It begins with a process of reconciliation

I watched a TED talk recently where a man - a black man - Bryan Stevenson - works with incarcerated youths who were tried as adults and imprisoned for life.

Of all of the so-called developed nations, this only happens in America - that we take 14yr old children, try them as adults - and give them life sentences.

One of his remarks that most struck me was this idea that America has not yet really committed to the process of reconciliation - and that process requires a full commitment to truth.

We are a nation that is literally founded upon a genocide as grave and enormous as the Nazi attempt to annihilate Jews of Europe. We literally sit in houses built on stolen land, having murdered almost all the people that rightfully owned it.

We are a nation whose wealth was initially created - but largely continues to be created - through the enslavement of millions of black Africans - hunted, captured, chained, and shipped here to die as cattle for our greed.

We are a nation whose infrastructure was built on the backs of mistreated and abused immigrants whose search from something better landed them in a place where their labor was cheap, their lives cheaper still.

We are a nation whose military dominates this globe. We use that military to bomb 7 other nations currently. We use that military to coerce other nations to give us access to their oil, their metals, their water, any commodity that we covet. We use that military and our CIA to undermine foreign governments - often democratic governments - who do not jump in line to offer us access cheaply enough or freely enough for our greedy exploitative corporations.

We are a nation that believes itself to be exceptional. Exceptional in the sense that we do not owe respect to any other nation, nor to international norms, or international treaties, or international laws. We do as we please, where we please, when we please, and we claim that it is because we are a special people and these lesser restrictions do no apply to so exceptional a people as we.

We are a nation that lies to its own citizens while singing songs of freedom.

We are a nation that condemns other governments for human rights abuses as we attack the water protectors in North Dakota who are trying to protect their water sources from yet further ecological damage from greedy oil corporations.

We are a nation that has unilaterally given itself the right to assassinate anyone, anywhere - including American civilians - if the president decides its in his best interests without judicial oversight and against international treaties, norms, and laws.

We are a nation that tortures.

We are a nation that steals.

We are a nation that lies about its past, its present, and its future.

We are in desperate need of some honesty.

We are in desperate need of acknowledging our unlawful, immoral, unethical, abusive, and intolerable behavior towards every culture on earth that isn't white upper class Americans.

I agree with that fellow in the TED talks:

We need a serious and honest commitment to reconciliation -

And until we do that, we cannot honestly nor reasonably have any hope at all of being able to move forward and stop repeating these same crimes and abuses over and over.

So, no, we cannot stop talking about the war crimes and crimes against humanity that Obama and Hillary and GW Bush and Rumsfeld, and the rest of our leaders have committed.

We must continue to act as our conscience until we as a whole - we as a community - we as a nation - stop lying to ourselves and face the truth to begin walking in the path of justice.

We must prosecute our criminals - starting at the highest levels and working our way down until we have renounced to our very cores exceptionalism once and for all.

Germany reminds itself annually of its criminal past - and has memorials in many prominent places to remind itself of its dark past.  It teaches of itself honestly and openly in its schools so that it never makes the same mistake again.

America needs to own up to its global crimes and begin that same process.

As Bryan Stevenson notes - the opposite of poverty is not wealth - it is Justice.