Only statists could possibly get nostalgic over public school cafeteria food.

In around 80 years the Congress (if there still is one) will likely be discussing a resolution branding the “turkeys” of this Congress as the ones who were responsible for a much slower form of genocide:

• The destruction of the U.S. middle class through passive acceptance of a sub-minimum wage for immigrants and of-shore employees and the mass importation of unsafe (but economical) products.

And.... Nationocide (?)

• The transition from a sovereign nation into the North American Trading Corporation.

• The holder of the title “World’s Most Debt Ridden Nation —Ever.”

Will we replace “In God We Trust” with “Lien on Me?

i am happy to say that i agree with whattheheck.

27-some-odd years of insane economic policy are coming home to roost. the destruction of the middleclass has been the goal. a frightened and beholden serf-class is so much more compliant.

with all the important business and crises at hand - this issue did not need to be addressed at this time.

Speaking as a Progressive and an often quite fierce critic of American society, I do think that a resolution condemning Turkey’s genocide against the Armenians, while belated and inexpedient (given Turkey’s current strategic importance to our presence in Iraq), would be meaningful.

I do agree that there are more important issues that need to be addressed right now.

I’m also not sure how I feel about characterizing America’s admittedly brutal and despicable policies toward the Indians as “genocide.” I feel quite conflicted about this. 

The term has come into casual use in a lot of progressive discourse, but as awful as was our stealing the Indians’ land, destroying their culture, frequently massacring them, and condemning them to live in terrible poverty, I’m just not sure how I feel about a term that implicitly compares these policies to the literal extermination of racial undesirables by the Nazi regime. 

Perhaps “cultural genocide” would be appropriate?  I honestly feel quite conflicted about this, since I cannot say that I in any way approve of our country’s heartless policies toward the Indians.

Just some thoughts.

i appreciate your struggle, stolenchild, but words still have meanings - even after 9/11. destroying cultures to steal their natural resources is indeed brutal and despicable and usually results in ‘cultural genocide’, but a nicer, no guilt, no complicity phrase would be ‘collateral damage’. then there’s ‘freedom fighters’ for those ‘with us’ and ‘terrorist insurgents’ for those ‘against us’.

if it’s the american empire’s divine right to take whatever we want from whatever ‘other’ culture in whatever brutal and despicable manner we deem necessary for ‘our’ greater good - wasn’t it the ottoman empire’s right too?

the turkey vote is just more glaring example of our myopic hypocrisy. kettle, meet pot.

Stolenchild and Hourglass,

If nothing else the U.S. / American Indian wars and conquest should make us humble enough not to lecture anyone else about their shameful historical behavior.

The present Turkish population had no more to do with the treatment of the Armenians than those of us living today had to do with Wounded Knee.

The taking of territory has always been and may always be temping to the strong. Whether Viking plundering, pilaging and raping, or our “Louisiana Purchase” from those who did not own it what is ancient history should be studied and recalled to avoid repetition.

Sackcloth and ashes today will may make some feel less guilty, but let today’s guilt be sufficient to the living.

Ignoring present issues is equally dispicable. We need to address things in real time. Now, if we could just get Congress to go along with the three of us…

Well, people today are not directly responsible for the evils of the past, but one can’t just ignore the past either, because the past caused the present. 

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it exactly as they would please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under conditions already existing, given and transmitted from the past.  Thus the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.” - Karl Marx

It may be a bit hypocritical for the US government to chide other governments on their legacy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it shouldn’t be done.

I don’t know, it’s complicated, is all. 

Anyway, I do think we should concentrate more on present problems.