The Maes Howe tomb on Orkney has viking-age graffiti on its walls that translates to the same "xy was here" messages you can find on the walls of every bathroom stall. It really is comforting to know that some things ARE constant.
The walls of the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul also have viking-age "X was here" graffiti.
One person on Deviant ART pointed out that it seemed kind of weird when gay people would be so Pro-Gay-lesbian-Transgender-Bisexual rights, yet proclaim Het is Ew.
There's also the phenomenon of No Bisexuals within LGBT groups, which is often related to Het is Ew.
Sometimes remarked upon as France and England. Both have Barbarian/Germanic origins for their cultures, with massive amounts of immigration. Both have had periods of complete military dominance. Both have seen their countries invaded and desolated, be it the Romans or the Nazis, and their languages have evolved so closely that words such as 'regard' and 'W.C' mean exactly the same thing. It's almost as if the two countries are so similar as to be defensive of each other to outsiders...
The "Communist Rules for Revolution" conspiracy theory in America and the "Dulles' Doctrine" conspiracy theory in Russia are almost mirror images of each other. Each side of the Cold War was thinking the other side is secretly corrupting their young, spreading sex and vanity and undermining the nation's salt-of-the-earth ruggedness.
During The Fifties, there were two men named "Joseph" who conducted Witch Hunts against anyone suspected of being subversive. One had the last name "McCarthy" and the other "Stalin". Granted, Stalin was much worse, but he had more power. Who knows what McCarthy might have been like if he'd been an absolute dictator instead of a lowly senator.
And, of course, there are the remarkable parallels between The Vietnam War and the Soviet Invasion Of Afghanistan. In fact, a lot of Cold War foreign policy. The communists may have propped up the likes of Pol Pot and Kim Il-sung, but the West did the same thing for various Latin American dictators.
We love to demonize certain companies for doing business practices...however, many other companies do the exact same things .
Victim mentality. Because we're the poor innocent victims, we use this as justification on doing whatever we want - even if it's Not So Different than the people we claim to be victimized by.
Over 2000 years separate us from the Roman Empire but there are records of elders in the community feeling that the young people of that era had no respect for the generation that came before them. Sound familiar? Every previous generation has people who think the current generation is ruining everything they accomplished and have no respect for authority, when we young people today get old, some of us may feel the same way. The cycle never ends.
There are two famous quotes attributed to Socrates regarding young people, and stop us if any of this sounds familiar:
The children now love luxury above all else. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect to their elders. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up treats at the table, cross their legs and are tyrants over their teachers.
The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or other elders. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they alone knew everything and what passes for wisdom with us (the older generations) is foolishness to them. As for girls they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress.
It isn't uncommon for veterans of war to lack a sense of hatred for the opposing side that was his enemy during the conflict. Somewhere deep down inside they realize that if fate had been less cruel and they had met under different circumstances they could have been friends, and that even if they couldn't be friends they were only doing their jobs in order to win the war so they can get back to their friends and families. All soldiers are human after all, with all the associated feelings of love, kindness, and wisdom you would expect out of a normal person, and would just like to move on with their lives.
Incidentally, the reverse is often also true: many veterans adopt the attitude that all the unsavory things they did would have been done to them by the other side were their situations reversed, or if the other side were stronger and more well-equipped. The fact that this is generally true doesn't help matters. Of course, there are enough black and white wars to prove this isn't always the case, but the line of thought remains.
Which makes a certain degree of sense. Soldiers who did and experienced horrible things and soldiers who never so much as had a chance to fire at the enemy will assume their experience to be "normal" to one degree or another. If you felt war drove you to do horrible things, wouldn't it make sense to assume that soldiers on the other side acted the same?
This troper recalls seeing a documentary on World War One when a Canadian veteran remembers meeting a German soldier and being surprised that he didn't have horns on his head. He looked like he could have been one of his friends.
Not to mention the numerous times that soldiers have temporary truces during holidays like Christmas or some other prior arranged agreement. Makes you wonder how if they could stop killing each other for a single day why they couldn't stop the war entirely.
When the last British veteran of World War One Harry Patch and the last living German veteran Charles "Karl" Kuentz (107 and 106 respectively and both half-crippled) met at the place where their battle in the war had been held on Belgian soil, Harry Patch picked up an acorn from the ground, gave it to the German and asked: "Do you remember that winter of 1917, when we had to eat ground acorns to survive? If you do, you know we were in fact brothers in arms." (They also exchanged a tin of Alsatian biscuits and a bottle of Somerset cider.)
Unfortunately, it's not the soldiers that make those decisions. Soldiers don't make the war; they just fight them.
Given the current political and economic situation in America, it's not uncommon for many to see both parties as this. And that is all we'll say about this.
This article on Cracked points out the surprising similarities between Gangstas and Rednecks.
Inverted. Both Chester Nimitz and Karl Dönitz were admirals of their respective armies. Despite their similarities, Nimitz sympathized with Dönitz and defended him in court when he was accused on wartime crimes in the Nuremberg Trial 1946, saying that he too waged unrestricted tonnage war in Pacific, and that there was nothing he hadn't done what Dönitz was accused of. Dönitz finally got ten years imprisonment. Many Allied admirals agreed with Nimitz and protested about this situation, claiming that Dönitz was innocent.
Inverted. A few gangsters in the era before prohibition refused to deal in the newer forms of crime. The police even sympathized with them when they were killed off by subordinates who had far less scruples.
Among sports rivals, celebrations when the rival loses tournament games might lead to complaints that "At least we got to the finals!", "You're envious!" and "Your only happiness comes from our defeats!". Guess if they won't celebrate the defeats of said rival team?
In the extremes of both sides of the whole religious vs atheism/antireligious thing, they basically do nothing but preach to people who already believe what they do (who are the only ones who will listen oftentimes) and go out of their way to alienate the people they purport to want to save.
