Experience Wins Over Thinking and Reading

Real world experience is so important, compared to reading one more book. For instance I have read a lot about the Great War, World War I. But at some point I think, "I don't even feel sorry for you guys. Why didn't you rebel against your leaders, rather than be slaughtered every day?"

In fairness, French soldiers did rebel in 1918. They would no longer 'go over the top'  when the officer blew the whistle -- they would no longer participate in suicidal and useless charges. But they held their ground defensively. They weren't deserters.

Still, how could the vast majority of citizens and soldiers throw their lives away, based on the commands of leaders who were murderous fools?

That is one good thing in experiencing the virus lockdown. I see a nation of sheep, throwing its livelihoods away, based on nothing but propaganda from the boob toob. Actually, we should stop comparing Americans to sheep, and change it to earthworms, instead.

The American economy, 2020.

Now I realize how complacent and obedient the vast majority of peasants is to Authority, regardless of the consequences.

Another thing that always troubled me was how contemptuous German leaders were towards democracy, during the unification of Germany around 1870, and for decades more, all the way to 1945. Why was the attitude towards democracy so different in Germany, compared to other countries in northwest Europe?

Perhaps it was just the German penchant for brutal honesty. Does the general public really decide all that much in the vaunted democracies? This point could be illustrated many ways, but the virus lockdown makes the point more powerfully than books or mere thinking. I suspect that very few hands were involved in the basic decisions of the lockdown, and that many of those hand were unelected. How much input was there, from the general public?

Bismarck and the Kaiser were right about democracy.