Nazi symbols and "immersion": boundaries?

[Rockin Robbins]

The only problem was that the Germans were not racially and culturally very different from those they invaded. They basically invented those "differences" as an excuse.

How was a German different from a Czechoslovakian? Why, he even used the excuse that he was seeking to reunite the Germanic peoples of Czechoslovakia and Germany! Austria different? Holland was apparently different enough to run over with his Panzer divisions. With the exception of the African countries, he confined his efforts in Western Civilization, all similar cultures sharing key values.

As for the United States in the 19th century, we can only say that humans of the 19th century had little to do with our values. While we look back sometimes with a wistfulness for a simpler, more straightforward and honest time, that is mostly a crock. It was a brutal time, where might was right, force was the arbiter of truth and if you had the power to do something you claimed the right.

I can make no excuses for either the Americans or the Indians of that time. They were both insane by our standards. Interestingly an American hero, General William Tecumseh Sherman was the man responsible for the conscious policy of exterminating native tribes. He gets nowhere near the amount of notoriety he deserves, and not even John Trudell mentions his guilt. I guess his civil war halo covers his genocidal aspects...