The conversation was about car pooling during World War II:
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http://xkcd.com/261/
OK, we’re going to have to find out when each of these happened EXACTLY to be sure.
Holy crap! Who’s the driver’s tailor??
Well, wait. That’s not a Godwin, for two reasons. 1) They really were fighting Hitler at the time. It’s not a Godwin if you’re talking about Hitler in context. 2) Michael Godwin hadn’t yet identified the trope.
Russell, OK on reason 2, but I don’t think there’s a “If Hitler than Hitler!” clause in Godwin’s Law.
There isn’t a retroactive application clause either.
But at the same time, kidnapping happened before there was a word for it. Or does that not count as kidnapping?
Same guy as the Joker uses, but for just a slightly more subtle look.
Maybe we didn’t have the word kidnapping, but there has always been some form of abduction or stolen to work with.
Looks like a Godwin to me, though. Equating conspicuous consumption of fuel cruising the town with Hitler. If the fuel wasn’t available to spare, it wouldn’t have been on the market. So it’s more like US capitalism, “I’ve got mine, screw you”.
Also, if you could be driving with Hitler, then you could just kill him.
Unless of course you are a NeoSketpic then you’d want to treat him fairly because, after all, someone might trick an Atheist into driving with them and then kill the Atheist. And we need to be Fair!
(Pardon my snark but… )
Speaking of fuel rationing. You know who got a lot of rations for no reason at all? Priests
You know who else was riding with Hitler when he was riding alone?
Hitler!
The situation was more dire in the UK than the US (read Orwell’s essays that discussed rationing during the war. He wrote during almost the entire time so you get a pretty good feel for what was going on) but wasting resourced during a total war does weaken a nation’s ability to fight.
As for the idea that there must be plenty of fuel if it’s on the market – read Orwell’s essays again on that about how the problem with capitalism is that you can end up with shortages of things that are necessary to fight a war or keep the civilian populace fed while a handful of wealthy schmucks consume as much as ever. Under capitalism or at least a least sufficiently deregulated capitalism a nation can be straining to fight a war and the capitalists can go on selling fuel to the government at a price high enough to make waging a war difficult. Or they can do what some US businesses did and actually sell things to the Nazis. In a war against the Nazis, do you really want to leave businesses free to say, sell fuel at a profit so that some civilian idiot can take a Sunday cruise rather than selling it at cost to the government so that they can actually fight a war against Hitler?