A friend of mine, Karmus, made a comment to my earlier, short, posting Happy Independence Day!, that I wanted to reply to.
His full comment goes:
“I congratulate the fact that the Americans actually managed to separate themselves from the UK back in the days, because they wanted to be FREE, but you forget that the U.S. is a country built upon the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans (the Indian people). Therefore I see no reason to praise this terror regime murdering millions of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. Furthermore it’s economic and imperialistic world policies are draining the global climate of the world. USA is a catastrophic (in Danish: ’sminket lig’) superpower, having the world’s second highest social inequalities between the rich and poor.”
As several points are made, I’m gonna do one at a time.
“I congratulate the fact that the Americans actually managed to separate themselves from the UK back in the days, because they wanted to be FREE, but you forget that the U.S. is a country built upon the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans (the Indian people). Therefore I see no reason to praise this terror regime murdering millions of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
No, I actually have not forgotten that. I know that darn well. However, what do you want me to do? Bring them back to life, beside the fact that nobody in the world have the ability to do so? Also, if you reread my posting, you’ll notice that it’s actually not a praise of the US government, it’s me saying “Happy Independence Day!” to the Americans who might be reading this blog. If I said “Merry Christmas!” to a former classmate of mine, who’s a very religious Christian (Borderline fundamentalist), would I then be praising the murder of 90% of the Indian population in Mexico by the Spanish settlers? If I said “Happy Eid” to a friend of mine who’s a Muslim, would I be praising Iran’s regime? And lastly, this is my favorite actually, if I sent a greeting to some of my family members in Japan, on the occasion of National Foundation Day, which is “a national holiday in Japan celebrated annually on February 11. On this day, Japanese celebrate the founding of the nation and the imperial line by its mythical first emperor, Jimmu, who established his capital in Yamato” would I be praising Imperial Japan (1968 – 1945) and “forgetting” the atrocities it committed during World War II against more than 30 million people in Asia?
“Furthermore it’s economic and imperialistic world policies are draining the global climate of the world. USA is a catastrophic (in Danish: ’sminket lig’) superpower, having the world’s second highest social inequalities between the rich and poor.”
While I agree with some of what you’re saying, I refuse to demonize average people of a country for something their government is doing. What about all the people in Nazi Germany, who weren’t nazis? Are they just as evil as the people who poured Zyklon.B gas into the gas chambers of Auchswitz? You decide for yourself!
You completely misunderstood what I wanted to say. As I said before, you are more than welcome to gratulate Americans as INDIVIDUALS for their independence. But as you might know, the American Independence Day was founded to praise the establishment of the COUNTRY, and THAT is wrong in my opinion, since the USA was built upon the murders and conquering of the country of another ethnic people, and I’m glad you don’t overlook that. Therefore, I think AID is wrong to celebrate, just like Christmas is wrong to celebrate if you’re an atheist (most do it anyway, but I have decided to quit it the day I move to Aarhus into my own apartment, to stay loyal to my ‘faith’ in nothing).
As you probably can guess, I completely agree with you that you can’t blame all Germans today for containing a corrupt regime throughout Second World War. You can blame all those over 30% who voted for that idiot in the 1930s, but most of them are likely dead by today, so it makes no sense.