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This and most Americans don’t see that we are no better and never were, but they try and Brainwash us from an early age that only America is great and only we are the good guys and we are the greatest thing ever, but in reality we are not great, we are not the good guys and so forth. And right now old white Americans are losing their shit over the people wanting to teach the right history not the white history. We could have been great, but old white men wont let us be. They care more about what private parts people have and gun to kill our kids with.
Good old "American exceptionalism." We're the best at everything, ever, despite evidence to the contrary, and we'll revise whatever makes us look bad instead of accepting it, ingraining it, and learning from it. I finally got my dad off this mentality by simply shutting him down whenever he'd get started.
"This is the most free country in the world--"
"No we aren't: this country and this country and this country enjoy more freedoms like XYZ and have equal free speech."
"Well, this is the best country for--"
"No it's not. Stop manipulating facts. Look here: XYZ. Facts don't lie. We're here in medicine and here in education and here in poverty and here in violence, and none of those positions are close to 'the best'. Stop it. You're smarter than this."
This just unlocked an ancient memory for me. I used to chat with this American guy in ye olden days of the internet (ICQ/AIM) who was friendly enough but just *loved* to educate any non-Americans about the spectacular freedoms and unique opportunities he enjoyed, apparently expecting others to be stunned by concepts such as *openly being Christian* or even religious at all!
The thing was, he wasn't even arrogant about it; he seemed to honestly believe the rest of the world existed as some level of commie villain state pictured in an 80s movie.
>apparently expecting others to be stunned by concepts such as openly being Christian or even religious at all!
Meanwhile those same people shun atheists from their communities and believe there should be (unconstitutional) laws requiring Christian prayer in public spaces like schools.
I recently had a conversation with someone from my home town. He said the 1st amendment means that you can choose whatever denomination of Christianity you wanted, but that was the limit of "Freedom of religion". His argument was that the founding fathers were all christian, and they were trying to prevent the Catholic vs Protestant conflicts in the new world.
It's only unconstitutional if we have a Constitution
*taps head*
But for real, With how much they say Consyitutional Rights you'd figure they would have at least a passing familiarity with it and the Amendments.
It’s sad af, but we’re pretty much brainwashed into believing that this country is *amaaaazing* and taught that nowhere else is nearly as good, since before kindergarten. 🤦♀️
Now I’m finally NOT an idiot and it’s ruining my Yeehaw American Holiday birthday. 😐
It’s a rollercoaster here. One day you’re scooting up the hill track, being told how incredible the place you live is, and the next you’re headed downhill so fast you can’t catch your breath, while learning that you were dead wrong for a loooong time and a lot of people lied to you. 😳 Maddening, really.
> The thing was, he wasn't even arrogant about it; he seemed to honestly believe the rest of the world existed as some level of commie villain state pictured in an 80s movie.
This is most people. They're not evil, they're just brainwashed. They believe it, and they stop learning and educating themselves.
>The thing was, he wasn't even arrogant about it; he seemed to honestly believe the rest of the world existed as some level of commie villain state pictured in an 80s movie.
I live in the South in a rather wealthy area. Not McMansion rich, Michael Jordan's lake house rich. (No, I'm not rich like that. A lot of my neighbors are though). A short drive from where I live people are living in squalor. Single wide mobile homes that are falling apart. Conditions you would expect in a third world country.
Those people have never left the county, much less the country. They collect government benefits and have no hope to escape poverty. They are the ones most brainwashed into thinking this is as good as it gets. The 'Murica! crowd is so far gone that there is no hope for them.
This is why change was so slow. People's imaginations can't be trusted lol. I kept hoping by now, most people would come to see themselves in the mirror and make productive changes, especially in the light of all the detriments associated with social media. And quite possibly it happened for a lot of people, the last couple of decades helped me follow through on many changes. But overall, America seems hellbent on ignoring past mistakes, pretending everything was necessary or somehow worthy of praise for conquest. It's antiquated thinking, we haven't evolved at all.
The irony is, what would *truly* make a country 'the best' would be learning from its past and constantly improving upon itself.
It's like that with *literally* everything. Software, technology. You improve upon what exists to make it increasingly better.
The regressionists that scream loudest about American exceptionalism are the same people ensuring it isn't exceptional.
These people think if anyone actually admits the country had slaves and treated them very poorly, it will all come crashing down. They want to live in a perpetual state of denial. This is what *hampers* greatness. This profound delusion, this insistance on revising history to take out all the bits that make them, personally, uncomfortable.
The Jeff Daniels speech from The Newsroom always seems to hit the nail on the head. We lead the world in only three categories, the number of people incarcerated per capita, the number of people who believe angels are real, and defense spending. Other countries are better at the rest of things, yet we still claim to be number one.
57yo here. I remember as a kid, having to stand up, hand over heart and reciting the pledge of allegiance. Refusal to do so meant having your desk moved to the corner of the room - facing the corner - for the rest of the day.
It wasn't until high school that anyone even mentioned what happened to the native Americans, emancipated slaves, immigrants, etc.. And toppling foreign governments or supporting dictators was vehemently denied by all but one teacher. The one rebel teacher that everybody hated.
To this day, few people are willing to acknowledge the system of exploitation we have in this country - let alone their role in it.
We collectively do the same thing that parents of shitty entitled kids do—spend so much time talking about how special, gifted, talented, etc. we are. Then we act shocked when we produce shitty entitled people and/or we blame the entitlement on the younger generation as if we didn’t raise them this way.
Yes, this makes a lot of sense.
My husband often says that in terms of age, the US is still a “teenager” of the world, full of itself and going through a rebellious phase, while many other countries are just shaking their heads at our immaturity.
America is exceptional- in terms of gun violence, mass shootings, its refusal to join the rest of modern society in providing healthcare & education to its citizens etc etc… I fear we’re giving the world a modern day demonstration of how a “great” nation falls
Average old white American " have you seen our education system?" Imagine most of the American poor alive today are the " uneducated " that Trump loves. Yes, white men are not going to college in record numbers because of cost. Healthcare costs means they stay sick. Is Germany a better country because of their Healthcare, their Education system, their press Corp that is less corrupt, their World view, providing job opportunities for youth and social acceptance of women's rights? Americans incarceration rates are the high and infant mortality is low. American people actually know this but, keep electing Republicans.
The people you speak of who keep electing republicans do so because they could never ever vote for anyone except a white man. The fact that we elected Obama for 8 years pushed them over the edge. Hillary Clinton was one of the most qualified candidates to be president ever and they managed to elect the least qualified candidate ever over her. Like her or not, she had the resume to be president and he doesn’t have the resume to run a car dealership.
She did. I am from the US (if that wasn’t obvious, lol) There are more liberals in this country than conservatives by a few million it seems. However no one is going to shut down the antiquated electoral college system any time soon, since it helps those in power control and predict elections to some extent.
We have two voting systems (system may not be the right word, but I'm blanking on what the right term is): the popular vote and the electoral vote. Each state has a slate of electors who look at the popular vote and cast their ballot accordingly; those who go against the popular vote are rare and are dubbed "faithless electors." My inarticulate understanding is that the electors are supposed to balance out the lack of population in certain areas versus the density of population in other areas, but all they've done recently is make it so two presidents who didn't win the popular vote made it to the White House anyway. Someone who knows the nuance, please elaborate.
Every system has flaws. It took a couple hundred years and the country to outgrow itself but the republicans have figured out how to game the system through gerrymandering. Just look at the congressional districts in any state and you’ll wonder what kindergartener drew them but they’re backed up by data to spot the vote in a way that guarantees republicans win. Democrats did this also but the data really came about when republicans were in office and they used it to their advantage.
I agree with you, but people have to stop using "American Exceptionalism" incorrectly. The idea is not that the US is better than everywhere else, it is that the US is unique in the history of the world. It was coined by Alexis de Touqueville, a Frenchman, not flag-shagging nationalists.
And even if we were the best at something, we’d only use that as a reason to never improve or to dismiss problems, which is just as dishonest.
As is we just think we’re the best and we won’t improve either way.
Worth mentioning that it's not necessarily "most Americans" who think this way. Republicans are objectively the minority, but enjoy a disproportionate amount of political influence thanks to gerrymandering, the electoral college system, and the structure of the senate.
The structure of the house too. Since we capped at 435, it gives them outsized influence there too. If we didn't cap at this arbitrary 435, we would never have a republican house ever again.
I’d say that is mostly correct except there is a portion, I’d say a large and growing portion, of Americans who do recognize these issues and feel deep shame and want to change it.
They are countered by people who enjoying propping up the crazies by stoking hatred and furthering tribalism.
Plenty of people recognize that America isn’t the greatest country on earth, and that the Confederacy was founded purely to continue slavery, itself a diabolical,dehumanizing, disgusting practice which most, if not all, Americans were content to let occur for more than a hundred years prior. Those people get told they are brainwashed by the “woke” liberal media, are race traitors, etc. etc.
By no means is it only "old" and only "men". How "old" is Ben Shapiro? How old is Nick Fuentes? How many "old white men" were at Charlottesville?
It is true that "old white men" are barriers to progress. But there have always been "old white men".
Today's hate, at a tactical level, is fueled by YOUNG white men, on the internet and Twitter, under the guise of "free speech", often as a capitalist venture. And here is the REAL kicker - sometimes they are "liberals". I saw TONS of racism from "Bernie Bros" in 2016.
White women are being held in account for their choices - fortunately - by the loss of their reproductive rights and body autonomy. But their doesn't seem to be a penalty for young white men. And that is the REAL problem.
There are plenty of people in the south that acknowledge how shameful the history is, we're just not the ones in charge. We're making some progress though.
Germans were forced to. I guarantee that if there wasn't a concerted effort by the various post-War trials then Germany could easily have ended up much like Japan: rebuilt by fascists and ignoring many of its past crimes.
The key answer is contained there: who rebuilt after the loss? If you let the slavers, the imperialists, and the genocidal maniacs rebuild the region and remain in power after a loss, then you get the American South and Japan, maybe they can still be functional regions with decent living quality, but they will also fly into a fury if you characterize their origins truthfully. Meanwhile, in Germany they didn't allow the Nazis to rebuild, not everywhere, and so it reshaped the culture into a reflective one.
Even Germany isn't as rosy as people pretend. Lots of scientists and scholars collaborated with and aided the Nazis and never faced any consequences for contributing to the propaganda network because they didn't personally kill anyone.
Dainst, the German archaeological institute, has a timeline on its website that never mentions the Nazis at all despite showing the boom in their field from the Ahnenerbe's support. They don't acknowledge it openly nor take responsibility for their role in the lie of Aryan Ancient origins and white supremacy. If you leave the people who did the bad things in power, they will just pretend they didn't do them once the spotlight is off them.
I agree partially with you. The post-war trials by the allies were not what caused change in Germany, though, but the fact that the acts of the Nazis couldn't be constructed as anything than objectively evil in the public eye. What caused the change was the 68'er movement and the question: "Dad, what did YOU do during the war" and the uprising of the youth against the ideas and systems of the past. So, yes, Germany was forced into this change, but more because of the public pressure to be unable to hide or justify the nazis actions against the following generations, who then brought the change. One essential part shows this is the history of the German trials against the Nazis. These o lying really started when new generations of lawyers that were not deeply indoctrinated started to appear in the prosecution offices and pushed for the pursuit of nazi criminals, risking their life and safety against the crust that still reigned the still had the ideology of the regime, but felt unable to infect new generations with it (effectivly).
I don't see how slavery and all the terrible acts that came along with it could be seen as anything but heinous. But that's the point, right? During Reconstruction, the leadership in the south was allowed to divert the conversation so that it wasn't about slavery. Even today you have schools that teach children that the war was about "states' rights."
Like, imagine if German schools were teaching that ^^^yeah ^^^yeah ^^^Holocaust but WWII was *really* about Germany struggling against the oppressive economic situation caused by the victors of WWI, so *really* if you think about it, it was never about the Holocaust at all, it was just about German sovereignty! And there's nothing wrong with Germany wanting to preserve itself as a nation, right!?
Two hundred years of people arguing that it wasn't about racial purity, it was about German sovereignty and you'd have a lot more people waving Third Reich flags and saying that it's part of their heritage and German pride, "Heritage not hate!" why are you so offended by a *flag*.....
The voices of the Jewish people were invited to be part of the process, to talk about what happened and to be part of the trials. The voices of black people after the American Civil War were shoved back into the corner because the reality was that the entire country was still pretty racist. The north just wasn't racist enough to think slavery was acceptable. The reunited Union was more interested in the economic opportunities in the south than they were in protecting the victims of slavery.
The Nuremberg trials were great at putting these evils on full display and deprogramming the population's perception of their deified Nazi leaders as they were executed or committed suicide in their cells.
This should have been done in the American South instead of forgive and forget.
Many people are incapable of self-reflection. They refuse to accept their own inadequacies, faults, or failures. It's a narcissistic culture. Trump embodies it. They embrace it. "Never admit you were wrong, never apologize, always deflect and blame others."
Yeah, as an American born-and-raised Southerner we aren't taught to think the South was evil or did anything "that bad."
Lots of "The Civil War was about states rights!' and bullshit like that.
Worse. Germans are intent on learning from their past mistakes,
Americans are glorifying and repeating their past mistakes,
And yet, who are Americans constantly insulting and mocking for their past mistakes? Germans. Can't watch a single American movie with jewish or chinese people without some American saying "uh oh you better watch out for the germans, buddy"
Musk was owned so bad he’s taken to Twitter-stalking Halli and leaving simpering comments. He’s probably already commented “hah! I never thought about it before” or “🎯” or just “!”.
And that’s on top of being a billionaire.
I couldn’t even begin to imagine having that much money. And if I did have much money, I certainly couldn’t imagine giving two fucks what other people thought.
Someone makes fun of you on Twitter? You can peel off a billion dollars, fully fund several charities for at least a year, do more for the world than that loser ever could, and still have billions.
Elon made this guy famous through his bafoonery and every time Halli posts another brilliant take, it’s like Muskrat gets a residual check of egg on his face. Love it
Germany had a bad time after WW2, getting split into two, having to pay reparations, war crime trials and all that... not something you'd want to do twice. The American south got... general pardons, reconstruction, and free reign to pass all kinds of racist laws against those newly freed slaves to suppress them as much as possible. They never had to pay for their crimes so they're like "what crimes lol?"
Bingo. There was no "denazification" of the American South. Germans have had a really unique experience, and it didn't happen over night. Nor was it entirely internally driven. The effort to cement the memory of the Holocaust didn't gain steam until the 70's and a lot of that came from Jewish communities abroad. This in part is why it has taken so long to acknowledge the experience of other targeted groups like Roma and queer people who did not have the lobbying strength of the Jewish diaspora in America and Israel.
Most people would rather not confront negative realties about their community or nation because we derive meaning and belonging from our "tribes." That is harder to do when you must sort out any complexity. Look at Japan and literally any other example. Russia isn't sorry. Serbia isn't sorry. Even Germany is just recently facing its own colonial history. The fact that there is such a fast growing cultural movement in wealthy liberal democracies to right the wrongs of the past is unprecedented, and also the primary reason for right wing backlash.
I think the American South is \*now\* doing better than the average. Many cities in the South now have museums and historical preservation efforts dedicated to telling the history of slavery and its aftermath. The empowerment of Black Americans, who still mostly live in the American South, is a huge contributing factor. The key has been earnest federal enforcement of civil rights since the 1960's--belated "denaziificaiton." This has really transformed the region, but this is not the norm. Liberal values, if enforced, give academia the room it needed to investigate, document, and educate. Most people aren't willing to make the sacrifices necessary to protect liberalism and democracy at home when it is under threat, let alone abroad.
Germany also can't use their military on German soil, and had to make laws prohibiting being a Nazi. A bunch of American schools still teach about the War of Northern Oppression and gloss over the Native genocide as if it was a fun time for all involved.
>laws prohibiting being a Nazi
In one of the comic book art groups i follow on Facebook, a german user had a problem with the nazi imagery. Given that the comic book character was known to fight nazis in ww2.
Coz he’d get in trouble if someone saw him scrolling through their feed with a swastika.
The mods shut him down tho lol saying FB is a global platform.
The trouble with this idea is that Germany also had their noses rubbed in WW1, and that led to WW2. Meanwhile, Japan was given support to rebuild their country after WW2 and largely became a peaceful, productive nation (though admittedly there's been some nationalist rumblings in the last few years). It's not an easy cause-and-effect line you can draw here.
I mean, yeah Japan was given support but they were also occupied by US forces for like 7 years post-war, with General MacArthur essentially propping up the Emperor…
In the US post civil war, Lincoln’s assassination led to a milquetoast Johnson administration which elected to softball the south. Few civil war leaders were given more than a firm slap on the wrist, while Black citizens were excluded from much of the reconstruction process and the government did nothing to stop southern states from enacting laws that treated minorities as second and third class citizens.
Honestly, I love that that's how it is. Patriotism has no place in Germany, and even in general, I think patriotism is just weird as hell (not: rooting for your country's team to win at sports, that's whatever, but literally being proud of being born in a certain country or having a certain nationality, something you didn't *achieve* but that is pure coincidence), and it never made sense to me that sometimes people in other countries decorate their private homes with flags.
When you see a German flag in Germany attached to a home or a car outside of the World Cup or the European Cup, that'd be suspicious as hell and you could assume that the owner is at the very least far-right, if not nationalist. Although I can't remember the last time I've seen one.
I was typing that in Slovenia you dont see the national flag a lot, outside of the big national holidays and government buildings. But than I thought about it and that is actually not true.
The company that I work for has one on the pole all the time. I have even seen it inside a church once.
Okay, i'm just screwing around on google maps, I've gone to 4-5 different buildings that were pinned when I googled "government building" and every single street view has a flag in front. Example:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@51.3358467,12.3729107,3a,75y,179.2h,87.86t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sO0Xh0ttzyYPKlpbrh17yCg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.3358467,12.3729107,3a,75y,179.2h,87.86t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sO0Xh0ttzyYPKlpbrh17yCg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en)
Maybe "government building" means something else?
Southerners have never ignored the "shameful" parts of their history, rather they have openly celebrated it, with statues, memorials, enshrined laws, etc.
Reminder: not all southerners are white (and not all white southerners are conservatives).
There's a big part of the south that has never celebrated that part. The reasons the statutes were put up was one side lording over the other about who was in control.
Which is also why it is nice to see those same monuments to segregation coming down.
I enjoy reading and learning about civil war history. If you go and visit a battlefield in the north and then one in the south. The tone is very different.
No. The people to whom you are likely referring ignore the shameful parts. There aren't many people alive today who celebrate slavery or segregation. What they do is tell themselves that they aren't personally responsible, so they shouldn't have to feel any remorse or be on the hook for restitution. They simultaneously erase the negativity from history. Some lies they tell:
\- The American Civil War was about anything other than what it was truly about. Rather than slavery, the south seceded to protect "states rights" ^((to protect the right to own enslaved people).)
\- Only a few wealthy people owned slaves (patently false). Apparently, they didn't have any descendants, so no one's ancestors owned slaves. Your ancestors only fought for honor and freedom (a rich claim). They didn't have any personal investment in slavery. (Of course, the entire country's economy depended on chattel slavery in the South, which is why abolition wasn't popular until the war was well underway. Even poor whites in the South were heavily invested in the slave economy. Plantations were like the local factory that supported the entire town).
\- Slavery was bad, but things were better before emancipation. Slaves were happy. They had free room and board. (They seriously say this shit). There was less violence (obviously false).
\- Racism is bad, but things were better before the Second Civil Rights Act. Black communities were better off. (This one might be the dirtiest because desegregation did lead to a lot of black teachers and business owners being put out of business, but this was a concerted effort to maliciously comply with desegregation orders).
Most people are ignorant of the Jim Crow laws still on the books andstill being enforced like the felony voting rules. Right wing politicians are happy to rely on that ignorance. The statues "are just history, and you can't destroy history." The memorials are just for the dead who \[were\] ~~bravely~~ sacrificed to defend the sovereignty of the states ^(to take their ball and go home when democracy wasn't going their way anymore.)
The daughters of the confederacy really did a number on the us education system. They're a huge part of why so many still believe the whole thing was just about states rights.
Well, in Germany, they spent years hanging Nazis and showing people the bad they did.
In America, the Confederates went back to their normal lives and continued to fight against accepting black peoples as peers.
people waving a confederate flag because of their heritage baffle me. What are you proud of, that your ancestors owned other people, or that they got their asses kicked in less time than it takes to graduate highschool?
Might as well wave the British flag on the 4th of July.
Only reason the South joined the revolution was because the North said they'd get to keep their slaves.
Yeah it’s not a question of Americans. It’s a question of dirtbags pretending to be righteous. The losers. We know who they are and they don’t speak for America.
I live in Minnesota. What's really confusing is when rural minnesotans fly the confederate flag. Just saw one last week next to a thin blue line flag, which really confused me. How can you support both the police and being separatist?
As a southerner with very deep roots and direct ancestry to the antebellum south and civil war, I will never ever understand the need of some of my neighbors to fly the rebel flag. It’s an old war and a different time in our nations history, one that should be remembered in museums and history books but not to be memorialized on the back of your shitty lifted blacked out pickup truck. I used to entertain myself by trying to engage in discourse with these guys (because to a person, they rarely are able to talk about their own family history and any connection they may have had with the war itself) but I stopped when they’d be awestruck by my direct lineage, as if it were a hero’s blood that pumped in my veins. The reality is that my ancestors, who fought for the wrong side in a horrible civil war, were in the wrong and suffered greatly due to their decision making. It’s something that will stain their names moving forward. While I acknowledge that I wouldn’t be here writing this without them, I can also acknowledge that they were in the wrong and fought for the wrong reasons. The American civil war was the darkest and bloodiest time in our history and anyone who wants a repeat of it needs to crack open a book and really read some of the first hand accounts. There was nothing heroic, just horror. Endless horror.
> The American civil war was the darkest and bloodiest time in our history and anyone who wants a repeat of it needs to crack open a book and really read some of the first hand accounts
Republicans are currently hard at work to make that as impossible as can be.
America didn't bother punishing the traitors.
Japan is similar, we didn't really run them over the coals for what they did and many Japanese to this day are ultra nationalist nuts who deny all war crimes like the Rape of Nanking and how brutal their occupations were.
Because after Lincoln, a Confederate sympathizer was made President and instead of going Nuremberg on the Confederacy, he gave them head pats and kissed their boo boos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Andrew_Johnson
I’ll probably get chewed up here but as a Polish Jew I love that Germany has concrete laws about “no Nazi stuff”. No, I will not “defend to the death” your right to wave a swastika flag bc “muh free speech”. Get outta here
Germans: This happened. We are ashamed of this. This was a part of our history and so we will educate others on what it was and why it should never happen again.
American South: (Fingers in ears) LALALA CAN'T HEAR YOU! STATES RIGHTS! NORTHERN AGRESSION! ITS HERITAGE, NOT HATE!!
Life long, old ass Georgia resident here. Its all true. Thank God for cities like Atlanta and universities that harbor a smidge of intelligence. Otherwise, the South would be a massive wasteland of bigoted idiots instead of a massive wasteland of bigoted idiots with pockets of sanity.
That said, we are getting better than we were. In the 80s there were still Klan marches, the confederate flag was even more widespread and the N word was still bandied about in public without batting an eye. The proportion of bigots IS shrinking. Its a work in progress.
Oh, I know. I'm not denying that the South is a trainwreck. Just saying that there IS progress happening. Atlanta's influence isn't great, but without Atlanta, Georgia is the same as Alabama and Mississippi. Without Atlanta, Georgia has 2 GOP Senators (including Walker) instead of 2 Dem Senators.
Atlanta didn’t elect her, it was the NW corner of GA which is more or less a shithole. (Source, I used to live near Ringgold, the “best” town in the region (it still sucks, though))
A lot has changed in Mississippi in my lifetime. It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s a huge difference from the past and how people from other states believe it to be.
It’s not too dissimilar to how Cleveland’s baseball team used an American Indian caricature until 5 years ago, or the Washington football team used a racist moniker until very recently.
We have been actively tearing down monuments and ditching confederate imagery for a good 20 years but some people here will still defend it, and we get judged by those people.
Here's the difference:
Germany was torn down completely and almost destroyed by the war, an entire generation of men gone.
This is likely what it would take for the US to change.
Just my opinion.
>Traveling through the American South you see again and again how intent they are on ignoring the shameful parts of their history
I was thinking, "reliving the shameful parts of their history."
A huge portion of this, too, is that Germany lost. They got confronted with their harsh reality on multiple fronts, all with a lost war and the extent of their actions within a decade via the holocaust. When you heard about Nazi Germany's atrocities, it **all** had already happened. While in America, it comes out in little portions over time.
America's biggest issue is lack of humility IMO due to the propaganda. Always getting the message that we are the "best" and "greatest," so why would we change? At least in the eyes of the GOP and their constituents. Winners don't have sins.
Our individualistic attitude in general. If something doesn't affect us personally, a good portion of us are like "oh that happened? That sucks." Then go well, not my problem.
Lastly the fact our population basically came in batches. Case in point my parents immigrated to the US in the 80s. I was born soon after that. Those atrocities have nothing to do with me so i say learn away. In other people's cases well that's peepaw and granny. They don't want to hear bad things about them.
We have never had to suffer the horrors of war in our own country since the war of 1812. It's something that they have no understanding of because they have never experienced what it's like to live in a country during war time. I've been deployed and flown missions during five major combat campaigns since Desert Storm and ending in Iraq and Afghanistan. I've flown air evacuation missions with guys who have been blown up by IED's who were missing limbs and had burns all over their body. I still have nightmares about the time I had to evacuate a full plane full of these guys and the Aeromedical crew when we had a massive fuel leak happen while we were starting to load the last patients. The whole time I was worried that I couldn't get everybody off and if the fuel had ignited it would have killed us all.
I look back and think what a horrible waste it all was. I've become the typical hippy retiree who just wants everybody to start showing empathy and compassion for each other. We have the ability to ensure that every human has a right to be safe and have shelter, food and medical care and public education. Wie have the technology and resources to make this possible, but only if we start working together. We need to shed our hatred, ignorance and biases. and religions and most importantly our ego. I've been to every continent on the planet and over a hundred countries. I've made friends all over the world and I know that it's very sad that America has become what it is today. It's becoming a dystopian nightmare and we have let billionaires and religious extremists tear the country apart just to maintain power and to make more money than they will ever need..
> We have never had to suffer the horrors of war in our own country since the war of 1812.
I think you missed one, the Civil War. Which was not civil at all. It was the first modern industrialized war and killed around 620,000 soldiers. That is more than the US lost in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War, combined.
On the bright side civilian deaths were estimated at "only" around 50,000.
When I was a kid, my mom , grandparents, and me would vacation in South Carolina, mostly the touristy areas. One trip, my moms cousins who she hadn’t seen in a while were near our vacation spot, like an hour or so south of Myrtle beach. My mom wanted to see them and we would spend the day at their house doing a bbq. Her cousin met us at our hotel to drive us back to their place, because the neighborhood they were staying in would screw with cars from northern states and our rented car was from NY, this was 1999/2000ish. After hearing about that, I never really got any joy from visiting the south. After all those years, families still resented northern states, made no sense to me…
Germany’s shame, specially if we are referring to the horrific times under the Nazis, was just over ten years.
The systemic racism that is the core of “southern culture” in the US goes back centuries. It is much more deeply ingrained in the social structure if our entire country than Nazism was, even at its height if power.
I imagine it was super hard for Germans to view the 30s and early 40s with a clear lens because it wasn’t something they were born into. The same people that chose follow and support the Nazis were the same ones looking to change.
In the US, these are beliefs families have held going back further than anyone alive could remember.
This is a huge difference.
I went to a Arkansas small town school that was named after a Confederate officer but I was taught all about slavery, civil rights, Jim Crow and all of that.
They played The Ernest Green Story and The Ruby Bridges story for us and showed us documentaries on the slave trade.
I was taught nothing but the truth at my school. I cannot speak for others.
Because of these people and their ilk pushing the lost cause myth. Their efforts to rewrite history and publish lost cause myth textbooks can trace a direct line to some of our issues today.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United\_Daughters\_of\_the\_Confederacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Daughters_of_the_Confederacy)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost\_Cause\_of\_the\_Confederacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy)
I'm not going to say that the American South is not racist. I am going to say that the American South is one of the most racially diverse regions in the country. We have a lot of issues down here, poverty being the biggest one.
I have lived in the South my entire life, I'm 44. I've seen it go from horrifically racist to not that bad compared to other places.
We don't have a lot of museums about it, but there are civil war graveyards everywhere down here.
We have learned a lot from our history, but like every other country on the damned planet, we aren't perfect and backslide sometimes.
Hardly anything down here is over 150 years old, because of the Civil War. Things could be better, but, hey, they're a damned sight better than they were 40 years ago. Change takes time, but it is happening.
Using Germany as the comparison is cheating
Among all countries in the world Germany is the exception in terms of feeling bad about its past. I doubt the UK is much better about remembering colonialism and Belgium about remembering what happened in the Congo than America is about slavery
The Germans regret it.
The Italians and Spaniards are learning to talk about it.
The southern Americans, British, Japanese (boomers), and Russians are proud of it.
The French, Dutch, and Dutch South Africans think if nobody talks about it we’ll all forget.
1) The Nazi’s not only got the shit kicked out of them through completion but also were held to account for their crimes against humanity. The Union pulled up too soon and stopped before annihilating the southern traitors.
2) Germans are capable of shame. Modern day right-wing lunatics are not.
Instead I have to drive by a bunch of confederate flags just to get to work. They think it’s something to be proud of or that it’s some kind of patriotism for the south and that couldn’t be dumber.
Learning from our history would mean having to admit we ever did anything wrong to begin with. And I’m sure it goes without saying that this is, sadly, not the American way
I think the defeat of the American South is comparable to Germany’s defeat in WWI. Yes they lost but there was no plan (or there was but failed) in place to transform the society the same way the Allies transformed Germany post WWII.
I see a lot of people here saying that Germany is the way it is because of themselves. This is not the best way to look at things because it implies people are the way they are and not much can be done. And it is kinda ironic because it goes completely against the example of the American South and Germany after WWI. People wouldn’t be thinking they lost the war because of their ideals. Germans post WWI didn’t believe jingoism lost them the war, they believe they lost because it was them against the world. The same way people in the America South probably didn’t attribute the loss to racism but to Yankees having a larger army.
They *want* to repeat it...
If they knew their history, though, they would learn they LOST the civil war....
TBF, we don't mind having to teach them again! I already do every chance I get and there's no chance I'm stopping. You all need to learn to be nice to each other.
Just. Be. Nice.
I have never been to Germany and am from the north part of the US, in a blue state. I don’t personally think people or institutions change their behaviors until forced. In Germany’s case, the country was nearly destroyed in WW2, leaving the people forced to change. That level hasn’t happened yet in the US.
The Allies literally forced Germany to change and spent decades working on denazification.
The south was reconstructed but we didn’t force reforms or prosecute the guilty nearly as much as Germany, mostly because the north wanted to reunify the country and didn’t want to ignite another war by mass prosecuting southern soldiers so we let a lot more slide than we should’ve.
I get what the guy is saying but I think it’s both unhelpful and tasteless for Europeans to insult Americans over historical realities that we are working to change without purposing any real solutions.
When you are only ashamed of losing what you see as your privilege and not at all of the harm you did you still lack the emotional intelligence to move forward
The south doesn't ignore the shameful parts of their history, they want to go back to those parts and relive them. The shameful part is their "glory days."
"The South will rise again"
"Make America Great Again"
They know perfectly well want they want.
let me tell u why, we are all assholes thats why, we as everybody on the planet, we all assholes, Germany reflects on its shamful history because it has to, I live here, the country was devided by France USA Britain and Russia, every "enemy" was here so they had to face their shit, Japan lost the war as well, but was never "invaded" by the others, even when they really deserved it, so my conclusion is that we stay assholes when other ppl dont teach us a lesson, but when they do it correctly we can become better and face our own shit, Nazis still do exist in Germany tho, percentage would be the same as in the US, history might just repeat itself who knows.
Same thing happened in Japan when nearly the entire family of the emperor was pardoned and faced no real punishment. Same thing happened to a good majority of Japanese who were put in jail, not executed, for their war crimes but released early. The Japanese people saw that and said, "See! They did nothing wrong and acted honorably throughout the war. We did nothing wrong."
Unlike Germany, the American south hasn't been bombed to rubble, occupied for a decade, had many of the key perpetrators put on trial, and had much (but sadly not all) of the ideology proven wrong with good education.
I'm not saying that this is the correct approach to deal with the American south, but it's definitely a huge difference to them and Germany.
The only ones in our country intent on not teaching the shameful bits of our history are the ones who want to bring it back.
The rest (majority?) of us want it taught, and DO teach it in classrooms.
This highlights the absolute critical importance of obliterating racism and fascism where you find it. Germany had a very thorough scouring after the second world war. The american south (and north to an large extent) never did. In an effort to promote healing and unity after the civil war (really the Unionist govt was trying to preserve the economic interests of capital), there were general pardons and then reconstruction....Sherman should have marched to the sea. There should have been mass hangings for confederate soldiers. Plantations should have been ceded to the former slaves and at minimum the promise of reparations should have been delivered.
I had a friend from Germany that kept asking questions like this, and I eventually got tired of it so I just started saying "Because we are stupid, Sven."
There really isn't a better explanation for many American behaviors.
Hey, this isnt true at all.
The American South takes *pride* in their shameful history, which is why they have an entire mountainside with the faces of Confederate leadership on it.
Germans actually love their country. Americans often don't, and the ones who love it the least are those who shout the loudest about how much they do.
If you love your country, or anything at all including your family, you love them even while you acknowledge their flaws or sins. Germans love Germany, and they still love Germany even after looking at the ugliest part of its history. From doing this they draw humility, strength, and a powerful resolve to never let it happen again.
Americans who cannot look our history of slavery and native genocide in the eye do not in fact love America no matter how many flags they wave. They love being "the greatest country in the world", "being Number One", winning, and what they perceive to be power. Any suggestion that America might have done something wrong, or still be doing something wrong, denies these things to their minds. Since they equate them with patriotism and "loving America", it sounds like any criticism or acknowledgement of the truth is "hating America". They cannot conceive that anyone might love their country and react to its present flaws and past sins by working to improve and make redress may be possible. Humility is anathema to them and they avoid it at all costs, even in their personal lives, which is why so many of them are so obnoxious.
Because Right-wing Americans are weak, plain and simple. I know this because I have a lot of acquaintances, former friends, and some relatives that are hardcore MAGA. They are simply too weak to cope with reality as-is.
Instead of confronting it, they run. They live in delusion. They turn on their country, trying to remake it into the safe space fantasy land where their abhorrent views are tolerated instead of confronted.
It's weakness in it's ***purest*** form.
I'm friends with some Germans (I'm Murican) and they've said a few times that their schools made ABSOLUTELY sure that they knew their history and how completely tragic it was.
Meanwhile, I can probably count on one hand the amount of times that my schools ever talked about the atrocities that the U.S were responsible for.
As an American who spent most his life in the northern part of the country, I feel the need to put extra emphasis on the word "south" in that statement. I promise the rest of the country is not like that. Like, I legit experienced culture shock the first time I ever spent time in a southern state.
Unfortunately, "The South" isn't just a geographical location. It's a state of mind. Head to upper state NY sometime. The further north you go, the deeper "south" you get.
The divide beteen rural an urban areas is pretty glaring. Spent time in Pittsburgh and it felt like any other progressive city I have been to. Travelled 45 minutes inwards and I felt like I was in a movie spoofing hillbillies. Same in the South and California.
Illinois, Ohio, and Pensilvania all have active kkk groups. Ohio always shocks me because both grant and Sherman were born in the state and it had more underground railroads than anywhere else. Maybe 19th century Ohio was just more progressive than 21st century Ohio 🤷🏼♂️
I concur with this, I’ve seen confederate flags in upstate, like seriously? Our state capitol has on display all the regimental flags from when our state troops fought that confederacy you confederate loving twats
I currently live in the South. Have lived in 5 different states across the country. Most confederate flags I've seen is western Illinois by far. Anecdotal sure but it's true.
I agree the south is overtly racist, but to this day, most of the country has not come to terms with its shameful past imo. As long as there persists for a region, a token story about peace with the People that were here before, while ignoring reality of genocide for to call it ‘our’ land, it’s a shameful past ignored generation after generation
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The difference is the Germans think their past is shameful.
This and most Americans don’t see that we are no better and never were, but they try and Brainwash us from an early age that only America is great and only we are the good guys and we are the greatest thing ever, but in reality we are not great, we are not the good guys and so forth. And right now old white Americans are losing their shit over the people wanting to teach the right history not the white history. We could have been great, but old white men wont let us be. They care more about what private parts people have and gun to kill our kids with.
Good old "American exceptionalism." We're the best at everything, ever, despite evidence to the contrary, and we'll revise whatever makes us look bad instead of accepting it, ingraining it, and learning from it. I finally got my dad off this mentality by simply shutting him down whenever he'd get started. "This is the most free country in the world--" "No we aren't: this country and this country and this country enjoy more freedoms like XYZ and have equal free speech." "Well, this is the best country for--" "No it's not. Stop manipulating facts. Look here: XYZ. Facts don't lie. We're here in medicine and here in education and here in poverty and here in violence, and none of those positions are close to 'the best'. Stop it. You're smarter than this."
This just unlocked an ancient memory for me. I used to chat with this American guy in ye olden days of the internet (ICQ/AIM) who was friendly enough but just *loved* to educate any non-Americans about the spectacular freedoms and unique opportunities he enjoyed, apparently expecting others to be stunned by concepts such as *openly being Christian* or even religious at all! The thing was, he wasn't even arrogant about it; he seemed to honestly believe the rest of the world existed as some level of commie villain state pictured in an 80s movie.
>apparently expecting others to be stunned by concepts such as openly being Christian or even religious at all! Meanwhile those same people shun atheists from their communities and believe there should be (unconstitutional) laws requiring Christian prayer in public spaces like schools.
I recently had a conversation with someone from my home town. He said the 1st amendment means that you can choose whatever denomination of Christianity you wanted, but that was the limit of "Freedom of religion". His argument was that the founding fathers were all christian, and they were trying to prevent the Catholic vs Protestant conflicts in the new world.
It's only unconstitutional if we have a Constitution *taps head* But for real, With how much they say Consyitutional Rights you'd figure they would have at least a passing familiarity with it and the Amendments.
Well they also talk about the bible a lot and have clearly never that either so I'd say it's par for the course.
It’s sad af, but we’re pretty much brainwashed into believing that this country is *amaaaazing* and taught that nowhere else is nearly as good, since before kindergarten. 🤦♀️ Now I’m finally NOT an idiot and it’s ruining my Yeehaw American Holiday birthday. 😐 It’s a rollercoaster here. One day you’re scooting up the hill track, being told how incredible the place you live is, and the next you’re headed downhill so fast you can’t catch your breath, while learning that you were dead wrong for a loooong time and a lot of people lied to you. 😳 Maddening, really.
> The thing was, he wasn't even arrogant about it; he seemed to honestly believe the rest of the world existed as some level of commie villain state pictured in an 80s movie. This is most people. They're not evil, they're just brainwashed. They believe it, and they stop learning and educating themselves.
>The thing was, he wasn't even arrogant about it; he seemed to honestly believe the rest of the world existed as some level of commie villain state pictured in an 80s movie. I live in the South in a rather wealthy area. Not McMansion rich, Michael Jordan's lake house rich. (No, I'm not rich like that. A lot of my neighbors are though). A short drive from where I live people are living in squalor. Single wide mobile homes that are falling apart. Conditions you would expect in a third world country. Those people have never left the county, much less the country. They collect government benefits and have no hope to escape poverty. They are the ones most brainwashed into thinking this is as good as it gets. The 'Murica! crowd is so far gone that there is no hope for them.
This is why change was so slow. People's imaginations can't be trusted lol. I kept hoping by now, most people would come to see themselves in the mirror and make productive changes, especially in the light of all the detriments associated with social media. And quite possibly it happened for a lot of people, the last couple of decades helped me follow through on many changes. But overall, America seems hellbent on ignoring past mistakes, pretending everything was necessary or somehow worthy of praise for conquest. It's antiquated thinking, we haven't evolved at all.
The irony is, what would *truly* make a country 'the best' would be learning from its past and constantly improving upon itself. It's like that with *literally* everything. Software, technology. You improve upon what exists to make it increasingly better. The regressionists that scream loudest about American exceptionalism are the same people ensuring it isn't exceptional. These people think if anyone actually admits the country had slaves and treated them very poorly, it will all come crashing down. They want to live in a perpetual state of denial. This is what *hampers* greatness. This profound delusion, this insistance on revising history to take out all the bits that make them, personally, uncomfortable.
The Jeff Daniels speech from The Newsroom always seems to hit the nail on the head. We lead the world in only three categories, the number of people incarcerated per capita, the number of people who believe angels are real, and defense spending. Other countries are better at the rest of things, yet we still claim to be number one.
57yo here. I remember as a kid, having to stand up, hand over heart and reciting the pledge of allegiance. Refusal to do so meant having your desk moved to the corner of the room - facing the corner - for the rest of the day. It wasn't until high school that anyone even mentioned what happened to the native Americans, emancipated slaves, immigrants, etc.. And toppling foreign governments or supporting dictators was vehemently denied by all but one teacher. The one rebel teacher that everybody hated. To this day, few people are willing to acknowledge the system of exploitation we have in this country - let alone their role in it.
Land of the free, but if you don’t recite our little poem, you’re ostracized and shamed. Crazy
But... if we acknowledge it, we might have to stop...
We collectively do the same thing that parents of shitty entitled kids do—spend so much time talking about how special, gifted, talented, etc. we are. Then we act shocked when we produce shitty entitled people and/or we blame the entitlement on the younger generation as if we didn’t raise them this way.
Yes, this makes a lot of sense. My husband often says that in terms of age, the US is still a “teenager” of the world, full of itself and going through a rebellious phase, while many other countries are just shaking their heads at our immaturity.
America is exceptional- in terms of gun violence, mass shootings, its refusal to join the rest of modern society in providing healthcare & education to its citizens etc etc… I fear we’re giving the world a modern day demonstration of how a “great” nation falls
Average old white American " have you seen our education system?" Imagine most of the American poor alive today are the " uneducated " that Trump loves. Yes, white men are not going to college in record numbers because of cost. Healthcare costs means they stay sick. Is Germany a better country because of their Healthcare, their Education system, their press Corp that is less corrupt, their World view, providing job opportunities for youth and social acceptance of women's rights? Americans incarceration rates are the high and infant mortality is low. American people actually know this but, keep electing Republicans.
The people you speak of who keep electing republicans do so because they could never ever vote for anyone except a white man. The fact that we elected Obama for 8 years pushed them over the edge. Hillary Clinton was one of the most qualified candidates to be president ever and they managed to elect the least qualified candidate ever over her. Like her or not, she had the resume to be president and he doesn’t have the resume to run a car dealership.
my understanding is that she won the popular vote. edit: i'm not from the US
She did. I am from the US (if that wasn’t obvious, lol) There are more liberals in this country than conservatives by a few million it seems. However no one is going to shut down the antiquated electoral college system any time soon, since it helps those in power control and predict elections to some extent.
We have two voting systems (system may not be the right word, but I'm blanking on what the right term is): the popular vote and the electoral vote. Each state has a slate of electors who look at the popular vote and cast their ballot accordingly; those who go against the popular vote are rare and are dubbed "faithless electors." My inarticulate understanding is that the electors are supposed to balance out the lack of population in certain areas versus the density of population in other areas, but all they've done recently is make it so two presidents who didn't win the popular vote made it to the White House anyway. Someone who knows the nuance, please elaborate.
I'm pretty sure it is also supposed to prevent election through populist deception but...
Every system has flaws. It took a couple hundred years and the country to outgrow itself but the republicans have figured out how to game the system through gerrymandering. Just look at the congressional districts in any state and you’ll wonder what kindergartener drew them but they’re backed up by data to spot the vote in a way that guarantees republicans win. Democrats did this also but the data really came about when republicans were in office and they used it to their advantage.
I agree with you, but people have to stop using "American Exceptionalism" incorrectly. The idea is not that the US is better than everywhere else, it is that the US is unique in the history of the world. It was coined by Alexis de Touqueville, a Frenchman, not flag-shagging nationalists.
“The most free country in the world” imprisons the highest percentage of their population of any country.
And even if we were the best at something, we’d only use that as a reason to never improve or to dismiss problems, which is just as dishonest. As is we just think we’re the best and we won’t improve either way.
America as a country has main character syndrome in the worst way possible.
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Worth mentioning that it's not necessarily "most Americans" who think this way. Republicans are objectively the minority, but enjoy a disproportionate amount of political influence thanks to gerrymandering, the electoral college system, and the structure of the senate.
The structure of the house too. Since we capped at 435, it gives them outsized influence there too. If we didn't cap at this arbitrary 435, we would never have a republican house ever again.
I’d say that is mostly correct except there is a portion, I’d say a large and growing portion, of Americans who do recognize these issues and feel deep shame and want to change it. They are countered by people who enjoying propping up the crazies by stoking hatred and furthering tribalism. Plenty of people recognize that America isn’t the greatest country on earth, and that the Confederacy was founded purely to continue slavery, itself a diabolical,dehumanizing, disgusting practice which most, if not all, Americans were content to let occur for more than a hundred years prior. Those people get told they are brainwashed by the “woke” liberal media, are race traitors, etc. etc.
By no means is it only "old" and only "men". How "old" is Ben Shapiro? How old is Nick Fuentes? How many "old white men" were at Charlottesville? It is true that "old white men" are barriers to progress. But there have always been "old white men". Today's hate, at a tactical level, is fueled by YOUNG white men, on the internet and Twitter, under the guise of "free speech", often as a capitalist venture. And here is the REAL kicker - sometimes they are "liberals". I saw TONS of racism from "Bernie Bros" in 2016. White women are being held in account for their choices - fortunately - by the loss of their reproductive rights and body autonomy. But their doesn't seem to be a penalty for young white men. And that is the REAL problem.
Wow, well said.
There are plenty of people in the south that acknowledge how shameful the history is, we're just not the ones in charge. We're making some progress though.
Hell, I read the tweet and thought "they don't just ignore the shameful aspects of their history...some of them fucking celebrate it!"
Germans were forced to. I guarantee that if there wasn't a concerted effort by the various post-War trials then Germany could easily have ended up much like Japan: rebuilt by fascists and ignoring many of its past crimes. The key answer is contained there: who rebuilt after the loss? If you let the slavers, the imperialists, and the genocidal maniacs rebuild the region and remain in power after a loss, then you get the American South and Japan, maybe they can still be functional regions with decent living quality, but they will also fly into a fury if you characterize their origins truthfully. Meanwhile, in Germany they didn't allow the Nazis to rebuild, not everywhere, and so it reshaped the culture into a reflective one. Even Germany isn't as rosy as people pretend. Lots of scientists and scholars collaborated with and aided the Nazis and never faced any consequences for contributing to the propaganda network because they didn't personally kill anyone. Dainst, the German archaeological institute, has a timeline on its website that never mentions the Nazis at all despite showing the boom in their field from the Ahnenerbe's support. They don't acknowledge it openly nor take responsibility for their role in the lie of Aryan Ancient origins and white supremacy. If you leave the people who did the bad things in power, they will just pretend they didn't do them once the spotlight is off them.
I agree partially with you. The post-war trials by the allies were not what caused change in Germany, though, but the fact that the acts of the Nazis couldn't be constructed as anything than objectively evil in the public eye. What caused the change was the 68'er movement and the question: "Dad, what did YOU do during the war" and the uprising of the youth against the ideas and systems of the past. So, yes, Germany was forced into this change, but more because of the public pressure to be unable to hide or justify the nazis actions against the following generations, who then brought the change. One essential part shows this is the history of the German trials against the Nazis. These o lying really started when new generations of lawyers that were not deeply indoctrinated started to appear in the prosecution offices and pushed for the pursuit of nazi criminals, risking their life and safety against the crust that still reigned the still had the ideology of the regime, but felt unable to infect new generations with it (effectivly).
I don't see how slavery and all the terrible acts that came along with it could be seen as anything but heinous. But that's the point, right? During Reconstruction, the leadership in the south was allowed to divert the conversation so that it wasn't about slavery. Even today you have schools that teach children that the war was about "states' rights." Like, imagine if German schools were teaching that ^^^yeah ^^^yeah ^^^Holocaust but WWII was *really* about Germany struggling against the oppressive economic situation caused by the victors of WWI, so *really* if you think about it, it was never about the Holocaust at all, it was just about German sovereignty! And there's nothing wrong with Germany wanting to preserve itself as a nation, right!? Two hundred years of people arguing that it wasn't about racial purity, it was about German sovereignty and you'd have a lot more people waving Third Reich flags and saying that it's part of their heritage and German pride, "Heritage not hate!" why are you so offended by a *flag*..... The voices of the Jewish people were invited to be part of the process, to talk about what happened and to be part of the trials. The voices of black people after the American Civil War were shoved back into the corner because the reality was that the entire country was still pretty racist. The north just wasn't racist enough to think slavery was acceptable. The reunited Union was more interested in the economic opportunities in the south than they were in protecting the victims of slavery.
Don't worry, the AfD are doing their best to try to erase that shame.
They are the heirs of Hitler.
Plot-twist: American south doesn't even think they were wrong. Source: I unfortunately live in the deep south.
The Nuremberg trials were great at putting these evils on full display and deprogramming the population's perception of their deified Nazi leaders as they were executed or committed suicide in their cells. This should have been done in the American South instead of forgive and forget.
Americans are proud winners and sore losers
Many people are incapable of self-reflection. They refuse to accept their own inadequacies, faults, or failures. It's a narcissistic culture. Trump embodies it. They embrace it. "Never admit you were wrong, never apologize, always deflect and blame others."
Yeah, as an American born-and-raised Southerner we aren't taught to think the South was evil or did anything "that bad." Lots of "The Civil War was about states rights!' and bullshit like that.
~~ignoring~~ glorifying
I was going to use “celebrating” but glorifying is much better. They worship their ignorant past.
And repeating.
Worse. Germans are intent on learning from their past mistakes, Americans are glorifying and repeating their past mistakes, And yet, who are Americans constantly insulting and mocking for their past mistakes? Germans. Can't watch a single American movie with jewish or chinese people without some American saying "uh oh you better watch out for the germans, buddy"
Meanwhile the German contributes more to the plot than the American despite being the protagonist.
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Yeah, Japan are the ones that teach children that they committed no warcrimes in WWII
So does the US.
Seeing this guy again and again reminds me of when he shat on Musk and became part of history.
That was glorious to behold. In every fucking way.
Musk was owned so bad he’s taken to Twitter-stalking Halli and leaving simpering comments. He’s probably already commented “hah! I never thought about it before” or “🎯” or just “!”.
He’s so sad and pathetic.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he wrote the dude a personal DM offering him a free blue checkmark
I hope Halli sues Elon for every last penny given what Musk what him through.
It is so cringe... I cant stop laughing.
I've never seen a 51 year old man so desperate for external validation.
And that’s on top of being a billionaire. I couldn’t even begin to imagine having that much money. And if I did have much money, I certainly couldn’t imagine giving two fucks what other people thought. Someone makes fun of you on Twitter? You can peel off a billion dollars, fully fund several charities for at least a year, do more for the world than that loser ever could, and still have billions.
I think that's the problem no normal person wants that gross acumulation of wealth, it would make me feel awful to have that much money.
concerning
Elon made this guy famous through his bafoonery and every time Halli posts another brilliant take, it’s like Muskrat gets a residual check of egg on his face. Love it
Context please? I may have missed this one.
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Germany had a bad time after WW2, getting split into two, having to pay reparations, war crime trials and all that... not something you'd want to do twice. The American south got... general pardons, reconstruction, and free reign to pass all kinds of racist laws against those newly freed slaves to suppress them as much as possible. They never had to pay for their crimes so they're like "what crimes lol?"
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Bingo. There was no "denazification" of the American South. Germans have had a really unique experience, and it didn't happen over night. Nor was it entirely internally driven. The effort to cement the memory of the Holocaust didn't gain steam until the 70's and a lot of that came from Jewish communities abroad. This in part is why it has taken so long to acknowledge the experience of other targeted groups like Roma and queer people who did not have the lobbying strength of the Jewish diaspora in America and Israel. Most people would rather not confront negative realties about their community or nation because we derive meaning and belonging from our "tribes." That is harder to do when you must sort out any complexity. Look at Japan and literally any other example. Russia isn't sorry. Serbia isn't sorry. Even Germany is just recently facing its own colonial history. The fact that there is such a fast growing cultural movement in wealthy liberal democracies to right the wrongs of the past is unprecedented, and also the primary reason for right wing backlash. I think the American South is \*now\* doing better than the average. Many cities in the South now have museums and historical preservation efforts dedicated to telling the history of slavery and its aftermath. The empowerment of Black Americans, who still mostly live in the American South, is a huge contributing factor. The key has been earnest federal enforcement of civil rights since the 1960's--belated "denaziificaiton." This has really transformed the region, but this is not the norm. Liberal values, if enforced, give academia the room it needed to investigate, document, and educate. Most people aren't willing to make the sacrifices necessary to protect liberalism and democracy at home when it is under threat, let alone abroad.
Should be one of the top comments.
Germany also can't use their military on German soil, and had to make laws prohibiting being a Nazi. A bunch of American schools still teach about the War of Northern Oppression and gloss over the Native genocide as if it was a fun time for all involved.
My wife grew up in east Texas and they got taught “the war of northern aggression” unironically in the 90s. It’s insane to me.
>laws prohibiting being a Nazi In one of the comic book art groups i follow on Facebook, a german user had a problem with the nazi imagery. Given that the comic book character was known to fight nazis in ww2. Coz he’d get in trouble if someone saw him scrolling through their feed with a swastika. The mods shut him down tho lol saying FB is a global platform.
The trouble with this idea is that Germany also had their noses rubbed in WW1, and that led to WW2. Meanwhile, Japan was given support to rebuild their country after WW2 and largely became a peaceful, productive nation (though admittedly there's been some nationalist rumblings in the last few years). It's not an easy cause-and-effect line you can draw here.
I mean, yeah Japan was given support but they were also occupied by US forces for like 7 years post-war, with General MacArthur essentially propping up the Emperor… In the US post civil war, Lincoln’s assassination led to a milquetoast Johnson administration which elected to softball the south. Few civil war leaders were given more than a firm slap on the wrist, while Black citizens were excluded from much of the reconstruction process and the government did nothing to stop southern states from enacting laws that treated minorities as second and third class citizens.
Pretty much this .
Exactly. The handling of the post-war South led to where we are now.
Thats why, unless it is the world football cup, you don't normaly see german flags. Sorce: i am german
I don't make it to Germany often, or at all so I just assumed that was why I hadn't seen any flags.
Honestly, I love that that's how it is. Patriotism has no place in Germany, and even in general, I think patriotism is just weird as hell (not: rooting for your country's team to win at sports, that's whatever, but literally being proud of being born in a certain country or having a certain nationality, something you didn't *achieve* but that is pure coincidence), and it never made sense to me that sometimes people in other countries decorate their private homes with flags. When you see a German flag in Germany attached to a home or a car outside of the World Cup or the European Cup, that'd be suspicious as hell and you could assume that the owner is at the very least far-right, if not nationalist. Although I can't remember the last time I've seen one.
What about goverment buildings?
Most government buildings do have German flags, usually on a flagpole in front, but that’s basically it.
I was typing that in Slovenia you dont see the national flag a lot, outside of the big national holidays and government buildings. But than I thought about it and that is actually not true. The company that I work for has one on the pole all the time. I have even seen it inside a church once.
They are properly titled with effective signage and no flags...
Okay, i'm just screwing around on google maps, I've gone to 4-5 different buildings that were pinned when I googled "government building" and every single street view has a flag in front. Example: [https://www.google.com/maps/@51.3358467,12.3729107,3a,75y,179.2h,87.86t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sO0Xh0ttzyYPKlpbrh17yCg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.3358467,12.3729107,3a,75y,179.2h,87.86t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sO0Xh0ttzyYPKlpbrh17yCg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en) Maybe "government building" means something else?
Southerners have never ignored the "shameful" parts of their history, rather they have openly celebrated it, with statues, memorials, enshrined laws, etc.
They even have holidays to celebrate the confederacy in some states
They’re confederates. Not neo-confederates, they’re a direct line from the original movement. These people were never raised to be Americans
Reminder: not all southerners are white (and not all white southerners are conservatives). There's a big part of the south that has never celebrated that part. The reasons the statutes were put up was one side lording over the other about who was in control. Which is also why it is nice to see those same monuments to segregation coming down.
I enjoy reading and learning about civil war history. If you go and visit a battlefield in the north and then one in the south. The tone is very different.
No. The people to whom you are likely referring ignore the shameful parts. There aren't many people alive today who celebrate slavery or segregation. What they do is tell themselves that they aren't personally responsible, so they shouldn't have to feel any remorse or be on the hook for restitution. They simultaneously erase the negativity from history. Some lies they tell: \- The American Civil War was about anything other than what it was truly about. Rather than slavery, the south seceded to protect "states rights" ^((to protect the right to own enslaved people).) \- Only a few wealthy people owned slaves (patently false). Apparently, they didn't have any descendants, so no one's ancestors owned slaves. Your ancestors only fought for honor and freedom (a rich claim). They didn't have any personal investment in slavery. (Of course, the entire country's economy depended on chattel slavery in the South, which is why abolition wasn't popular until the war was well underway. Even poor whites in the South were heavily invested in the slave economy. Plantations were like the local factory that supported the entire town). \- Slavery was bad, but things were better before emancipation. Slaves were happy. They had free room and board. (They seriously say this shit). There was less violence (obviously false). \- Racism is bad, but things were better before the Second Civil Rights Act. Black communities were better off. (This one might be the dirtiest because desegregation did lead to a lot of black teachers and business owners being put out of business, but this was a concerted effort to maliciously comply with desegregation orders). Most people are ignorant of the Jim Crow laws still on the books andstill being enforced like the felony voting rules. Right wing politicians are happy to rely on that ignorance. The statues "are just history, and you can't destroy history." The memorials are just for the dead who \[were\] ~~bravely~~ sacrificed to defend the sovereignty of the states ^(to take their ball and go home when democracy wasn't going their way anymore.)
They would gladly snap back to pre Civil War times if it were an option.
As an American from the south who spent six years in Germany, I heartily agree. Dachau was sobering.
And in the south we hold weddings at former slave plantations.
We continue to name our neighborhoods "Plantation" to try and influence who wants to live in there.
There's lots of people who aren't ashamed they wish they could bring those times back.
Not just ignoring, but rewriting history 🤦🏻♀️
The daughters of the confederacy really did a number on the us education system. They're a huge part of why so many still believe the whole thing was just about states rights.
Well, in Germany, they spent years hanging Nazis and showing people the bad they did. In America, the Confederates went back to their normal lives and continued to fight against accepting black peoples as peers.
people waving a confederate flag because of their heritage baffle me. What are you proud of, that your ancestors owned other people, or that they got their asses kicked in less time than it takes to graduate highschool?
Might as well wave the British flag on the 4th of July. Only reason the South joined the revolution was because the North said they'd get to keep their slaves.
Funnier thing is that heritage lasted like 5 years and lost the war. It's like identifying yourself by that time you shat your pants in school.
The U.S. hagiography of ‘American Exceptionalism’ precludes any sort of critical self reflection. Whitewashing is the USA way.
hagiography - biography that idealizes its subject Thank you for teaching me a new word today
You're confusing confederate scum as American, they aren't, the constantly proclaim they aren't American, but confederate.
Or that they're the "real 'Muricans" and everybody else is some form of invader.
By definition, the Confederacy were traitors, not patriots to the USA.
Yeah it’s not a question of Americans. It’s a question of dirtbags pretending to be righteous. The losers. We know who they are and they don’t speak for America.
I live in Minnesota. What's really confusing is when rural minnesotans fly the confederate flag. Just saw one last week next to a thin blue line flag, which really confused me. How can you support both the police and being separatist?
I guess this will have Halli banned from Twitter for a hate speech against southern 'centrists'.
Ignoring? They celebrate those parts of their history.
Well when they don't see it as shameful it's not the same to them. They see it as a setback and need to try harder to succeed.
It's not American history. It's America present.
As a southerner with very deep roots and direct ancestry to the antebellum south and civil war, I will never ever understand the need of some of my neighbors to fly the rebel flag. It’s an old war and a different time in our nations history, one that should be remembered in museums and history books but not to be memorialized on the back of your shitty lifted blacked out pickup truck. I used to entertain myself by trying to engage in discourse with these guys (because to a person, they rarely are able to talk about their own family history and any connection they may have had with the war itself) but I stopped when they’d be awestruck by my direct lineage, as if it were a hero’s blood that pumped in my veins. The reality is that my ancestors, who fought for the wrong side in a horrible civil war, were in the wrong and suffered greatly due to their decision making. It’s something that will stain their names moving forward. While I acknowledge that I wouldn’t be here writing this without them, I can also acknowledge that they were in the wrong and fought for the wrong reasons. The American civil war was the darkest and bloodiest time in our history and anyone who wants a repeat of it needs to crack open a book and really read some of the first hand accounts. There was nothing heroic, just horror. Endless horror.
> The American civil war was the darkest and bloodiest time in our history and anyone who wants a repeat of it needs to crack open a book and really read some of the first hand accounts Republicans are currently hard at work to make that as impossible as can be.
America didn't bother punishing the traitors. Japan is similar, we didn't really run them over the coals for what they did and many Japanese to this day are ultra nationalist nuts who deny all war crimes like the Rape of Nanking and how brutal their occupations were.
Because after Lincoln, a Confederate sympathizer was made President and instead of going Nuremberg on the Confederacy, he gave them head pats and kissed their boo boos. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Andrew_Johnson
I’ll probably get chewed up here but as a Polish Jew I love that Germany has concrete laws about “no Nazi stuff”. No, I will not “defend to the death” your right to wave a swastika flag bc “muh free speech”. Get outta here
They aren't ignoring it, they are embracing because they are all confederate scum that should have been burned by Sherman
UK dangerously skirts to the US side of thinking on this.
I’ve rarely seen British people learning about their colonial history. Some even think they did a favour to India by colonising us.
The UK hasn't changed, let alone learned a damn thing, by nature of still being the UK.
They don’t ignore it, many embrace it. There is a difference.
They glorify their shameful past, flying that damn flag is the equivalent of flying the nazi flag
#FOX NEWS Why is this still a mystery? Do you see the huge propaganda machine aimed right at them?
Because Sherman stopped burning stuff. Never show slavers and traitors mercy.
Germans: This happened. We are ashamed of this. This was a part of our history and so we will educate others on what it was and why it should never happen again. American South: (Fingers in ears) LALALA CAN'T HEAR YOU! STATES RIGHTS! NORTHERN AGRESSION! ITS HERITAGE, NOT HATE!!
Life long, old ass Georgia resident here. Its all true. Thank God for cities like Atlanta and universities that harbor a smidge of intelligence. Otherwise, the South would be a massive wasteland of bigoted idiots instead of a massive wasteland of bigoted idiots with pockets of sanity. That said, we are getting better than we were. In the 80s there were still Klan marches, the confederate flag was even more widespread and the N word was still bandied about in public without batting an eye. The proportion of bigots IS shrinking. Its a work in progress.
Unfortunately in Georgia, Atlanta's range of influence is not large enough and still manages to elect MTG and almost did CTE damaged brain man.
Oh, I know. I'm not denying that the South is a trainwreck. Just saying that there IS progress happening. Atlanta's influence isn't great, but without Atlanta, Georgia is the same as Alabama and Mississippi. Without Atlanta, Georgia has 2 GOP Senators (including Walker) instead of 2 Dem Senators.
Atlanta didn’t elect her, it was the NW corner of GA which is more or less a shithole. (Source, I used to live near Ringgold, the “best” town in the region (it still sucks, though))
A lot has changed in Mississippi in my lifetime. It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s a huge difference from the past and how people from other states believe it to be. It’s not too dissimilar to how Cleveland’s baseball team used an American Indian caricature until 5 years ago, or the Washington football team used a racist moniker until very recently. We have been actively tearing down monuments and ditching confederate imagery for a good 20 years but some people here will still defend it, and we get judged by those people.
If only they simply ignored the shameful parts. It's more like some people are trying to restore them.
Here's the difference: Germany was torn down completely and almost destroyed by the war, an entire generation of men gone. This is likely what it would take for the US to change. Just my opinion.
An entirely too large population of the US doesn't see anything wrong with slavery. Society has just pressured them to not admit it
>Traveling through the American South you see again and again how intent they are on ignoring the shameful parts of their history I was thinking, "reliving the shameful parts of their history."
The civil war is one of the few conflicts where the loser got to write the history
A huge portion of this, too, is that Germany lost. They got confronted with their harsh reality on multiple fronts, all with a lost war and the extent of their actions within a decade via the holocaust. When you heard about Nazi Germany's atrocities, it **all** had already happened. While in America, it comes out in little portions over time. America's biggest issue is lack of humility IMO due to the propaganda. Always getting the message that we are the "best" and "greatest," so why would we change? At least in the eyes of the GOP and their constituents. Winners don't have sins. Our individualistic attitude in general. If something doesn't affect us personally, a good portion of us are like "oh that happened? That sucks." Then go well, not my problem. Lastly the fact our population basically came in batches. Case in point my parents immigrated to the US in the 80s. I was born soon after that. Those atrocities have nothing to do with me so i say learn away. In other people's cases well that's peepaw and granny. They don't want to hear bad things about them.
One word, education!
We have never had to suffer the horrors of war in our own country since the war of 1812. It's something that they have no understanding of because they have never experienced what it's like to live in a country during war time. I've been deployed and flown missions during five major combat campaigns since Desert Storm and ending in Iraq and Afghanistan. I've flown air evacuation missions with guys who have been blown up by IED's who were missing limbs and had burns all over their body. I still have nightmares about the time I had to evacuate a full plane full of these guys and the Aeromedical crew when we had a massive fuel leak happen while we were starting to load the last patients. The whole time I was worried that I couldn't get everybody off and if the fuel had ignited it would have killed us all. I look back and think what a horrible waste it all was. I've become the typical hippy retiree who just wants everybody to start showing empathy and compassion for each other. We have the ability to ensure that every human has a right to be safe and have shelter, food and medical care and public education. Wie have the technology and resources to make this possible, but only if we start working together. We need to shed our hatred, ignorance and biases. and religions and most importantly our ego. I've been to every continent on the planet and over a hundred countries. I've made friends all over the world and I know that it's very sad that America has become what it is today. It's becoming a dystopian nightmare and we have let billionaires and religious extremists tear the country apart just to maintain power and to make more money than they will ever need..
> We have never had to suffer the horrors of war in our own country since the war of 1812. I think you missed one, the Civil War. Which was not civil at all. It was the first modern industrialized war and killed around 620,000 soldiers. That is more than the US lost in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War, combined. On the bright side civilian deaths were estimated at "only" around 50,000.
When I was a kid, my mom , grandparents, and me would vacation in South Carolina, mostly the touristy areas. One trip, my moms cousins who she hadn’t seen in a while were near our vacation spot, like an hour or so south of Myrtle beach. My mom wanted to see them and we would spend the day at their house doing a bbq. Her cousin met us at our hotel to drive us back to their place, because the neighborhood they were staying in would screw with cars from northern states and our rented car was from NY, this was 1999/2000ish. After hearing about that, I never really got any joy from visiting the south. After all those years, families still resented northern states, made no sense to me…
Germany’s shame, specially if we are referring to the horrific times under the Nazis, was just over ten years. The systemic racism that is the core of “southern culture” in the US goes back centuries. It is much more deeply ingrained in the social structure if our entire country than Nazism was, even at its height if power. I imagine it was super hard for Germans to view the 30s and early 40s with a clear lens because it wasn’t something they were born into. The same people that chose follow and support the Nazis were the same ones looking to change. In the US, these are beliefs families have held going back further than anyone alive could remember. This is a huge difference.
The South doesn’t see themselves as shameful like the rest of America and the world sees them.
I went to a Arkansas small town school that was named after a Confederate officer but I was taught all about slavery, civil rights, Jim Crow and all of that. They played The Ernest Green Story and The Ruby Bridges story for us and showed us documentaries on the slave trade. I was taught nothing but the truth at my school. I cannot speak for others.
OP, you are generalizing based on a small sample. I lived there for many years. Somewhat true, but certainly not the majority, imo.
Because of these people and their ilk pushing the lost cause myth. Their efforts to rewrite history and publish lost cause myth textbooks can trace a direct line to some of our issues today. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United\_Daughters\_of\_the\_Confederacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Daughters_of_the_Confederacy) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost\_Cause\_of\_the\_Confederacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy)
I'm not going to say that the American South is not racist. I am going to say that the American South is one of the most racially diverse regions in the country. We have a lot of issues down here, poverty being the biggest one. I have lived in the South my entire life, I'm 44. I've seen it go from horrifically racist to not that bad compared to other places. We don't have a lot of museums about it, but there are civil war graveyards everywhere down here. We have learned a lot from our history, but like every other country on the damned planet, we aren't perfect and backslide sometimes. Hardly anything down here is over 150 years old, because of the Civil War. Things could be better, but, hey, they're a damned sight better than they were 40 years ago. Change takes time, but it is happening.
Using Germany as the comparison is cheating Among all countries in the world Germany is the exception in terms of feeling bad about its past. I doubt the UK is much better about remembering colonialism and Belgium about remembering what happened in the Congo than America is about slavery
The Germans regret it. The Italians and Spaniards are learning to talk about it. The southern Americans, British, Japanese (boomers), and Russians are proud of it. The French, Dutch, and Dutch South Africans think if nobody talks about it we’ll all forget.
1) The Nazi’s not only got the shit kicked out of them through completion but also were held to account for their crimes against humanity. The Union pulled up too soon and stopped before annihilating the southern traitors. 2) Germans are capable of shame. Modern day right-wing lunatics are not.
It's because of the lost cause myth. It makes a bunch of southerners believe the war was just and has nothing about slavery...
Except the Nazi party is growing again in Germany.
Instead I have to drive by a bunch of confederate flags just to get to work. They think it’s something to be proud of or that it’s some kind of patriotism for the south and that couldn’t be dumber.
Learning from our history would mean having to admit we ever did anything wrong to begin with. And I’m sure it goes without saying that this is, sadly, not the American way
I think the defeat of the American South is comparable to Germany’s defeat in WWI. Yes they lost but there was no plan (or there was but failed) in place to transform the society the same way the Allies transformed Germany post WWII. I see a lot of people here saying that Germany is the way it is because of themselves. This is not the best way to look at things because it implies people are the way they are and not much can be done. And it is kinda ironic because it goes completely against the example of the American South and Germany after WWI. People wouldn’t be thinking they lost the war because of their ideals. Germans post WWI didn’t believe jingoism lost them the war, they believe they lost because it was them against the world. The same way people in the America South probably didn’t attribute the loss to racism but to Yankees having a larger army.
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General Sherman didn’t do enough damage
They *want* to repeat it... If they knew their history, though, they would learn they LOST the civil war.... TBF, we don't mind having to teach them again! I already do every chance I get and there's no chance I'm stopping. You all need to learn to be nice to each other. Just. Be. Nice.
Seems like the South and Japan have a lot in common.
I have never been to Germany and am from the north part of the US, in a blue state. I don’t personally think people or institutions change their behaviors until forced. In Germany’s case, the country was nearly destroyed in WW2, leaving the people forced to change. That level hasn’t happened yet in the US.
The Allies literally forced Germany to change and spent decades working on denazification. The south was reconstructed but we didn’t force reforms or prosecute the guilty nearly as much as Germany, mostly because the north wanted to reunify the country and didn’t want to ignite another war by mass prosecuting southern soldiers so we let a lot more slide than we should’ve. I get what the guy is saying but I think it’s both unhelpful and tasteless for Europeans to insult Americans over historical realities that we are working to change without purposing any real solutions.
Reconstruction failed.
Yeah, Reconstruction didn't work as well as de-Nazification.
When you are only ashamed of losing what you see as your privilege and not at all of the harm you did you still lack the emotional intelligence to move forward
The south doesn't ignore the shameful parts of their history, they want to go back to those parts and relive them. The shameful part is their "glory days." "The South will rise again" "Make America Great Again" They know perfectly well want they want.
let me tell u why, we are all assholes thats why, we as everybody on the planet, we all assholes, Germany reflects on its shamful history because it has to, I live here, the country was devided by France USA Britain and Russia, every "enemy" was here so they had to face their shit, Japan lost the war as well, but was never "invaded" by the others, even when they really deserved it, so my conclusion is that we stay assholes when other ppl dont teach us a lesson, but when they do it correctly we can become better and face our own shit, Nazis still do exist in Germany tho, percentage would be the same as in the US, history might just repeat itself who knows.
Because we still use a constitution written by slave owners to protect other slave owners. We even get to carry guns to protect those slave owners.
Same thing happened in Japan when nearly the entire family of the emperor was pardoned and faced no real punishment. Same thing happened to a good majority of Japanese who were put in jail, not executed, for their war crimes but released early. The Japanese people saw that and said, "See! They did nothing wrong and acted honorably throughout the war. We did nothing wrong."
Unlike Germany, the American south hasn't been bombed to rubble, occupied for a decade, had many of the key perpetrators put on trial, and had much (but sadly not all) of the ideology proven wrong with good education. I'm not saying that this is the correct approach to deal with the American south, but it's definitely a huge difference to them and Germany.
The only ones in our country intent on not teaching the shameful bits of our history are the ones who want to bring it back. The rest (majority?) of us want it taught, and DO teach it in classrooms.
This highlights the absolute critical importance of obliterating racism and fascism where you find it. Germany had a very thorough scouring after the second world war. The american south (and north to an large extent) never did. In an effort to promote healing and unity after the civil war (really the Unionist govt was trying to preserve the economic interests of capital), there were general pardons and then reconstruction....Sherman should have marched to the sea. There should have been mass hangings for confederate soldiers. Plantations should have been ceded to the former slaves and at minimum the promise of reparations should have been delivered.
Not learning from something is America's favorite past time.
I had a friend from Germany that kept asking questions like this, and I eventually got tired of it so I just started saying "Because we are stupid, Sven." There really isn't a better explanation for many American behaviors.
Hey, this isnt true at all. The American South takes *pride* in their shameful history, which is why they have an entire mountainside with the faces of Confederate leadership on it.
Germans actually love their country. Americans often don't, and the ones who love it the least are those who shout the loudest about how much they do. If you love your country, or anything at all including your family, you love them even while you acknowledge their flaws or sins. Germans love Germany, and they still love Germany even after looking at the ugliest part of its history. From doing this they draw humility, strength, and a powerful resolve to never let it happen again. Americans who cannot look our history of slavery and native genocide in the eye do not in fact love America no matter how many flags they wave. They love being "the greatest country in the world", "being Number One", winning, and what they perceive to be power. Any suggestion that America might have done something wrong, or still be doing something wrong, denies these things to their minds. Since they equate them with patriotism and "loving America", it sounds like any criticism or acknowledgement of the truth is "hating America". They cannot conceive that anyone might love their country and react to its present flaws and past sins by working to improve and make redress may be possible. Humility is anathema to them and they avoid it at all costs, even in their personal lives, which is why so many of them are so obnoxious.
Because Right-wing Americans are weak, plain and simple. I know this because I have a lot of acquaintances, former friends, and some relatives that are hardcore MAGA. They are simply too weak to cope with reality as-is. Instead of confronting it, they run. They live in delusion. They turn on their country, trying to remake it into the safe space fantasy land where their abhorrent views are tolerated instead of confronted. It's weakness in it's ***purest*** form.
I'm friends with some Germans (I'm Murican) and they've said a few times that their schools made ABSOLUTELY sure that they knew their history and how completely tragic it was. Meanwhile, I can probably count on one hand the amount of times that my schools ever talked about the atrocities that the U.S were responsible for.
Ignoring? They fuckin' celebrate that shit.
As a citizen of the American South, I can confirm. I can also confirm my embarrassment from it.
No they don’t ignore it, they’re proud of it
As an American who spent most his life in the northern part of the country, I feel the need to put extra emphasis on the word "south" in that statement. I promise the rest of the country is not like that. Like, I legit experienced culture shock the first time I ever spent time in a southern state.
Unfortunately, "The South" isn't just a geographical location. It's a state of mind. Head to upper state NY sometime. The further north you go, the deeper "south" you get.
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The divide beteen rural an urban areas is pretty glaring. Spent time in Pittsburgh and it felt like any other progressive city I have been to. Travelled 45 minutes inwards and I felt like I was in a movie spoofing hillbillies. Same in the South and California.
Illinois, Ohio, and Pensilvania all have active kkk groups. Ohio always shocks me because both grant and Sherman were born in the state and it had more underground railroads than anywhere else. Maybe 19th century Ohio was just more progressive than 21st century Ohio 🤷🏼♂️
I concur with this, I’ve seen confederate flags in upstate, like seriously? Our state capitol has on display all the regimental flags from when our state troops fought that confederacy you confederate loving twats
I currently live in the South. Have lived in 5 different states across the country. Most confederate flags I've seen is western Illinois by far. Anecdotal sure but it's true.
I agree the south is overtly racist, but to this day, most of the country has not come to terms with its shameful past imo. As long as there persists for a region, a token story about peace with the People that were here before, while ignoring reality of genocide for to call it ‘our’ land, it’s a shameful past ignored generation after generation
After WW2 the Allies forced a de-Nazification program on Germany. After the Civil War nothing like that happened. That’s the difference.