We explore real-life reformation here in this informed, online community.
"Given the heinous crimes they were about to commit, there is a tendency to think that the members of the Einsatzgruppen were all bloodthirsty sadists. It’s a comfortable way of thinking about the history, but it’s wrong. Whatever else motivated these killers, it wasn’t mass psychopathy. Two of the four commanders of the Einsatzgruppen, Arthur Nebe, head of the Criminal Police, and Walter Stahlecker, who had led security forces in Norway, volunteered for the job.9 The others were appointed, including the intellectual Otto Ohlendorf of the SD. He wasn’t the only cerebral commander within the ranks of the killing squads. In Einsatzgruppe A, eleven of the seventeen most senior leaders were lawyers; nine held academic doctorates."
The point is, people can be psychologically motivated to commit unspeakable atrocities. The entire book is about how the National Socialists achieved that. Thus:
"Alfred Metzner, a driver for one of the Nazi commanders [in Poland], remembered that “pregnant women were shot in the belly for fun and then thrown into the pits… . And Walter Mattner, an officer charged with organizing a ghetto clearance, recounted his actions to his wife in October 1941: “I aimed calmly and shot with confidence at the women, children and numerous babies… The babies flew in great arcs and we shot them to pieces in the air before they fell into the ditch and the water … Oh, Devil take it! I’d never seen so much blood, filth, flesh. Now I understand the expression ‘blood-drunk’.”
Many such cases.
— Rod Dreher on The Nazi Mind: Twelve Warnings From History, by Laurence Rees,
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.297297/gov.uscourts.dcd.297297.1.0.pdf
Mishandling national defense information. Very serious.
There are three ways the outlook could play out.
1. The polls and analysts are largely accurate.
a. House: 233 D - 202 R; Senate: 52 D - 48 R
b. Recent polling errors have been greater in the presidential elections while midterms - on the whole - have been more accurate (Silver Bulletin). If largely accurate, Democrats would win a majority of similar size to the 2018 and 2006 midterms and gain a narrow Senate majority.
2. The polls and analysts underestimate Republicans by a normal polling error.
a. House: 221 D - 214 R; Senate: 51 R - 49 D
b. Some of the biggest polling errors this century occurred in reliably red states and districts that underestimate Republican support (The Economist). Given where the competitive races are located this year, another underestimation would be enough to keep Republicans in control of the Senate and to have Democratic House margins in the single digits.
3. The polls and analysts underestimate Democrats by a normal polling error.
a. House: 238 D - 197 R;...
Over the years, I have become convinced sunlight is one of the most essential nutrients for the body. Unfortunately, since no one has a financial interest in promoting sunlight (and it hence has no lobbyists), almost everything we hear instead focuses on why it’s terrible for us. For example, dermatology transformed itself from one of the least desirable specialties in medicine into one of the highest paying ones by rebranding its members as cancer fighters, which required scaring everyone senseless about the sun (while omitting that a lack of sunlight is what causes fatal skin cancers). Despite the billions now spent each year on skin cancer, the total death rate from it remains almost entirely unchanged (all of which is discussed here).
A similar story has played out with the light inside our homes. In 2022, the federal government effectively banned the incandescent bulb on the grounds most of its output is “wasted” as infrared, even though a rapidly growing body of research ...
