The tragedy of mathematics in Russia (2013)

House and Senate Republicans are motivated by their own goals and gains, not fear of Trump's vengeance.

To even compare Trump with Stalin is idiotic.

Also, Devil doesn't exist.

Germany more individualistic?

There is a quote from the book _three men on a bummel_ written in 1900 wherein one of the characters states that he could take over Germany simply by putting up the correct signage as Germans followed all the rules; even their dogs would not walk on the grass signed "do not walk".

German culture is not individualistic in the sense being discussed here.

A lot of reports and surveys about "level of individualism in country XYZ" use "individualistic" to mean the opposite of "driven by extended family relationships". This is a very misleading way of using the term "individualism". A more accurate term would be "anti-nepotistic". German culture is certainly less nepotistic than the average for the world or even for Western Europe -- but to describe this as individualism is extremely inaccurate.

Nazism is a combination of many things. Obviously it's a regression to tribalism, but it's also purity neuroticism, such as still found in the esoteric movement and natural food movement. Finally, and today little understood it's the upstart underdogs hyper imperialism, a attempt to out monster the monsters already prowling the lands, deactivating empathy systematically by constant reminding of past victim hood and the atrocities of the "larger fishes". Add to that a war traumatized nation and you get the perfect storm.

Germany when ww1 came around was not old, it was a small militaristic kingdom glueing together half diggested bits of in between empire countries, wedged between eternal giants of France, Britain, Russia, Austria Hungary. To life in in between country is to know what the great game is all about, it's about painting on a map, so that the real, the capital city people can have a nice life, while in between country folks serves as disposables for taxing, torturing and throwing out of cellar windows. evil is gestated and caricature like evil is gestated in caricature like circumstances. The modern left is unable to perform this kind of analysis any more, but the nazis were a afterbirth of imperialism and nobody can prevent this from returning without understanding of the conditions that gave birth to this.

Hearing a political joke and not informing authorities was enough to get sent to a labor camp. Same goes for lagging behind in public condemnation of "enemies of the people" (your neighbors and coworkers).

The moral choices came with a very high personal cost.

Glad that era is over and that these days academics is held up as a bastion of political neutrality and free speech!

Realistically the struggle between liberal ideals and more instinctual authoritarian leanings is an ongoing process that turns up in every country. The issue is that Russia looks like what happens when the authoritarians just get too much power. The thing that is baffling is that despite the effectively inevitable outcome that more liberalism leads to better outcome there is no talking people down from taking authoritarian stances on nearly every policy area.

Which of these were egregious in your opinion?

Just through a random wikipedia list, I found Oppenheimer (if not an outright member of the communist party, very closely aligned) and Needham (who had agreed to be an Inspector in North Korea).

Two differences were, no one was killed without a fair trial (the Rosenbergs of that time were definitely guilty and they went through a normal court system) , and, the Venona decrypts showed that there were a lot of spies just as McCarthy said.

Except McCarthy was absolutely right and continues to be vilified to this day.

(I find it funny this is one of the two posts from this account, 50 rubles is 50 rubles I suppose?)