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pessimizer

That proves true the myth of our moral superiority to the Nazi regime, but not the myth of our moral superiority.

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To the Nazi regime. To the Communist regimes. To Turkey (Armenian genocide). To Rwanda. To Serbia.

But not to everyone, I'll agree.

Is the Armenian genocide worse than the Trail of Tears, for example?

(I'm not trying to discredit or diminish the Armenian genocide here, mind you, but rather point out we still have someone who committed genocide by the same terms on American money.)

They are fairly similar, however we just don't know much about what happened to Armenians, which doesn't diminish what they endured or how bad things were done to them.

I think most Americans will, at this point, agree that the Trail of Tears was terrible. The National Park Service has an official historic trail covering the route, with many exhibits describing the terrible suffering.

Turkey, on the other hand, still tries to pretend that the Armenian Genocide did not happen, even prosecuting people who say it did.

We are by no means perfect, but I think nations which are able to acknowledge and learn from the mistakes of their past have a leg up on those that try to pretend everything was great.

> We are by no means perfect, but I think nations which are able to acknowledge and learn from the mistakes of their past have a leg up on those that try to pretend everything was great.

The United States government has never acknowledged Native American genocide either.

They clearly have to some extent. That's why I mentioned the National Park Service trail. More would be better, for sure, but we don't deny it, nor prosecute people who say it happened.

Calling it a genocide is an important acknowledgement in its own right.

That's an argument that the US could handle it better. My argument is simply that some countries handle it qualitatively better than others, and in particular that the US acknowledges and learns from the Trail of Tears in ways that Turkey does not with the Armenian Genocide. These two arguments are compatible.

I would say that our genocide of the indigenous people's of North America was just as bad as either of those.

..and we're still invading their lands and violating treaties with them.

This is a bit misleading, given the documented atrocities that certain Native American tribes committed against settlers.

Fact is, there was no future in which they were going to keep their nice things and in which we would be able to get where we are today.

Yes, some Native American tribes treated the settlers badly too. (Even then, there was conflict within tribes regarding how to deal with whites.) But there was an order of magnitude difference in the amount of violence perpetrated and the amount of harm caused.

The "documented atrocities that certain Native American tribes committed" against INVADERS, you mean? Because it was their land, and the word "settlers" is a way to whitewash what people did to them - and are still doing to them today - which is invasion and genocide.

Hitler cited the US actions against Native Americans in the same breath as the Armenian genocide - as reasons he could eliminate the Jews and suffer no ill effects.

And he would probably have been right, had he not coupled it with a war of aggression against enough of the world to get every major power not in the Axis aligned against it.

The Nazi's downfall wasn't the genocide against Jews and other "undesirables", for all that that became the basis of punishment for some ex-regime figures after the Nazis were defeated.

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