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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

With the exception of the Brits (whose deconstruction from its Empire days keeps fucking stuff up to this day, just look at Israel/Palestine or Pakistan/India), we have learned from our mistakes.

I'm not foolish enough to claim we're perfect - far from it, especially when it comes to restitution towards former colonies and looted art from there - but at least we recognized how and where we fucked up, and we're teaching our children about that in school. We don't skip over the horrors of WW1, we don't skip over WW2 and what led up to it, we don't skip over the various genocides committed on European soil. We acknowledge and own the stuff that our ancestors did.

In contrast, as I mentioned, more and more American schools outright ban books and teaching about its problematic past, or (like MKULTRA) it isn't taught about at all.

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So what mistakes do you believe you have learned from? From here, it appears you have very much retained your paternalistic European attitude toward other cultures which you deem to be less learned or morally inclined.

While you scratch around for an answer, you might also like to remind yourself that European countries maintain undue influence in their former colonies to this very day.

Look, they are comparing Europe to the US, the current hegemon, and criticise that the US does not include it's history of violence and abuse in its curriculum to the same extend as they do in Europe.

I honestly don't think your comment addresses this criticism at all. You seem to look for reasons why the US shouldn't be criticised to start with, which sort of strengthens the point op made.

> From here, it appears you have very much retained your paternalistic European attitude toward other cultures which you deem to be less learned or morally inclined.

Well, the current issues that the US face are so large they are hardly to ignore here. Y'all's regular occurrence of mass shootings even makes national headlines in our media, and we see the cultural issues seeping from US-made media (both entertainment and social media) into our societies. We don't have a real answer to that other than regulation though.

> While you scratch around for an answer, you might also like to remind yourself that European countries maintain undue influence in their former colonies to this very day.

Fair point, France does have its issues in Africa, but at least the colonies are their own independent nations (and do exercise that right, as we've seen the last few months).

What a great cop out. Fuck up the colony, then give them independence so you can wash your hands of the blood and tears.

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