Elon Musk promotes free speech...then did THIS! Shocking.

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Everyone knows that the Leftists have the best songs.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Songs_of ... th_edition)



You have weird taste in clothing. Is this a fetish? How often do you wear them?

I watched Viktor und Viktoria recently

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024736/

I thought it was excellent. It came out in 1933--before the Nazis came to power.

But, the Nazis did have some musical movies



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHMg_-mMpCk

How is being a Nazi a culture? It’s a political party.
It’s not like being Cajun or a New Englander.

Professor Collins on Blackness in America.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/amp/ncna1235703

Nazism celebrated German culture to the exclusion of all other race/cultures. Sure, German and Austrian classical music is among the finest in the world: Wagner, Strauss, Brahms, Bruckner, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn. But Nazism also meant suppression of works by Jews and Romani, and music by forward thinking composers like Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Eisler, Weil, even Hindemith of all people.

I can think of plenty reasons to hate on the second Viennese school (musical tones are heard hierarchically, which makes beautiful music sound beautiful. Imposing artificial equality on all musical tones results in ugly, highly dissonant and sometimes even unlistenable music). But Hindemith??? And yet Hindemith is lumped in with degenerate music. Goebbels and Rosenberg never agreed on Hindemith, with Goebbels more approving of new music and Rosenberg more closely matching Hitler’s musical taste. They all knew the power of music to influence culture, however, hence why music from this era is often restricted to Wagner and Strauss.

The point is Nazism had as one goal to create and shape culture around its ideals. That culture itself never produced anything creative. It spent too much time and energy looking backwards and hating everything new.

And don’t think in America separate cultures haven’t sprung up around Republican and Democratic parties. They haven’t produced anything useful, either. Although I do think the Republican Party and Libertarian parties attract more rugged individuals than the Democratic Party. It’s not a culture that produces anything either, I just think that it promotes initiative WITHIN the culture to do more creative things. I used to go to church music conferences where I’d meet other pianists. We’d talk about all sorts of things, but mostly it was about encouraging each other and exchanging ideas. I think there is a creative subculture where individuals are empowered to take risks, experiment, and explore. But it always comes down to the ideas of the individual.

That's a gracious way of putting it.

German culture existed before the Nazi party came on the scene and tried to claim it as their own and corrupt it.

They still had beer, sausages, sauerkraut, polkas, accordions, octoberfest, lederhosen, yodeling.

To their credit, the Nazis initiated an anti-smoking campaign

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8973234/

I've been watching some old American movies, and, my goodness, they're ALL smoking, as if smoking were the most natural thing in the world. Even Marlene Dietrich, who came from Germany.

You are old enough to remember cigarette commercials.

The last time I was on an airplane people were smoking.I was 15 and also smoking on the plane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKONEUCaQY8

And, it turns out that the first Marlboro Man never smoked.

https://www.insider.com/marlboro-man-de ... es-2019-11

Although subsequent Marlboro Men did meet their anticipated fates:

https://www.latimes.com/nation/nationno ... story.html

Now I vape.
Everyone has a bad habit or two.

I suppose that I can condone vaping, given that it isn't as malodorous for the non-vapers.

German culture was corrupted when Emperor Willie couldn't read his GPS and tried to invade Russia by marching through Belgium. German glory imploded when their enemies forced them to walk their front lines back towards the German border, fueling national panic and destroying the Kaiser's ability to rule. Germany's capitulation managed to preserve the sovereignty of the country but made German identity a mark of shame rather than a mark of pride.

The Nazi party didn't corrupt German culture. There was no meaningful German culture. Nazism, as misguided as it was, represented an attempt at restoring German culture and national pride.

The problem the Germans faced both in the monarchy and under Nazism was the prevailing view that the German people do not exist for themselves but for the nation. The end of WW2 in Germany represented a full realization of the logical extreme of Hitler's program: If the German people cannot protect the sovereignty of their nation, they aren't fit to exist. Hitler was prepared to send every last German man, woman, and child to their deaths.

German culture under Emperor Willie had quietly become self-destructive. That carried over into the Weimar Republic when the German people got the mistaken idea that the majority is always right, and that directly led to Hitler and his disciples discovering how to manipulate the culture and government into granting him unlimited power.

Fun fact: Nazism didn't originate with Hitler. Hitler's ideas were shaped by Georg Ritter von Schönerer and Karl Lueger. And German nationalism even predates those guys with Johann Gottlieb Fichte being a major influence. The party itself has its beginnings with Anton Drexler and Karl Harrer, along with some others. The ideas of völkisch nationalism were especially popular among members of the Freikorps. You cannot accurately say Nazism corrupted society and culture--Nazism was a PRODUCT of German society and culture, or at least of what might have passed as culture by that point in time. As long as things were good in Germany, most people were happy and could continue on with business as usual. As soon as you get one hot-headed monarch involving the country in foreign wars that didn't concern them, you set a series of events in motion that shifts the balance towards dangerous cultural and populist movements that end in even worse disaster for the nation.

I'm not sure those beer bellies are all that rugged, but they sure do love to pretend they are.