Swastika Pillows

Today in US History, we talked about the Confederacy as a symbol, namely through its flag and various memorabilia that surrounds it.

While almost everyone agreed that a Confederate flag is acceptable but a Swastika was not, I thought a Swastika was totally OK. My teacher, clearly very… intrigued by my stance, pointed how bad the Germans were in the 40s.

However, this exemplifies a great double standard in how the US views itself and how they view the Nazis.
Examples of similarities and comparisons between the US and the Third Reich:

1. The Nazis rounded up all the Jews, and killed them mercilessly.
   Compare: The US rounded up all the Japanese during WWII and withheld general freedoms, they enslaved an entire race of a continent, changing its culture forever, and killed probably more people in combined wars ever (because of its huge role in industrial manufacturing).
   Impact Calculus: The US obviously did more damage than the Third Reich, seeing as they enslaved a whole continent and provided for 1000-fold amount of killing through manufacturing guns, munitions, and even foodstuffs during the isolationist era. A bunch of European wars were sourced by American food
2. The Nazis destroyed Democracy, and instead placed a dictator who step-by-step stripped away liberties
   Compare: The US is launching an even scarier attack on civil liberties. While the Nazi attack was obvious, the Americans are less careful, because they have the Constitution that allows for slow undermining. Government Surveillance, Bureaucracy, Capitalism, etc. all fall in this category.
   Impact Calculus: The US probably is doing more damage than the Third Reich could ever do, but not at an accelerated pace. It's even worse because while the Nazi attack was obvious, the American attack on liberties is subtle and ever-occurring.

Those are two points, and are usually the larger ones.
The Germans, remember, also:

1. Boomed their economy in a few short years.
2. Used nationalism to its greatest extent, as used by the US in all its (rather frequent, if I might add) wars.
3. Exemplified and proved how Nietzschean Will-to-Power works in the real world, that it requires some underdog that is pushed down and taken advantage of and used as teaching tools to teach the people not to fear and to be powerful to prevent this themselves.

The only argument in favour of the US I see is that the Nazis were like Distilled Alcohol, with much more "evil" or "bad" content per year. US aggregate evil-ness, on the other hand, so grossly outweighs Nazi evil that there is no comparison.

And the Nazis had a neat flag and goose-step, not to mention armbands. I wish they could be acceptable to wear/do again, because they're rather funny and cool.