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>Yet, you've said very little outside of hand-waving about how evil America is and co-signing to deep-state conspiracy theories that plainly make no sense to ev

>Yet, you've said very little outside of hand-waving about how evil America is and co-signing to deep-state conspiracy theories that plainly make no sense to even the casual observer. But, you love your country, right? There is no conspiracy about the century+ of imperialism that we have been engaged in. Nobody with even a passing understanding of history disputes this. At least honest imperialists like David Frum and Max Boot don't embarass themselves with an utter ignorance of history - just an utter lack of morality. >You've then gone on to offer a near child-like version of the world in which the U.S. operates in a magical vacuum wherein liberal democracy is some guaranteed default mode that simply exists irrespective of what the rest of the world does. We simply withdraw from the global world stage and the world order just remains as-is, right? Or perhaps you have a problem with the current world order? Everyone informed and intelligent who cares about morality, international law, and the well-being of the people of the United States and the world has a massive problem with the current world order. >And, once the space begins to shrink for the ideal of liberal democracy, how does America fare? Nobody who knows anything about history would ever consider suggesting that the United States has supported, or supports now, the idea of "liberal democracy". From Egypt to Saudi Arabian to Uzbekistan to countless dictatorships in Africa, to right-wing juntas in Central and South America, we support, and have supported, the most vile dictators alive. From Saddam Hussein to Pinochet, from Guatemala to El Salvador to Honduras to Columbia, the list goes on. Then we can go on to our most recent destruction of Iraq, Libya, and Yemen and our support of Islamic terrorists in Syria to support our "allies" and client states that prop up our global military empire. Unfortunately your astounding ignorance of history and current events is the standard for people here, which is why the corporate agents of the DC/CIA media establishment have no problem installing all kinds of nonsense in your head. Anyone can see your worldview quite clearly - its the worldview imprinted on the minds of the ignorant by the propagandists who unfortunately run our society. Its easy to fill an empty vessel with platitudes about "liberal democracy" if people don't understand our actual history of overthrowing democratically elected governments around the world, both overtly and covertly, for a century. In an effort to alleviate a tiny portion of your ignorance, I point you to the person who inspired me to take this handle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

unclebucknasty 8y ago
>In an effort to alleviate a tiny portion of your ignorance, I point you to the person who inspired me to take this handle. Yes, I know who Stanislav Petrov was. Hence, the quotes placed ever-so-carefully around his name. But, you managed to miss it anyway. And, if you still do not see the irony, then there's not a lot I can say here. But, that you missed that subtlety (really not so subtle) and that you so proudly posted a link to a Wikipedia page to attack my supposed "ignorance" is telling: your deficiency is not in reading Wiki pages or Googling historical information, but in processing and understanding it beyond the ideas that were provided to you by someone else. It's little wonder that you fall prey to such a simplistic worldview and keep berating others about "history": You see value in history as a collection of facts and, absent the ability to think for yourself, you find it difficult to understand how anyone can reach a different set of conclusions than those given to you. This is why you point out what you believe to be America's mistakes without realizing that what you omitted is even more telling. It's why you fail to see the internal inconsistency with your own arguments from one sentence to the next. It's how you can declare two things to be "bad" without realizing that they both cannot be so--or that perhaps one was less-bad and necessary in any case. You don't understand or acknowledge how the geopolitical climate changes over time and policies might change accordingly. Thus, you fail to interpret history as a continuum, but rather a set of discrete occurrences wherein you consume others' qualitative judgments about each in isolation and believe that the "final answer" is the sum of those judgments. It's also why you arrive at this worldview that fails to separate actors from underlying ideals. Thus, if one bad actor does something in the name of democracy, then it's "U.S. bad. Other countries good". It's why you see things as black or white; perfect or imperfect; good or evil. Though, strangely, you seem to have a blind-spot where other nations are concerned, leaving the U.S. as singularly evil. Did Russia not invade Ukraine? Are they not "propping up a dictator" in Syria? Were these their first misadventures? Did the U.S. make them do it? It's why your "solution" entails retreating from the world stage and then...well, what exactly? A perfect world suddenly emerges wherein all hostile state actors renounce their world-views and geopolitics, then equally retreat? It's not about anyone propagandizing liberal democracy or even whether every actor in the U.S. has always lived up to that ideal. It's about whether or not you believe liberal democracy or just plain democracy to be a good thing. Once you've made that decision, then there are hard questions to answer and, unfortunately, those answers are sometimes imperfect. All of this I say affording you the benefit of the doubt as a hapless victim of propaganda with honest intentions. If that is the case, however, what's most shocking is the utter lack of self-awareness that prompts you to go around beating people over the head for what is, essentially, the breath-taking paucity in your own understanding of the world. Still, the worst-case scenario is actually that you understand it all and are simply choosing to join the army of propagandists against the U.S. It's no accident or secret that those propagandists will benefit at the expense of our nation, so it makes many wonder how we should think of those who give them aid and comfort.

unclebucknasty 8y ago

>In an effort to alleviate a tiny portion of your ignorance, I point you to the person who inspired me to take this handle. Yes, I know who Stanislav Petrov was. Hence, the quotes placed ever-so-carefully around his name. But, you managed to miss it anyway. And, if you still do not see the irony, then there's not a lot I can say here. But, that you missed that subtlety (really not so subtle) and that you so proudly posted a link to a Wikipedia page to attack my supposed "ignorance" is telling: your deficiency is not in reading Wiki pages or Googling historical information, but in processing and understanding it beyond the ideas that were provided to you by someone else. It's little wonder that you fall prey to such a simplistic worldview and keep berating others about "history": You see value in history as a collection of facts and, absent the ability to think for yourself, you find it difficult to understand how anyone can reach a different set of conclusions than those given to you. This is why you point out what you believe to be America's mistakes without realizing that what you omitted is even more telling. It's why you fail to see the internal inconsistency with your own arguments from one sentence to the next. It's how you can declare two things to be "bad" without realizing that they both cannot be so--or that perhaps one was less-bad and necessary in any case. You don't understand or acknowledge how the geopolitical climate changes over time and policies might change accordingly. Thus, you fail to interpret history as a continuum, but rather a set of discrete occurrences wherein you consume others' qualitative judgments about each in isolation and believe that the "final answer" is the sum of those judgments. It's also why you arrive at this worldview that fails to separate actors from underlying ideals. Thus, if one bad actor does something in the name of democracy, then it's "U.S. bad. Other countries good". It's why you see things as black or white; perfect or imperfect; good or evil. Though, strangely, you seem to have a blind-spot where other nations are concerned, leaving the U.S. as singularly evil. Did Russia not invade Ukraine? Are they not "propping up a dictator" in Syria? Were these their first misadventures? Did the U.S. make them do it? It's why your "solution" entails retreating from the world stage and then...well, what exactly? A perfect world suddenly emerges wherein all hostile state actors renounce their world-views and geopolitics, then equally retreat? It's not about anyone propagandizing liberal democracy or even whether every actor in the U.S. has always lived up to that ideal. It's about whether or not you believe liberal democracy or just plain democracy to be a good thing. Once you've made that decision, then there are hard questions to answer and, unfortunately, those answers are sometimes imperfect. All of this I say affording you the benefit of the doubt as a hapless victim of propaganda with honest intentions. If that is the case, however, what's most shocking is the utter lack of self-awareness that prompts you to go around beating people over the head for what is, essentially, the breath-taking paucity in your own understanding of the world. Still, the worst-case scenario is actually that you understand it all and are simply choosing to join the army of propagandists against the U.S. It's no accident or secret that those propagandists will benefit at the expense of our nation, so it makes many wonder how we should think of those who give them aid and comfort.