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Comment by rockskon | Hacker News Reader

Never say never.

Germany seems to have recovered quite a lot of trust following World War 2, to provide an extreme example of bad foreign policy.

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Do you think the US is going to have Nuremberg trials? Do you think there will be a deep national reckoning about what happened?

Never say never.

> Do you think there will be a deep national reckoning about what happened?

About half of the people I know who voted for Trump this past election have deep regrets.

Do they regret voting Republican, or do they regret voting for this particular Republican candidate?

This is the crux. Trump is simultaneously a wholesale departure from political norms, but also merely a culmination of decades of reactionary talk radio preaching "Death to America" but then backing it off just enough for people to go to the polls and vote for "their" candidate.

Trump's second term should be the end of the Republican party. But if Bush II is an indication, the pattern was that while people gradually came around to seeing what a bad idea the Iraq War was and whatnot, they merely cooled off for a few years but then were right back at it getting fooled again a slightly different way. How much of the support for Trump was basically recycled criticism of the Iraq War (ie of the Republican establishment) ? And yet here we are now, with a nice shiny new quagmire (assuming it isn't an outright loss).

fwiw I'm a libertarian so while I actually agree with much of the criticism, it galls me even more how people can start with very individual-liberty-centric criticisms, but then somehow gleefully jump behind supporting authoritarianism when it can be their turn at the trough.

I have regrets when I say something dumb or drive through an intersection on a not-quite-yellow light.

Innocent people, including children, are dead. Republicans have done irreparable harm to this country on every imaginable level: civil liberties, trade, global power, economics. Open and naked corruption is so off the charts it can only be described with comparisons to the post-Soviet era.

"Regret" is, quite frankly, insulting.

I hope they are suffering deeply for it. They got exactly what they voted for.

"Deep regrets"

L-fucking-O-L

What did they expect?

What exactly do they have deep regrets about, though? Do they regret voting for someone with his style? Do they regret empowering an obvious corrupt liar? Do they regret supporting someone who focuses on who to blame and hurt, rather than on things that might actually help (albeit in regrettably marginal ways in all three cases)?

Or do they just regret that they were fooled by this guy, specifically? That he's not accomplishing his stated goals, whether or not he is taking his promised actions? If it's this one, then it's only a matter of time before another charlatan does the same thing better.

Usually they regret him not being extreme enough. Being personally harmed to a very high level also works. The keyword is very high level, people are willing to take a lot of pain for someone they think is "jesus".

Through selfless deeds, hard work and admitting their failures to the fullest, for generations till now. Somehow I don't see that happening easily with american ego

They didn't tho. West Germany was still governed by ex Nazi politicians and bureaucrats after the war. This was the primary reason that the Red Army Faction formed and carried out its attacks.

The Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) was staffed by many ex SS officers.

Nuremberg Trails are continuously trotted out as an example of a system that works, but 200k people are estimated to have participated in crimes against humanity, of which only around 6700 were convicted, or 3.3%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_Saevecke

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dickopf

https://www.waz.de/politik/article4512500/die-braunen-jahre-...

https://www.warrelics.eu/forum/history-research-third-reich-...

https://www.jvl.levit.dev/the-prosecution-of-war-criminals

https://us.cnn.com/2018/12/14/europe/germany-nazi-war-trials...

they're also on the cusp of throwing it all away, again.

It is wild seeing the elctorial maps of Germany and you can almost exactly recreate the East-West split. Decades later and it is coming back to haunt them.

tbf the east-west split never really stopped haunting Germany. its not like it came suddenly. there are a lot of systemic errors that lead to this.

Tbf, the east/west split is the one part that wasn’t the Nazis’ fault unless indirectly as a consequence of starting and losing a second World War in a row.

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