepping on a bug. IMO, that type of person is clearly meeting both the mentally unstable and evil descriptions. The average mentally unstable person or even severely unstable person, depending on the diagnosis, is much more likely to harm themselves than others.