Posted: Dec 15, 2015 2:03 pm
ScholasticSpastic wrote:crank wrote:The disagreement is over what you are calling a blame game and I see as acknowledging the reality of the past. You say we can't move forward as long as we're holding a grudge, and I say we can't move forward without recognizing how we got to where we are. I sure hold no grudges, I'm a huge benefactor of many of the most appalling actions of the past. As to feelings of shame, I can't help that, it seems rather a human reaction, no different than finding out my parents, or my brother was a serial killer. I wouldn't have any blame or responsibility, but I'd have strong feelings along those lines just the same. Or when Gohmert opens his mouth, I feel a tinge of shame as a fellow Texan, and as a fellow human being.
When my father went to jail on Federal charges for human trafficking and running brothels, I didn't feel any shame about it because I didn't do it. So perhaps your way of thinking is simply strange to me. I am ashamed of what I have done wrong. I do not buy into the sins of the father bullshit. My parents may have shaped me, but I've spent longer now beyond their care than I ever spent being raised by them. If I cannot be my own person now, I cannot ever be so.
It's not at all topical, but those charges against my father were dropped. It was his wife who was doing it and set him up as her patsy. She's since fled to China, which is uncomfortable for my Dad as he'd really like to divorce her.
I am no more proud now that those charges were dropped than I was before they were dropped because, again, I didn't do those things.In this particular case, it's the denial of in our culture of this past that shames me to some extent, because this is the culture I live in, that I am a part of, I can't divorce myself enough to not feel that shameful actions by fellow Americans taints me also. Maybe it shouldn't intellectually, but it does emotionally.
There may be a general discomfort with talking about that past, but shying away from discussing a thing and denying that thing are two disparate things. As someone who doesn't subscribe to nationalism as extensively as most, this isn't a problem for me. But you cannot be satisfyingly nationalist and think of your country as a shining hero in the world and hold those past atrocities in your head at the same time. The cognitive dissonance from that is simply too much.
Still, this shame thing is silly. You didn't do it. Why are you ashamed? Are you Catholic?
I am, was, catholic, maybe some of that still warps my thinking. Maybe I'm conflating emotions, or looking at it metaphorically--the country did shameful things. Mostly it's the denial, and it's an active denial in the US, our past isn't only not discussed, it's purposefully lied about, and actively suppressed. One example that is quite topical at the moment is how little gets acknowledged about slavery, about the horrors of southern racism last century, and the realities of it still today. This is finally, one hopes, changing, but there is still a long way to go. You only have to look at a few threads here to see how many still actively deny how seriously fucked up the law/legal system/cops/courts/prisons are for minorities, especially blacks. If we don't acknowledge the past that lead us to a present where most blacks are seriously economically disadvantaged, we'll continue to have lots of aholes who will blame them for their condition, just watch FauxNews who seem to have regular blame-the-blacks features daily.