2015 income tax filing notes

Presidential Election Campaign Fund: This fund helps pay for Presidential election campaigns. The fund reduces candidates' dependence on large contributions from individuals and groups and places candidates on an equal financial footing in the general election. ... If you want $3 to go to this fund, check the box. If you are filing a joint return, your spouse can also have $3 go to the fund. If you check a box, your tax or refund won't change.

In the past, I always checked the box.

This year though, the description paragraph includes a new blurb:
The fund also helps pay for pediatric medical research.

So I did a search. Interesting details about the fund here.
In the past, the fund also helped pay for political conventions, which I hadn't been aware of. In 2014, a bill was passed to stop funding the conventions and instead use that part of the fund for pediatric medical research.

It doesn't make sense to me though, to set aside part of a presidential election campaign fund for medical research. If the government wants to fund medical research, then they should do so on its own merit. So this is the first year I've decided *not* to check the box. Even though it's making me feel slightly guilty. But there's also the issue that I don't like to give money for medical research unless I know it's not being used for animal experimentation. So there.

I was in the minority in checking the box to begin with, as last year only 5.4% of returns had it checked. Apparently candidates aren't making much use of the available funds anymore either, due to the restrictions that accepting the money entails.

.

I planned to use the freefilefillableforms website to submit my data, like in the past years.

The Minimum Computer Requirements page recommends you use Chrome, IE 11, or Firefox 26. It says not to use Firefox 43. My Firefox is 45, which isn't mentioned. I don't like Chrome, so I decided to use IE to be on the safe side.

First I got prompted to update my Shockwave, so I did.

Then on the first page, I started filling in the fields to set up a new account. Every 4th or 5th character I typed didn't show up. It was only a problem in IE, not in my other windows. Considering that I was going to have to type in a bunch of numbers, and I didn't want to have to triple-check and retype everything I entered, I decided to just mail in the paper forms instead. This year, I do have the envelopes for doing that, hah!

nightmare strikes again

It goes like this:

Last night:
Check TV guide to see what's on TV.
PBS is showing "1916 - The Irish Rebellion. The story of the Easter Rising rebellion...."
Do a search on something related to that. Irish Volunteers, etc.
Skim various pages.
Start wondering if the U2 song "Bloody Sunday" refers to the Easter Rising.
Do a search.
Oh. There are a whole bunch of Bloody Sundays.
One of them: Stanislawow Ghetto Bloody Sunday massacre, a massacre of 10,000 to 12,000 Jews before the Stanisławów Ghetto announcement.
Read about horrors.
Ghettos, concentration camps, mass killings, mass graves.
Click links; read about more horrors.

I never can wrap my mind around it. In a way, I don't want to. That's why I try to avoid the topic. But for my own sanity, I want to understand it. How could such things happen? How could people come to commit such atrocities? I'm terrified of it happening again. I'm terrified that it is happening, constantly around the world, in smaller versions. How can I be safe? How can I be sure that I'd never be involved in such a thing? What control do I have over the things my government is doing? Am I really any different from the average German civilian back then?

And it also puzzles me, in reading some things, as to why the victims didn't fight back more? Some parts I can understand. If soldiers come for you and your family with guns, yes, you're likely to do what they say rather than to be shot to death right there. Maybe going where they tell you to go, will let you survive in the end.

But I have a hard time understanding the mass shootings. Surely it can't be that 10,000 people would stand together in a crowd, letting themselves be shot to death, for hours on end, as some of those articles imply? Surely they would have surged forward against the shooters, knowing that death was imminent anyway? Were the shooters up on walls? Wouldn't piles of dead bodies would have gotten in the way of further shooting? Did the shooters take breaks so that the bodies could be moved out of the way? Were the Jews so starved and demoralized by that point, that they welcomed death? Who would want to remain living in a world like that?

And it wasn't only Jews being killed. There were mass killings of ethnic Poles too, by both the Nazis and the Soviets. And masses of people being deported to Soviet labor camps. How could mass killings be so common back then? How could people so callously disregard life? Was it a state of mind? That to have revolutions and change society, you need to kill the existing society that stands in your way?

The German side of my family came from the area right near Poland, so that's another reason I'm often drawn to reading about these kinds of things.

After over an hour of that, I managed to make myself to switch gears, and return to doing my taxes.

Today:

Read an email about local events.
One event is "South Carolina survivors and victims of the Holocaust".
Am reminded of that first page I read last night. I bring up the page again, and read it again. Again trying to wrap my mind around it. Yesterday wasn't the first time I'd read those kinds of things. But as many times as I read them, it seems I'll never be able to come to terms with them.

Clicked some other links related to the history of Germany before World War II. Republic, unification, Holy Roman Empire, Kingdoms, duchies... All of history seems to be full of wars and fighting and horrors. I've always hated history.

Here I sit, in my peaceful house, in front of my computer. Relatively clean, fed, clothed, and warm. Even if I'm not particularly enjoying life, it's not particularly bad.

But the world is full of horrors, and I'm quietly terrified that someday they will strike me personally, and this relatively peaceful world will be blown to bits.