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Paul Fiery's avatar

I'll have a go at an answer:

The difference between "there are racists in America" and "America is a racist country" is the difference between having hope of improvement and having no hope. It is the difference between identifying opportunities for moral progress and believing that the only way "forward" is to destroy everything and rebuild something completely new upon the ashes. It is the difference between admitting past atrocities, recognizing our progress and striving to do better, as against denying there has been progress and citing slavery, Jim Crow and redlining as though these horrors and injustices are still going on today and will go on forever. As though the fact that they happened in the past gives them equal force in the present and forever shadows our hopeless future.

I'm seeing Germany held up as a country that properly dealt with it's own moral stain. The holocaust is taught in schools and it is said none of the worst details are evaded. Which is fine; I'm all for hiding nothing about American history that is shameful and treacherous. But those holding up Germany to be emulated fail to point out that Germans don't go around calling Germany a "Nazi Nation." This is because there is no program to undo Germany. Instead, even though I think the guilt over the holocaust and Nazism has hurt Germany in many ways, Germans are not giving up on their country. They admit to the past and they even admit there are still Nazis among them, but they hold the door open to the future. They are allowed to have hope. But let a congressperson stand up in the USA and say, "this is not a racist nation", and all hell breaks loose. Now that's a real difference.

So you see, you asked a very good question. A key question. The pivotal question, really.

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Steve QJ's avatar

Wow, yep, extremely well put. It's hard to overstate the harm being done by this trend to turn despair and pessimism into some sort of intellectual/moral stance. I spend more time than is psychologically healthy reading comments by people who have absolutely nothing to add to a discussion but the sense that everything is awful and we're all doomed.

These are the same people who aren't content to recognise that there's racism in America and get to fixing it. They want an unequivocal, never-ending, (and purely symbolic) affirmation of how hopeless everything is.

See the writing of people like Umair Haque for a perfect example of how this can be monetised.

What I find especially interesting is what happens when their worldview is challenged by the fact that the world actually isn't all bad. All those people who were just *certain* that Trump would win a second term, or that Chauvin wouldn't be convicted, or that COVID would destroy the world, there's never a moment of self examination when they're proven wrong. Just straight on to the next bit of doomsaying.

p.s. Yep, I also learned recently that you can't edit comments. It's infuriating😅

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