Slavery is an unforgivable stain on our souls, something we'll have to live with for eternity. The same goes to the relocation and genocide campaigns against Native Americans. We've never allowed ourselves forgiveness for those sins and we never should.
The brutality in the Philippines sickened Americans to that point that the old colonialism had be traded in for quiet skullduggery. We also learned from the internment camps. When cries came out to round up everyone of middle eastern descent after 9/11 we ignored them and made new mistakes.
Deep down we Americans know that if there is a Hell we probably deserve to go to it, but that doesn't stop us from trying to learn from our mistakes. We are fatally flawed, not essentially evil.
That is the real battle over all of this. It isn't state secrets, but a generational shift. The young live with the cynicism and pain of past mistakes and can't figure out why the old continue down broken paths. Unfortunately, today's young will have to let the generations that follow walk with the knowledge of our mistakes. And what doozies we've handed them: Eternal War, torture and deep resentments and distrust between state & citizen and citizen & state. I wish them luck.
That's my point. And I wouldn't even claim that we deserve to go to hell or that we are fatally flawed.
We are in the spotlight in the world and I swear I wish people would remember that when they evaluate the USA vis à vis other nations.
We should set the highest of standards for ourselves. And like any good 'American exceptionalist' we should achieve those high standards we set for ourselves.
But when we fail to achieve that standard we need to remember to evaluate ourselves in the context of the world at large, and in our own nation's history.
If the worst thing that our government did to us today was to `tee` our Reddit memes to /dev/utah and then not look at them then maybe, just maybe we're not as screwed as HN thinks we are. Even my own grandma knows that the Internet Never Forgets.
As I've said before, we may look at these programs and decide to switch up the controls, gut them all, or something in between. But this place can be such an echo chamber sometimes... and the cynicism is absolutely toxic, especially as it mixes and interferes with the very-necessary skepticism that should be often employed.
> Deep down we Americans know that if there is a Hell we probably deserve to go to it
You don't speak for me. All countries do horrible shit. Mao killed, what, 80 million? Hell is crowded.
The issue here (as in: the thing I am furious about) is the hypocrisy of the bureaucracy running the country and the incompetence of our leaders, regardless of party.
| The same goes to the relocation and genocide
| campaigns against Native Americans. We've never
| allowed ourselves forgiveness for those sins
| and we never should.
Slavery is an unforgivable stain on our souls, something we'll have to live with for eternity. The same goes to the relocation and genocide campaigns against Native Americans. We've never allowed ourselves forgiveness for those sins and we never should.
The brutality in the Philippines sickened Americans to that point that the old colonialism had be traded in for quiet skullduggery. We also learned from the internment camps. When cries came out to round up everyone of middle eastern descent after 9/11 we ignored them and made new mistakes.
Deep down we Americans know that if there is a Hell we probably deserve to go to it, but that doesn't stop us from trying to learn from our mistakes. We are fatally flawed, not essentially evil.
That is the real battle over all of this. It isn't state secrets, but a generational shift. The young live with the cynicism and pain of past mistakes and can't figure out why the old continue down broken paths. Unfortunately, today's young will have to let the generations that follow walk with the knowledge of our mistakes. And what doozies we've handed them: Eternal War, torture and deep resentments and distrust between state & citizen and citizen & state. I wish them luck.