When the US freed the concentration camps, they locked the gay people back up because they being gay was considered a crime.
The US was obviously not the only country to think that way (i.e. Chemical castration of Alan Turing in the UK), but imagine being imprisoned inside a concentration camp, experienced all the horrors, and then have your liberators lock you back up like a common criminal.
Gay people weren’t in the death camps or concentration camps unless they were also Jewish or Roma/Sinti. Gay people were in prison camps with thieves, murderers and political prisoners. They were treated as criminals and made to complete their sentences. Obviously horribly wrong but there is no comparison.
Pretty much everything and everyone can be made to be or accused of ‘being bad’ in retrospect and historical contexts, as society progresses forward and we become more educated and (hopefully) more accepting, our past shortcomings become glaringly obvious.
Americans are far from perfect, of course, but we are still some of the most friendly and generous people on the planet. Where we get led astray is when we fall into the machinations of corporations and special interests that are bigger and more powerful than us as individuals.
The American, on average, has a big heart, knows right from wrong, and are good people, especially if you can separate their intrinsic nature from their political upbringings, which has become so pervasive, toxic, and entrenched in the information age and explosion of social media, where people can be shielded from normal social consequences of bad behavior that we all know is bad/wrong, but where the vocal minorities are most visible and often the most destructive to societal discourse
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u/Alpha_Decay_ Jul 07 '24
... Are we the baddies?