Hold the Mockery

More and more, I see nuance mastery as just the ability to argue away the lethality of gathering threats.

Sophisticates who sneer that it is wrong to compare any enemies we make deals with rather than confront to Germany and the 1938 Munich deal because Germany was a real military power neglect that the Germany the West appeased in 1938 (and earlier) was weak and not in the same league as the Germany that conquered half of Poland in 1939 (Moscow grabbed the other half), the Germany that conquered Western Europe from France to Norway in 1940, or the Germany that marched to the Volga River in Russia and within striking distance of the Suez Canal in 1942.

That's the problem, see? Weak enemies not stopped when they are weak get stronger. And they tend to see themselves as a potentially more successful enemy because of that strength rather than becoming our new friend with no interest in using that new strength against us.

Sure, you can dismiss the failure to stop Hitler early by saying we still beat the much stronger Germany by 1945, but the cost was enormous and extended to post-war chaos and death as people and borders were rearranged in Europe and a decades-long Cold War against the twin of Nazism--Communism--which took the place of the Nazis as the brutalizer of Europeans.

Nobody was sneering by then.