Nothing became Germany like its leaving of the 20th century.

All human societies display a yin-yang behavior, violence and art, mindless destruction and mindful creativity. As the 20th century began, everybody recognized that few societies in history had matched the creativity of the Germans. From Bach to Einstein, the record of humanistic achievement in Germany was plain to see.

As the 20th century ended, Germany had become the pariah of the planet: birthplace of a culture of genocide.

A case, a very strong case, can be made that Germany became the scapegoat, the whipping boy for a race that, on the whole, chooses not to acknowledge its own universally shared sins. Germany, doing something all human cultures to some degree have done, got caught. And was rightly punished. Starting with the Nuremberg trials, Germans and the German nation have repeatedly and continuously been placed in the planetary dock, testimony has been received and weighed, and the verdict has always been the same: guilty as charged.

Given the quality and the quantity of the evidence, these judgments seem accurate and fair.

To its credit, Germany has reacted with reasoned and extended consistency to the long roll call of "guilty as charged." Contrition and reparations continued to be forthcoming as new wrongs were uncovered. Victims and survivors of the Holocaust inside and outside of Germany have received apologies and material reparations.

No words, no acts can undo or properly atone for the suffering caused by the Nazis. But it is important that the human historical record take proper note of the fact that, to an unprecedented degree, Germany accepted the verdict of guilty and undertook a decades-long, humbling series of national obeisances to world opinion-- and to its own opinion of itself.

No other nation in history has manifested such self-awareness of its malfeasance.

Pondering German guilt and German attempts at atonement, we have to ask: What of the rest of us?

The Japanese, also guilty of massive, widespread killing of innocents in World War II, also got caught. The Japanese received certain punishments, primarily the bracing (and, for them, especially humiliating) experience of military occupation. But there was no extended condemnation by world opinion. No on-going acts of atonement were imposed on, or even expected from, Tokyo. Now and then, after the end of the war, new awareness of this or that Japanese atrocity would surface (the POW camps, the Burma Road, the comfort women, the Rape of Nanking, etc.), but nothing would be done. Or expected.

While not getting off scot-free, the Japanese emerged relatively unscathed and undeplored from their horrifyingly brutal, imperialistic misadventure.

Only two other nations in the 20th century had the power and the wherewithal to mount similarly massive military operations outside their borders: the Soviet Union, and the United States.

For both those countries, at least until the Cold War, the case is usually made that they were more sinned against than sinning. Each, for various reasons, it is said, was drawn into the two world wars to counter belligerence. (The story, of course, is never that simple; for our purposes here, we’ll let it stand.)

But once Germany and Japan were defeated and caged, the USSR and the USA took center stage.

As is well-acknowledged, their performance there was at best spotty and at worst approaching the level of inhumanity of the two defeated foes.

Four decades of occupation of satellite countries, repeated expansionist forays, unrestrainedly brutal repression of enemies over whom it had any control: such was the behavior of the would-be imperial Russia.

At the same time, the victorious United States marched to a different, more muted drumbeat. Under the banner of economic liberalization and political equality, Americans spread their umbrella of self-described good will and Yankee know-how to a mostly accepting world. Missteps along the way ranged from those with comparatively minor suffering (the Bay of Pigs, Chile, Guatemala, etc.) to badly arranged misadventures leading to incalculable disaster (Vietnam, Cambodia).

As we finally reached the end of the bloody trail that was the 20th century, Russia itself had been humbled, its dreams of empire shattered, its protective wall brought down by millions of the long-aggrieved.

Amidst the debris, America was left standing. Bloodied, yes. Nobly bloodied? Yes (Europe and Asia are dotted with American military cemeteries).

Unbowed? Yes. Tragically, and ignobly, and unworthily unbowed.

The only superpower, and therefore able to ignore its own manifest and manifold sins, America strides the globe unchecked and unchallenged.

Uncle Sam, whether in his Wall Street guise or his Pentagon guise or his Hollywood guise or his Silicon Valley guise, says jump, and the rest of the world says, how high.

American humility? Now there’s an oxymoron for you.

Yes, the Germans lost and were forced to accept the penalties of defeat. To their enormous credit, they accepted not merely in good faith, and acted on the penalties not only to the letter of the law, but to the spirit as well.

The Japanese, with few signs of regret, resourcefully constructed a massively successful economy on the ashes of humiliation. And now the Russians struggle just to get from one day to the next.

While America, rich and powerful, bloated with pride, stands over the world like some latterday Colossus of Rhodes. Preaching equality, we create within our own borders an increasingly unequal society (2,000,000 prisoners; 1% of the people control 60% of the wealth; 40% of our citizens have no health insurance). Preaching democracy, we shape the world as we see fit (the vital environmental correctives of the Kyoto Accords are not worth the paper they were printed on because America ignores them; in an extended fit of pique, we withhold our vital dues from the United Nations). Preaching opportunity, we allow and encourage the growth of corporations of unparalleled size and unbridled power (economically, Microsoft is larger than the poorest six dozen nations together).

If American humility is notable by its absence internationally, it is in these latter capitalist days of Republican supremacy, a perfect vacuum of values internally.

We virtually eliminated our indigenous population some years before anyone except those eliminated much cared. The stain is there, still mostly unacknowledged. Heaping guilt on guilt, we at the same time of that near-genocide continued the practice of slavery.

Slavery. The word is so frequent in American history and so common in discourses about that history that it has lost much of its obscenity. Three and a half centuries of slavery. Overlapping for 75 years the vaunted beauties of our egalitarian constitution.

That stain too, at least acknowledged, is there. But any hint about atonement, or any kind of formal recognition of guilt, not to mention the possibility of reparations, brings howls of anguish from the American ruling class. (A telling--and damning bit of historical trivia: only one city in the United States [Charleston, South Carolina] maintains its old slave market site as a museum and a reminder.)

So great, so fragile is our "pride", this false posturing: God must be on our side because we won.

Sure, it’s not easy to be the biggest kid on the block, to be in fact the only really big kid left standing. It’s also not easy to be a creative nation and brought to your knees in full view of the world by your own violent minions.