Sasha Maximova

Look, mom, a new feature! Progress tracking now comes in two flavors – count all list items or only checkboxed TODOs ✅ Press 'pc' to add a progress counter and choose what to track. Works on a branch or the whole list 👇

I don't know why so many Americans have this idea that Germans all feel guilty about WWII. I don't know anyone my generation or even my parents' generation who feels this way. I think this is a story that Americans are telling themselves. What is true is that at least the Germans I know feel a responsibility to make sure what happened in Nazi Germany doesn't happen again, not here, and not anywhere else. I certainly do. This is why we are scared by what we see happening in the United States. The concentration of power, the streamlining of opinions, the normalization of evil, and the populism to excuse it. These are all warning signs we were taught to recognize. Americans have this idea that the Holocaust happened in Germany because something is especially wrong with Germans. We're just somehow especially evil. This is why the bad guys in Hollywood movies are always Germans. This is why they make jokes about our supposedly military sounding language. I strongly disagree. What happened in Germany could have happened anywhere. It's just that Hitler was the first to exploit this weakness. He was a master of mass manipulation (probably strongly influenced by Le Bon's "The Crowd" -- worth a read if you don't know it). Now we have new masters of mass manipulation. And of course Germans worry about it. Don't confuse what we feel is our responsibility with guilt. Yes, ugh, "responsibility". That sounds terribly German, doesn't it. I'm sure you read this wiz a Schermen eksent. No, I'm not proud to be German. Why would I? I didn't do anything for it, I just happen to have been born to two Germans. But I am glad I am German because all things considered it's a good country. But if it was possible to just identify as Earthling and not belong to any country, that's what I'd want to be.

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