When people said bad things about the US, I would defend it, I will no more. We suck. We’re so unbelievably stupid,

I visited Sachsenhausen a few years ago and...damn. I don’t really have the words to describe how it felt. Going to Poland next year, pretty much just so I can go to Auschwitz.

I’m sure that has everything to do with the fact that the Nazis were soundly defeated and stayed that way for, well, ever. On the other hand, the Confederacy was defeated, then little more than a decade later, they basically came back - and were allowed to peddle a bunch of bullshit about what actually caused the…

I reckon that if Justin Trudeau is even half as fearless and cocky as his father, there is hope or, conversely, no need to fret quite yet. Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Richard Nixon did not get along but much of it was due to Nixon’s paranoia plus the fact that PET did have a knack for getting under his skin. That’s…

I am a coastal liberal elite (and damn fucking proud of it) and as such, have avoided the south like the plague. However, for my birthday last year my wife booked us a trip to New Orleans. On one of the days we spent our time visiting various plantations and I was horrified by how much these places glorify the…

I keep flashing on how American soldiers marched Germans through the death camps, just to see what their complicity had wrought. If we get through this, the Trump voters have to have their faces shoved in what they did too.

You say forget as if most Americans gave a shit about history in the first place.

Yep. In Germany, you can’t walk three blocks without tripping over a holocaust memorial. And they didn’t turn their concentration camps into “nostalgic,” “charming,” “historical” places to host weddings, like we did with plantations.

They put us to shame in that department. America was built on genocide and slavery. How many Americans do you think would acknowledge that?

The US is the dad.

Is the UK the dad in that analogy? Or did I misunderstand?

They also have very strict laws regarding hate speech. Breitbart and the like would have a hard time operating in Germany.

I don’t agree, politically, with Merkel on a large slab of issues (I’m not German, but have a half-German family and am in the EU, so I know them pretty well), but we’re in new world now where “Will stand against fascism” is apparently a rare and precious commodity in a world leader.

Liberal in the older sense, a democrat, certainly not a fascist.

Terrific attitude. Guess who people also didn’t believe was a liberal.

Germany is pretty much the only country that doesn’t whitewash its history, and makes damn sure children are raised learning everything about its past mistakes so they won’t make them again. Virtually no other country does that.

So... We’re calling Angela Merkel a liberal now? Because that really feels weird to us europeans.

She’s from East Germany. She knows what happens when this shit goes wrong. Do we all need to be reminded with some empirical evidence? Because that is where we’re heading.

Looking to Germany for a means to deal with a fascist Cheeto Voldemort?

well......at least not in a good way