re: #79 Targetpractice

Entire generations of West Germans were raised being told that Nazism was their fault. That it was a form of “original sin” for them, that they would go forward forever bearing their grandfather’s crimes as a way to ensure it would “never happen again.”

Meanwhile in the American South, entire generations have instead been brought up to venerate their ancestor’s “lost cause,” believe that the North was “just as racist,” and that slavery was just a form of business that was on its way to being obsolete rather than an immoral institution that kept millions in bondage and whose supporters looked to expand it as much as possible.

Germans were taught that their heritage is not something to celebrate, that they should feel shame for what the Nazis did in their names. Southern Americans have been taught that their heritage is guiltless and that liberals are trying to make them feel bad for something that “they did too!”

Yup, but this is probably the exception, not the rule. After all, the way Turkey approaches the Armenian Genocide, or how Japan approaches its conquest and massacres in the 30s and 40s is more in line with the “what’s the big deal?” approach that lost causers have about slavery. I’m also reasonably certain that Austria has a “let’s forget the whole thing happened” attitude towards its least-favorite son’s actions.

So kudos to Germany society for confronting its past so thoroughly.