--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> It'd be nice if the U.S. went through a few guilt
> rituals for slavery
> and Indian genocide. What you call guilt-tripping
> has kept Germany on
> pretty good behavior for the last 60 years.
>
It's also kept Germany almost completely subservient to US foreign policy until very recently and reflexively pro-Israel.
Why should, say, Doug Henwood feel guilty about stuff that happened in the US in 1850? The German case goes way beyond "Germans did some really evil stuff at one point in history and it must never happen again." It's a collective national myth based on being evil. Kind of sick and self-indulgent. (But then perhaps I have personal reasons to feel this way, what with being German and all.)
Hannah Arendt demolished the whole Mitschuldigkeit Cult back in the 1960s. I thought you were against notions of collective guilt anyway?
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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