One thing I discovered by my experiences in Germany and Japan was, that no, the people were not fundamentally evil as we had been instructed during our wars, rather they were as decent and as kind as any others, but they were complicit in evil by virtue of their denial and, with some,its advanced stage, that is zealotry, which in our own country too often passes as patriotism.
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In Nazi Germany, for instance, the trains loaded with people as freight went east, then returned empty. The "good" Germans witnessed the traffic but never allowed themselves the question: What happened to the people?
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And now our government practices extreme rendition, torture, and slaughters thousands of innocent civilians while we Americans wave little flags and support our troops.
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I must admit that good people everywhere can have problems, can exercise selective vision, can fall victim to patriotitis, but it never occurred to me that my own country could be similarly afflicted, "good" American that I was.
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And so it's been a painful experience for me, and I am sure for many Americans, to come to grips with our denial, our complicity, the license we grant our government for treachery.
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But that license has been indeed granted and is metastasizing. Now we -- who would aspire to be actually good Americans -- must attend to terminating that license and get on with the task of bringing our government up to the standard of the decent governments of the world.
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