Quote:
Originally Posted by Tinordi
And delusions can be addressed and erased if there's a high enough priority placed on doing so.
Germany had Nazism burned out of its soul, deliberately, by German policy makers and civil society. They confronted their immediate past and, for the most part, have accepted the shame, guilt, and solemnity of that era.
This is an act in a similar vein and an act that's 150 years overdue. Imagine if the South was forced to accept that slavery was bad from decades long policies of reconciliation and acceptance like in Germany where we would be today?
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I agree that's what should have been done. It's not clear how to follow through 150 years after the fact, though. Ban editorial comment peddling the Lost Cause myth? Have the federal government vet the curriculum of every school board in the South?
It's easier to impose guilt and shame on a society scrabbling for food in the devastated landscape of war, where people are starving and desperate to make a new start, than it is on a relatively secure and prosperous population, generations later. What if people don't want to feel guilt? Do you point a gun at their face until they acquiesce?
And a counterpoint to Germany is Japan. Its army was smashed, its cities burned to ashes, its emperor captured, and the country occupied by American troops who wrote a new constitution from scratch. And yet today very few Japanese acknowledge any responsibility or guilt for the country's monstrous crimes in SE Asia. In fact, many (like Americans in the South) regard their country as victims.