Zuzak

Ngl, the fact that the US lied about masks and had such a clusterfuck response while China listened to the science was a major step in me becoming China-pilled.

life back then mustv been crazy people just thought whatever

People still just think whatever tho.

Moral rules are not things to be blindly followed, but rather are useful guidelines to avoid screwing things up. They are "the manual," they are "standard operating procedure," they are there for a reason and you can deviate from them, sure, but you'd better have a damn good reason, or you can expect it to blow up in your face.

Virtually everyone seems to have this all twisted up. On the one hand, you have people who always try to follow SOP, even if there's good reason to deviate from it. On the other hand, you have people who see that there are situations where SOP doesn't apply, so they just ignore it altogether. Both of these approaches are foolish and lead to making mistakes.

The trolley problem is a thought experiment specifically designed to be an exception to the otherwise reasonable SOP of "Don't kill innocents." But you don't make a rule from the exception. You don't go around treating, "The ends justify the means," or "It doesn't matter how many people I have to sacrifice in persuit of the greater good," as your new SOP, just because you saw a thought experiment where the old SOP doesn't apply.

The whole reason moral guidelines are necessary is because the mind if fallible and prone to making mistakes. Our emotions, or our desire to fit a particular identity, may get in the way of good decision making. For example, the use of torture post-9/11 was driven by hatred, a desire for revenge and domination, and a desire to embody the image of the Jack Bauer antihero, willing to do whatever it takes to keep people safe. I've read reports of NSA torturers walking out of torture sessions while visibly erect. It was driven by, well, evil. This "ends justifies the means" mental framework makes it all to easy for hate or other emotions to hijack reason. Of course, in reality, this torture never produced any useful information, and in at least one case caused a previously cooperative informant to clam up.

Likewise, if a problem can be pushed out of sight and out of mind, it can easily be ignored or rationalized away. This is the case with liberals and the Palestinian genocide. When something is far away, when it affects people who I don't know, then psychologically it becomes much easier to write off anything that happens - even moreso if you are operating on the framework of, "Any cost to achieve my aims." But these situations are where moral guidelines are more important than ever. It is fundamentally unacceptable to act on willful ignorance of the suffering caused by one's actions, to say, "This makes me feel guilty so I just won't look at it or think about it." This is another way in which one's mind can compromise their reason and better judgement.

That's also what's at play, at least imo, when people continue to eat meat despite knowing about the cruelty involved in that industry. When we see someone beat a dog, we are horrified, we are outraged, we are moved to act to stop it - because our empathy extends to the pain the dog feels. But cows and pigs can feel pain just as a dog can, which means that rationally, we should be equally horrified at the conditions those animals are kept in. But those practices are always kept out of sight and out of mind, and the mind has powerful forces, like the force of habit, that are capable of compromising reason and good judgement.

When people try to convince me of things (especially things like torture or genocide) based on them being "the lesser evil," to say it goes against SOP is an understatement. It's like asking me to dance a waltz on the raised forks of a forklift. Now, maybe some set of circumstances exists in which standing on the raised forks of a forklift makes sense, like maybe it's the only way to escape a fire. But I'm never going to accept that this is just a normal or generally acceptable way of doing things.

The rules are there for a reason and you shouldn't deviate from them without a very good reason and the majority of the time that people think they have a good reason they are wrong.

This is one of the oldest and most effective tricks in politics. Every hack in the business has used it in times of trouble, and it has even been elevated to the level of political mythology in a story about one of Lyndon Johnson’s early campaigns in Texas.

The race was close and Johnson was getting worried. Finally he told his campaign manager to start a massive rumour campaign about his opponent’s life-long habit of enjoying carnal knowledge of his barnyard sows.

"Christ, we can’t get away with calling him a pig-fucker,” the campaign manager protested. “Nobody’s going to believe a thing like that.”

“I know,” Johnson replied. “But let’s make the sonofabitchh deny it.”

In my experience they don't even bother making up a source, they just ban/block you for committing the sin of heresy.

The further they push, the more regular people will recognize it as insane.

Is that a yes or a no to whether a bunch of Holocaust scholars are engaging in a conspiracy to fabricate evidence? Just need one word. I would also accept maybe.

Could you do me a favor a clearly state whether you believe the historians working with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum are knowingly lying and fabricating evidence regarding the Holocaust? And if so, would you mind giving me your best guess as to why Holocaust scholars are engaging in this conspiracy?

No, because I do not read Ukrainian, and I have not personally reviewed the primary sources. There are people who do speak Ukrainian and have extensively studied these sources, such as the people who work at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Literal Holocaust denialism, you Nazi fuck.

Here you go:

Historian Karel Berkhoff, among others, has shown that Bandera, his deputies, and the Nazis shared a key obsession, namely the notion that the Jews in Ukraine were behind Communism and Stalinist imperialism and must be destroyed. “The Jews of the Soviet Union,” read a Banderist statement, “are the most loyal supporters of the Bolshevik Regime and the vanguard of Muscovite imperialism in the Ukraine.” When the Germans invaded the USSR in June 1941 and captured the East Galician capital of Lvov, Bandera’s lieutenants issued a declaration of independence in his name. They further promised to work closely with Hitler, then helped to launch a pogrom that killed four thousand Lvov Jews in a few days, using weapons ranging from guns to metal poles. “We will lay your heads at Hitler’s feet,” a Banderist pamphlet proclaimed to Ukrainian Jews.

Here's another one: Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, and Cult, written by a Fellow of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum

The author notes that in a declaration in May the OUN-B called for the extermination of "Moskali [Russians], Jews, aliens, and Poles" as it began to collaborate with the Abwehr in the formation of the two battalions that entered the Ukrainian SSR in June 1941 with the German Army. The key event after the invasion from a Ukrainian perspective was the OUNB's declaration of Ukrainian independence in L'viv on June 30, 1941—which the author contrasts with the Ustasha's analogous declaration in Croatia, which did not glorify Hitler and the Wehrmacht. In the pogrom that followed "Germans and the Ukrainian military establishment controlled by the OUN-B" carried out the killings of Jews, and Bandera's "moral and ethical responsibility [is] evident" (p. 239).

It's not necessary to incorporate metagaming into Paranoia, you shouldn't have any problems running it more conventionally. Those suggestions are pretty much just for fun, and if you don't think they'd be fun for your table, don't do them. I think the reason it suggests things like punishing a PC for OOC questions is to set the tone of, well, paranoia. Poking around at things you don't need to know is always risky. Also, I wouldn't say backstabbing is necessary either. If the players would rather work as a team, let them, give them NPCs in case they do need to backstab somebody.

However:

I would consider my players trustworthy. I can be reasonably sure they're more interested in a good story than rules lawyering or metagaming.

This is the only part might be a problem, lol. Paranoia is all about rules lawyering. A big theme of the game is coming up with convoluted technicalities, either to hit your players with, or for players to justify their actions, or for players to pass blame onto other players with. Like, the computer instructed you to do this task, and obviously you have to do X to accomplish that task, but you don't have the clearance to do X, and the computer won't explicitly give you permission or provide an alternative (realistic) solution, so the challenge is finding a way to get X done while having plausible deniability or being able to blame someone else for it.

A lot of the ideas behind the system are to turn assumptions about roleplaying on their head and to give permission (and encouragement!) for things like (in character) rules lawyering. Idk if that sounds bad but like it's a satirical setting where nonsensical, contradictory rules that make it impossible to do your job are played up to 11 for comedy and as long as you're following the exact letter of what you're told, anyone who challenges you or interferes in any way is committing an act of treason and trying to get you to disobey orders because they think they know better than Computer, and is probably also a mutant commie terrorist. The more bizarre technicalities and loopholes your players come up with to get away with shit ("getting away with shit" here also including, actually doing their jobs without dying), the more immersive the setting. It's cathartic.

It's a rules-lite system that's flexible enough to fit a lot of different styles, but in my personal opinion, that sort of rules lawyering and malicious compliance is what makes Paranoia Paranoia. If none of that sounds appealing, you could still probably make it work, but there might be another system that's a better fit.

I think I see your point a bit more, I didn't really think about the implications of American fascism being a new thing. Also didn't want to single you out or anything.

I hear you, I just feel like the meme was about the ordinary soldiers rather than the government. Fully respect wanting to correct the record regarding the government, just felt it was worth a reminder that there were people like the soldier in the meme who did sacrifice a lot fighting for a worthy cause and who do deserve respect, and our criticism of the government shouldn't overshadow that. Just a small pushback on that, but one I felt was important.

There were also 400,000 soldiers who died fighting fascists under the US flag, who were not responsible for their government's decisions regarding the use of nuclear weapons, nor Operation Paperclip, nor any other major government decisions.

I gotta push back against the criticism that several of my comrades in here are expressing. Y'all are talking about the US collaborating with Nazis after the war, and you're not wrong about that, but that was the US government, while this meme is about a soldier. The soldiers on the ground fought for all sorts of reasons, they might have opposed the Nazis for all sorts of ideological reasons, or they might have just been doing it out of loyalty, or any of the other reasons soldiers fight. But there were people on the ground fighting the Nazis under a US flag who were committed antifascists and even communists. As for the others, whatever their reasons, when the call came to save the world from fascism, they answered, and were willing to sacrifice life and limb to do it. That's pretty heroic if you ask me. And they weren't the ones who made the decision to let Nazis into NATO and stuff afterwards.

I understand the defensiveness against attempts to glorify the US while villifying the USSR and downplay their (more substantial) sacrifice and contribution to the war. But there's nothing in this meme that's doing that, and there were Americans who contributed to the war effort. Is it necessary to kneejerk react to a meme celebrating someone who fought the Nazis by talking about the government that ruled over them? People aren't defined by their nation or their government.

Let's not forget the proud tradition of people like Woody Guthrie, who explicitly tied the war effort to a broader idea of antifascism, nor of the people on the front lines who he inspired.

On the one hand it's not a great sign about which way the winds are blowing, but on the other hand my mind is just so much more at ease not seeing the cursed pride logos of Raytheon and the Pinkertons.