Even the blackboards have gone, and it's just whiteboards now....
No, just kidding. Strange how such a silly remark could be highjacked for any point you would want to make.
We have become a bit touchy on the subject. That's a good thing, because it shows that things are changing, and we feel the need to regain our balance.
My granpa was German, and he was in the SA.....the "brownshirts" of Hitler's nazi party, and it seems he was quite convinced he was doing the Fatherland and all of mankind a favour. Unfortunately, after Germany had lost the war and the terrible things that went on during the 12 years of nazi reign were no longer dismissable, he had not enough time to struggle with those new realities.
My father volunteered ( lied about his age at the recruitment bureau) as a 17 year old kid to go to the Dutch Indies in 1948 to fight in the "Police Actions" against Indonesian Nationalists, wanting to become independant from Holland. He just wanted to get away from home, and fight for queen an country.
He later never showed any racist tendencies, but natives were seen as inferior to the westerners, and in a way, it was a clash of races.
Like so many that came back from a war, he was not understood, and it seemed that life had gone on as usual in Holland in the meantime. He hardly ever spoke of his time in the army. What happened over there is only recently a topic that can be discussed.
What that tought me is that if we do not expose ourselves to the good, the humor, the interresting things in other cultures, we might be used as "useful fools" for power hungry politicians that exploit our fear on the unknown or unfamiliar to make us do terrible things.
Sure, we think our motivation is good. We might fight for that what we know and love, but they use our love against us.
Since love is the most powerfull drive in human nature.......imagine what we could be capable of!
Once the struggle is over which those politicians have caused........will we be proud, or ashamed of the things we did so zealously?