How does History effect the Present?

Capt'n Midnight

omnicorp wrote:

well, we could learn from history and maybe predict that if Bush gets reelected it will be a worse term because as they say... Power corrupts

Are you implying that Bush et al. could be corrupted ?
If so this would imply that they aren't already corrupt.

Also worse for whom, certainly not Bush. People will voulantarily give up many things, love, money, eggs but as a general rule people do not give up power. Knowing this explains a lot of politics. Also the unwritten rule is that you can do ANYTHING within your own borders but acting externally does not go with the international community.

Our government used to recognise Democratick Kampuchea instead of the Vietnamese puppet government. The puppet government was not free or fair but unlike the people we dealt with they didn't try to return 3/4 of the population into the stone age (the other 1/4 didn't survive.)

Oh yeah we've learnt a lot about preventing genocide..
Armenia, China, The Holocaust (About half Jews), Cambodia, Brundi etc.
No to mention the 10 million civilians killed by the US military since WWII
And yet once it's over it's back to business as usual, sometimes not even waiting. Look at all the companies that used slave labour in Germany and how badly they were affected (not).

The lesson seems to be that you can get away with a lot of stuff that people once got away, despite all the promises of "never again" since no one recognises the signs or acts on them until it's too late .

omnicorp

it's because of the other classic line "It was a good idea at the time"