[UA] Adolf in the IC

[Nick Wedig]

>I recall
>reading a powerful article written around the False Milennium, explaining
>why we shouldn't pick Hitler as the most influential man of the 20th
>century.  It all comes down to legacy--do we want this awful little
>boogeyman to haunt our dreams for the next hundred years?  Should we throw
>up our hands in defeat, saying, "Yep, this is the best we could do in 100
>years.  It sucks, but whadayagonnado?"  Or should we instead admire the
>quieter moments in history, and the people who brought them about?
>Shouldn't we see that murder and carnage are abberations, and not a true
>testament of what it is to be human, and what ought to influence us as we
>look back?  They picked Einstein instead, and I said, "Good for them."

They seem to fail to recognize the difference between "most influential" and "best".  In any situation where someone kills another, the most influential would be the killer, but the better is probably the victim (depending on circumstances).  

>PS:  What's also interesting to consider is what happened to the fellow he
>displaced?  Obviously Genocide's been around for a while.  Both Hitler and
>Stalin felt that their atrocities would be largely ignored by the world, as
>they were in Armenia not so long before the war.  Stalin once said, "A
>single death is a tragedy.  A million deaths is a statistic."  If there was
>a mad-dog genocidal bastard that already ascended, what happened once he
>exited the House?  Hey, does anyone know what Nelson Mandela was doing
>before the war?

Vlad the Impaler?  Did the archetype necessarily exist beforehand?  If so, I imagine it was a tyrant king with a different slant on the archetype than Hitler and/or Stalin had.  Likely not targetting a group as the source of the problem, but rather destroying his own men as a show of power (various historical examples could be provided here).  Any positive side to the archetype?

Mr. Teapot
enjoys morally ambiguous archetypes

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