I can't even with the news today

[conuly]

Seriously, I just can't.

Take a short story instead.

The Nazis won, and they won big. Also, they're obsessive little fucks, aren't they.

Comments

[librarygeek]

I agree with you about the news today.

Thank you for story, I think. 🤷‍♀️🔯🙏

I remember a psychological group study that showed in extremis, what humans want most is some idea of why, for all of this. Selah v'amen.

[librarygeek]

After thinking about the story for a while:

My reaction was not horror. My reaction is more relief. Inevitably the Nazis will fail, because they create their own enemies. I am Jewish, and I welcome all of those who chose to join us, even if I don't survive to see it (sob).

I was trying to be an interfaith healthcare chaplain and because I'm female, Jewish, and open about having multiple miscarriages that needed abortion care, it may be difficult for me to be employed as I wanted. But that doesn't mean I have to stop helping people. The biggest responsibility and gift of a chaplain should be a listening heart, that HEARS every person.

Social Justice Cleric here. All I can promise is not to go quietly.

[conuly]

Inevitably the Nazis will fail, because they create their own enemies

Literally, in this story.

[elayna]

I have not seen news yet, think I’ll clean my house first.

[conuly]

I saw some of those headlines and said "You know what? I refuse! I just refuse!"

[minoanmiss]

that story is well crafted utter horror.

[conuly]

Mmm. The economics of the setting are horrific enough without the rest of it - like, how much of the GDP is going to mass domestic espionage?

But a system like that is bound to crumble, sooner or later, just under the weight of its own absurd expense account.

[siliconshaman]

Yeahhh... that's one of those stories the more you think about it, the more disturbing it gets.

[conuly]

At least some people are willing and able to look for a better way if/when their society finally has the decency to give up and collapse.

[viggorlijah]

I love that story and reading it the second time remembering the twist let me linger in it longer. Next year in Jerusalem

[conuly]

A Jerusalem that's not at war, I hope.

[muninnhuginn]

Fascinating story. Thank you.

[conuly]

:)

[siderea]

Thank you for linking that. I doubt I would have read it otherwise, and I found it very touching. I know Turtledove's whole thing is alternate history fiction, but given how much this is a meditation on how being a reenactor changes one, I wonder if he was a reenactor himself.

Edit: There was a point in my life where most of the Muslims I knew personally got that way by first portraying Muslim personas in the SCA; while I am never likely to be any sort of theist, my worldview is definitely shaped my own exposure to Catharism in my persona research.

[conuly]

There was a point in my life where most of the Muslims I knew personally got that way by first portraying Muslim personas in the SCA

That's an interesting path to conversion that I honestly hadn't thought about in the real world.

[siderea]

Yeah, the thing depicted in the story is a very real phenomenon. Religious conversion is an obvious extreme version of it, but there's other subtler forms.

[silveradept]

An instructor of mine at university whose specialty is in Islam, Islamic societies, and the history thereof once recounted that during a lecture of his on the tenets, one of the students apparently rose and spoke the first of the required phrases to convert, at which point the other Muslim students welcomed them. There are apparently all kinds of strange ways of finding a practice that works for you.

[silveradept]

They are entirely obsessive little fucks, because their ideology often hinges on ferreting out details and trying to stop people from getting those details. They can't be everywhere at once, and they can't catch everything, and eventually they collapse under their own paranoia and inability to tolerate necessary differences.

[conuly]

I just wish they'd stay collapsed. It seems like we can't get rid of them lately.

[silveradept]

Yeah. They can go away and stay away and be a historical curiosity, instead of a relevant lesson.

[conuly]

But no living history museum for them.