feeling listless

History When 'Schindler's List' won the Oscar there was almost a feeling of atonement, a demonstration that America hadn't forgotten that it stood by and watch genocide from across the atlantic, not wanting to get it's hands dirty. Samantha Power's new book "A Problem From Hell" looks at why when these things continue to occur, still little or nothing is done. The Atlantic asks her for the Coles Notes version:

"What surprised me was the extent to which officials involved in shaping policy could define their responses as moral—that they could feel they were doing something that was humanitarian, that was moral, that was in the long-term interests not just of American security and American wealth but of their own values. The sophistication of those denial mechanisms was striking to me. But then the other thing that surprised me was how many people had stood up. The book is told through the travails of these individuals who really did try to move the system, and I was very pleasantly surprised to know that in most cases there were these individuals who did take the promise of "Never Again" seriously and who did believe that American power carried with it some kind of responsibility."

Isn't this the global politics version of walking by when someone is being beaten up in the street?