“Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean. ” Aldous Huxley, in his foreward to the 1959 edition of Brave New World.
Of course Mr. Huxley wasn’t talking about the HOLOCAUST, for which we could never have too much brooding, guilt, shame, horror, sickness, nor could we have too many museums, movies, books, essays, school courses, or memorial ceremonies. In fact, the farther away in time the Holocaust gets, the MORE we have to keep rolling in the muck and brooding over our wrongdoing, even if we weren’t born until after 1945. When (non-Jewish) American school children leave the Holocaust Museum, we hope they feel damn guilty, if they didn’t already. On the other hand, we in Americafarm rarely brood about the wrongdoing of today, because, after all, nothing anybody could do today could possibly compare in bad behavior to what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jews (and others). It’s absurd to try to make comparisons, and also very likely an anti-Semitic thought crime.
There is no confessional at the Holocaust Museum where you can have your always potentially anti-Semitic soul washed clean. In this way the Holocaust Memorial Religion is superior to earlier religious cults such as Roman Catholic. Catholic Guilt Trips Bad, Holocaust Remorse Good.