Historical Misconceptions That We Hate

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i agree, but he did not want to personally witness their plight. therefore he was not a sadistic killer, but a cold calculating person who said "i'll leave the details up to you"
i am certainly appalled at the plight of the jews.
having their businesses blacklisted and then confiscated by the nazi regime was fine with hitler.
being hoarded into ghettos where misery and starvation and disease made their lives hellish.
then being transported like cattle to an abattoir in trains straight to the death camps.

the misery of the living skeletons is hard to watch.

women and pretty little girls and also little boys and even babies were just shot in the head at first.
people who looked as german as the germans themselves.

how could the executioners bear the horrifying guilt of shooting a little 3 year old girl in the back of the head in a trench? as well as everyone else.

they generally could not do it, and only the sadistic soldiers could maintain the practice, but even they started to refuse to do it, and that is when gas was employed.
it is much more impersonal to have people walking into a room never to emerge alive from.

i wonder whether hitler himself could have aimed a rifle at an innocent child's head and pulled the trigger.
i think not.
but he caused it all to happen for sure.
but he had the protection for his conscience of never witnessing or engaging personally in these acts.

some normal people are capable of this.
people who liked to hear of the iraq war and thought "good riddance to all of you" would not personally have been able to carry the killing acts out.

people in the middle ages who flocked to see a beheading, were protected in conscience by not wielding the axe.
they often cheered, but if you picked any one of the audience and gave them the axe to do the job, i bet they could not do it.

snipers have a rather disturbing personality trait that allows them to zoom in on the head of a person and get very personal, and then, at the right moment, blow them away.

the guy who dropped the bomb from the enola gay on hirroshima knew what would be the consequence, but if you are not there to see it, i lends a shield of impersonality to it all.

i do not know really.

Charles Manson also didn't personally kill all those people he set his "family" on - he didn't want to see it, either - but he was just as responsible.

Use of poison gas on the battlefield is not the same issue as using poison gas in a sealed chamber to execute prisoners. On the battlefield poison gas is considered a "weapon of mass destruction" with hard to control collateral damage, and other issues. But as a means of capital punishment its actually considered "modern" and "humane" (like the electric chair,and lethal injection, and unlike archaic means like having a big dude with a big axe chopping your head off). The US Army has not used poison gas in combat since 1918, but many US states have gas as an option for capital punishment. Peaches to pears.

Also Hitler balking at using poison gas on the battlefield may have had more to do with practicality than with morality. In Europe the prevailing winds are westerly, and the western allies were attacking Germany from the west.

poison gas should never be employed at close range.
that is obvious.
but the v1 and v2 rockets that pummeled london could have been loaded with chlorine gas or mustard gas or cyanide or even plague bearing fleas.

no collateral danger.

the substance that kills people on death row by lethal injection is sodium thiopental.
it is an anesthetic which is kind of humane.

but you can not miscellate it or turn it in to an effective field gas.

i

"Dinosaurs were incredibly slow, stupid beasts because their brains were tiny, and that may even be the reason for their extinction". I used to hear this quite a bit until maybe the early 90's when scientists had learned more about dinosaurs and found that such a belief was rather undeserved.

"Bats are blind". I once knew a guy who even believed bats had no eyes.

"HIV and AIDS can be transmitted by mosquitoes". I once knew another guy who believed this and when I told him it wasn't true he claimed that's what "they" want your to think.

"Walt Disney's body was frozen." He was cremated. I'm no expert but I think it would be pretty hard to bring someone back from that.

"Women were never drafted or expected to fight on the battlefield; therefore, women were protected and not affected by war."

I even here this one right here on WP, and it's a sentiment that reflects both a poor understanding of history, and a privileged First World viewpoint.

Women might not have been in the "front lines"----but they certainly were in the "front lines" when it came to treating battlefield injuries both physical and emotional. All the way back through history.

At least as useful infantrymen---at least as much on the "front lines" as infantrymen.

"The Ancient Greek philosophers were all deep, introspective thinkers."

Nope. "Philosopher" means "lover of knowledge" in Ancient Greek.

Back in those days, "philosopher" was a more general term for "intellectual".

Socrates was (arguably) the first person who was a "philosopher" in the modern sense of the word.

Hearing aids completely correct a hearing problem. They are like glasses for the ears.

All people who use a wheelchair are totally incapable of walking.

All blind people are totally blind.

All deaf people are totally deaf.

I hate it when people say "The English language is degenerating! Look at how eloquent Shakespeare was compared to the average person today!"

Well ... that's what you get when you take one of the most exceptional people of one era and compare him to the average person of another era. I could easily prove the opposite point by comparing my English to that of a typical medieval peasant. I've never spoken to a medieval peasant, but I'm fairly certain that they threw around the c-bomb constantly.

Overall, I think that Shakespeare is a tad overrated. Was he eloquent? Yes. He was also an anti-Semitic, misogynistic, nationalist who inserted political propaganda into his plays. He was only human after all.

Rewriting history to fit political and social engineering agendas is reprehensible.

Tell that the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and other white nationalist groups who live their every waking moment in life obsessing about the south's defeat.

Okay, it may not be historical, but I wanted to post this anyway:

"Either you're a Christian and go to Heaven, or you're not a Christian and go to hell."

That's chicken crap. There are many, many other places to go in the afterlife based on main beliefs:

Judaism/Christianity/Islam-Heaven (for the good) or Hell (for the bad), regardless of faith (correct me if I'm wrong)

Buddha-Nirvana

Greek Myth-Many parts of Hades-Fields of Asphodel, Tartarus, and some others I forgot to name

Norse Myth-Helheim, Valhalla, and Niflheim (?)

Egypt Myth-Some place in the Duat where Osiris rules

Spiritual-becoming one with nature

....And many others I don't really know much about.

Whoever said this is just being an Anti-UnChristian.

Speaking of:

"Jesus is the true founder of Christianity"

Not true, he was Jewish Rabbi who had said a lot of meaningful, wise things during the times when Israel is under control of the Roman Empire, and he eventually became a martyr. The real founders of Christianity were his followers, 12 Disciples included.

Indeed, the 10% isn't true. Human beings use 100% of their brains overall, and the degree to which significant parts of the brain fluctuating in their use depending on what people are doing at different points in time.

"THE [one and only] substance that kills people in executions"????????????????????
Dude, get your head out of your arse please.

There are three means of execution commonly used in the US: electric chair, poison gas, and lethal injection.

What you are describing is "lethal injection". Not the same thing as "poison gas".

They can...strap you to an electric chair and fry you, or...they can shoot you up with a cocktail of drugs in an syringe (like a vaccine) to both poison and anethesize you, or they can stick you in sealed chamber and pipe in poison gas.

They have used some of the same gases in chambers as they use on the battleifield, but even if its a different chemical its still killing with a gas.

Don't forget hanging. We still have that here in Washington state.