She finds the whole idea absurd. To Prof Marci Shore, the notion that the Guardian, or anyone else, should want to interview her about the future of the US is ridiculous. She’s an academic specialising in the history and culture of eastern Europe and describes herself as a “Slavicist”, yet here she is, suddenly besieged by international journalists keen to ask about the country in which she insists she has no expertise: her own. “It’s kind of baffling,” she says.
In fact, the explanation is simple enough. Last month, Shore, together with her husband and fellow scholar of European history, Timothy Snyder, and the academic Jason Stanley, made news around the world when they announced that they were moving from Yale University in the US to the University of Toronto in Canada. It was not the move itself so much as their motive that garnered attention. As the headline of a short video op-ed the trio made for the New York Times put it, “We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the US”.
Starkly, Shore invoked the ultimate warning from history. “The lesson of 1933 is: you get out sooner rather than later.” She seemed to be saying that what had happened then, in Germany, could happen now, in Donald Trump’s America – and that anyone tempted to accuse her of hyperbole or alarmism was making a mistake. “My colleagues and friends, they were walking around and saying, ‘We have checks and balances. So let’s inhale, checks and balances, exhale, checks and balances.’ I thought, my God, we’re like people on the Titanic saying, ‘Our ship can’t sink. We’ve got the best ship. We’ve got the strongest ship. We’ve got the biggest ship.’ And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink.”
Nope, how logical a decision is doesn’t get decided afterwards and conditionally.
It’s decided based on what information they had at that point. The dude’s grandpa knew it was the right choice to get out. Even if he hadn’t fought, it would’ve been the right choice.
Or are you saying that if the girl his grandpa was after had come with him, that it would’ve only been acceptable had that girl then joined the US military to fight the Nazis, a hundred years ago? And if she hadn’t, then it would’ve still been the right decision for the grandpa to bail from Germany to fight the Nazis, but it would’ve been a wrong decision for the girl?
Yes, I get social responsibility, but you’re being literally unreasonable.
Frame it how you want but I’ll never agree that it’s unreasonable to expect citizens of a democracy to stand and fight rather than run away at the first sign of a threat to their democracy. That’s cowardly behavior through and through. The people who fought and died for us to have this democracy would be ashamed of such behavior and those are the people I’m looking to for inspiration right now, not people who can’t be bothered to stand beside me.
it was more along the lines of–according to grandpappy–people denying that they were about to be all exterminated and it was overblown by cowards as you call them versus people who got out when the gettin’ was good to fight back with better gear, in a better country, in a better environment where people took the threat seriously. Of course only after the japanese attacked. the US didn’t give a shit until then.
go ahead, stand up for your country, krashmo. Lets see you put your money where your mouth is. Do it. post it online so we can all see how much of a hypocrite you are when you do nothing
Sorry I was browsing and lost the sense of who answered whom. My bad.
I do that all the time as well, no worries!
deleted by creator
No-one claimed as much. I certainly didn’t even imply such.
And which one do you consider a democracy, Nazi Germany or the US? Because according to academics, neither are.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B
And that’s from over ten years ago.
Should’ve, would’ve, could’ve.
Frame it however you want but I would never agree to willfully stand inside a burning house.
And to a lot of people, the US is looking worse than a house-fire. So I commend you for your will to fight against such bullshit, but I definitely don’t blame anyone for bailing out.