But comparatively speaking, we did exactly that, we absolved them of responsibility for their actions because holding a general population responsible for the actions of a government is what led to the war. The average person on the street in Germany two, three, four generations down from Grandpa does not associate themselves with Naziism. Why not? Why has the German population moved to the centre-right/centre left?
What is not happening in Germany is a political movement basing itself in Judaism, or homosexuality seeking to ensure contrition for past misdeeds - the German populace doesn't ignore the war, they are working to ensure it doesn't happen again. There has been no attempt to hold the average voter responsible for their grandparents failure to resist the lure of demogoguery. Instead, the various powers that were in place realised that what most people want is economic stability, community growth, and predictable slow progress towards liberal markets and social liberalism in every generation.
So yes, anger from women and ethnic minority groups is both justified and salient, but it is not a strategy by which political change can happen. Comparatively speaking, women and ethnic minorities in the US have never had it so good - could it be better? Of course it could. Do I think we were heading that way? I did. The entire 20th Century has been a move towards social liberalisation until about the last eight years or so - when various groups were suddenly united on social media and decided this was the worst of times and that everything should be viewed through a lens of oppressor/oppressed and simple binary arguments could be a mode of change. In that environment, we'll call it the 'Your Grandad killed my Rabbi and you should be sorry!' approach to politics, what do you think the chances of a German identity movement would be in getting elected.
Whether it is true or not is irrelevant, it is pragmatism that wins out in the electorate.
The left needs to run a social economic Bernie Sanders strategy to bring the working class into the movement and to rebuild community around a definition of 'American citizenship' not around race, sex, genitals, or other arbitrary factors. A certain subsection of men, and a certain subsection of women stopped listening to each other a long time ago. Neither of these groups is working towards the definition put down by feminists around equality and both need to be ejected from the mainstream liberal movement. Both groups are angry, but both groups fuel each other and prevent useful discourse and progress in the centre ground as they occupy ever engorging echo chambers.
