If I was on the governing committee of a major political party, I’d be funding trips to places like Hiroshima and Auschwitz for members of our party that are running for office for the first time, not for the photo op, but so that maybe they can get some fucking perspective and not say batshit stupid things that make us look like a bunch of genocidal racists.
Idk, just a thought. Assuming that “genocidal racists” isn’t a significant voting demographic that you are trying to appeal to.
so that maybe they can get some fucking perspective
Your idea could maybe work, if they didn’t think was staged and part of some conspiracy. The real (harder to implement, but long term) solution would be to fix the education system and nip this in the bud.
Idk, maybe fundamental policy statements - “the holocaust was real”, “first strike use of nuclear weapons is abhorrent, inhumane, and we will never advocate for it”. If you want to be part of our organisation and have our support, you sign on in support of our fundamental position and if you go against that in public we’ll kick you out, pull our financial support, and run someone else against you next election
This is exactly the sort of nonsense that my suggestion is designed to avoid.
If all you know about Hitler is that he was in charge of Germany during the second world war, they lost, a bunch of people died, but their uniforms looked cool (Hugo Boss, looks sharp) and people called him “Fuhrer” (German sounds so badass) then yeah, this kind of thing doesn’t seem so off.
I want my representatives - whatever their affiliation - to have stood in front of the pile of children’s shoes and the mass graves and the charred ruins. I want them to have stared at the abyss, felt the horror and the despair and the inhumanity and the evil and truly understood the weight of the responsibility they have to ensure we learn from our history.
You can show them all the horrors of war, and they’ll tell you that they have the fortitude to do whatever is needed to protect the homeland. To them not flinching shows how tough they are.
If I was on the governing committee of a major political party, I’d be funding trips to places like Hiroshima and Auschwitz for members of our party that are running for office for the first time, not for the photo op, but so that maybe they can get some fucking perspective and not say batshit stupid things that make us look like a bunch of genocidal racists.
Idk, just a thought. Assuming that “genocidal racists” isn’t a significant voting demographic that you are trying to appeal to.
That’s the problem, for republicans “genocidal racist” IS a voting demographic they’re trying to appeal to.
Your idea could maybe work, if they didn’t think was staged and part of some conspiracy. The real (harder to implement, but long term) solution would be to fix the education system and nip this in the bud.
Idk, maybe fundamental policy statements - “the holocaust was real”, “first strike use of nuclear weapons is abhorrent, inhumane, and we will never advocate for it”. If you want to be part of our organisation and have our support, you sign on in support of our fundamental position and if you go against that in public we’ll kick you out, pull our financial support, and run someone else against you next election
Be careful. That could backfire.
This is exactly the sort of nonsense that my suggestion is designed to avoid.
If all you know about Hitler is that he was in charge of Germany during the second world war, they lost, a bunch of people died, but their uniforms looked cool (Hugo Boss, looks sharp) and people called him “Fuhrer” (German sounds so badass) then yeah, this kind of thing doesn’t seem so off.
I want my representatives - whatever their affiliation - to have stood in front of the pile of children’s shoes and the mass graves and the charred ruins. I want them to have stared at the abyss, felt the horror and the despair and the inhumanity and the evil and truly understood the weight of the responsibility they have to ensure we learn from our history.
You don’t understand.
You can show them all the horrors of war, and they’ll tell you that they have the fortitude to do whatever is needed to protect the homeland. To them not flinching shows how tough they are.