Cory1848

No, it's not dying. It's just passed you by.

I would never talk to my wife that way!😆

The cruelty on both sides is unimaginable. My parents (Estonians) lived through the first Soviet occupation in 1940, then three years under the Germans, then fled when the Red Army returned in 1944. According to them, life under German occupation was not so bad (German soldiers were polite enough not to rape local women, and they even listened to classical music!), but Estonia had only a minimal Jewish population; those few whom my parents knew disappeared.

Oh for heaven's sake it's all over the news. But of course, how would you know?

Kubizek’s memoir might indeed be an interesting read, but what are you saying, that Hitler professed some curiosity about socialism during their chats, when they shared lodgings in Vienna in 1908? So what? They were teenagers! By the 1930s, Hitler knew in which direction his political fortunes lay. “Another one bites the dust”? Really? That’s so cute!

Well, a certain present-day US megalomaniac just a few days ago posted that the US did “more than any other Country [sic], by far,” in beating the Germans in the war, and 35 percent of US Americans will fall in line and unquestioningly believe the statement, so there’s that. Said megalomaniac I'm sure has never heard of the Eastern Front.

Who is denying this? More than 3 million Soviet POWs died in Nazi custody. This figure from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's website.

Pure socialism (collective ownership of the means of production) perhaps comes close to communism, and this has been shown to be antithetical to human nature -- or at least, we haven’t sufficiently evolved as a species to make it work. Social democracy, however, can work beautifully -- whereby the profit motive is removed from major societal sectors that provide services needed by everyone (health care, basic housing, basic transportation and the like) while regulated capitalism can be applied to consumer industries. Something approaching this seems to work in Scandinavia for instance, always at the top in various “happiness” indexes.

Maybe driven by present-day politics; calling a liberal administration in whatever Western democracy “socialist” or “communist” and then equating that with Nazis because, well, everyone knows that Nazis are bad. But that’s way off topic for this thread.

No, that’s not it, actually! Rather, it’s that arguing with the sort of stubborn, chest-beating illogic that you seem to revel in is at best a useless activity. Sorry I tried.

Your continued efforts to equate National Socialism with socialism are by this point more pathetic than hilarious. (It’s like calling the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea a democracy because the word appears in the country’s official name.) Here’s a succinct explanation (from Google AI no less): “National Socialism, also known as Nazism, and traditional socialism are fundamentally different ideologies, despite the shared term ‘socialism’ in National Socialism’s name. Socialism generally advocates for collective ownership and control of resources, often with the aim of a more equitable distribution of wealth. National Socialism, on the other hand, is a form of right-wing nationalist and fascist ideology that prioritized national interests and racial purity over individual or collective rights, and used a centralized, planned economy to support its political goals.” And further, “While the Nazis implemented public works programs and rearmament initiatives, which did create jobs, the overall wealth distribution was not made more equitable. Real wages actually declined for many workers.” And, of course, Germans deemed “non-Aryan” were excluded from any jobs programs; genuine socialism at least in theory aims to benefit all legal residents. Antisemitism can emerge among fascists, communists, socialists, liberal democrats, anarchists, Buddhists, or people of any other affiliation, although the extreme nationalism advocated by most fascist regimes usually requires some form of “othering,” and Jewish people over the millennia have tended to be the first to be “othered.” Got it?

What on earth have you got against backpackers? They definitely add to certain segments of the economy, and if they have a good experience, they’re likely to return later in life when they have more money to spend, so it’s an investment. Plus, they are better behaved and more respectful than your average drunken sex tourist in Pattaya or Phuket. Sure, I’m in my sixties have my grumpy moments, but I remember how great it was to be young and free-spirited and have the whole world in front of me -- everyone should have that experience. Lighten up!

Plus, at parks on the signboards they use Thai numbers for the local prices (rather than Western numbers, which are commonly used elsewhere), so foreigners who can't read Thai can't see how big the price discrepancy is.

I've done exactly that, and it usually works! The humor part is key -- if you get them to chuckle, you're in.

Both “ladyboys” and “trans women” are perfectly good words, each in their own context.