2 ms·

The US, at least since WW2, are the bad guys. I'll go with "the US has been bad". But to say that they were simply "the bad guys", in a world bursting full of

The US, at least since WW2, are the bad guys. I'll go with "the US has been bad". But to say that they were simply "the bad guys", in a world bursting full of bad guys in practically every corner, is simplistic and naive. It also (ironically) denies these other societies any respect for their own agency, and their own salient capacity to be corrupt, incompetent, genocidal and warmongering, and run themselves into the ground in countless other ways without any help at all from the US. In that sense, it's actually quite a myopic and hegemonic way of looking at things.

jmyeet 2y ago
This amounts to "other people are bad too". Is that really a defense? It's also a question of scale. The amount of direct and foreseeable harm caused by the United States goes all the way back to its founding. The genocide of Native American peoples, the translatlantic slave trade, chattel slavery, segregation and then in the 20th century we go global. The British Empire is described as the first drug dealer empire. First tobacco then opium. Well the US is the arms dealer empire. Eisenhower's farewell address warned of the increasing threat and power of the "military industrial complex" [1]. But in virtually every conflict post-WW2 we've been on the wrong side. Take the defining moment of 9/11, a terrorist attack perpetrated by Saudis, funded by members of the Saudi royal family. What did we do? We turned around and invaded Afghanistan (who offered to hand over bin Laden [2]) and Iraq (who had absolutely nothing to do with it), killing millions. [1]: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwight-d-eisenhowers-farewell-address https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwigh... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...
- aguaviva 2y ago
  It's not a defense; just a (much) more grounded contextualization, in my view. This amounts to "other people are bad too". It's also not whataboutism. To suggest that it is amounts to, well, an "either/or" response. All I'm saying is: it seems you're trying to essentialize the woe and evil the world in a way I don't find valid or useful.

jmyeet 2y ago

This amounts to "other people are bad too". Is that really a defense? It's also a question of scale. The amount of direct and foreseeable harm caused by the United States goes all the way back to its founding. The genocide of Native American peoples, the translatlantic slave trade, chattel slavery, segregation and then in the 20th century we go global. The British Empire is described as the first drug dealer empire. First tobacco then opium. Well the US is the arms dealer empire. Eisenhower's farewell address warned of the increasing threat and power of the "military industrial complex" [1]. But in virtually every conflict post-WW2 we've been on the wrong side. Take the defining moment of 9/11, a terrorist attack perpetrated by Saudis, funded by members of the Saudi royal family. What did we do? We turned around and invaded Afghanistan (who offered to hand over bin Laden [2]) and Iraq (who had absolutely nothing to do with it), killing millions. [1]: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwight-d-eisenhowers-farewell-address https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwigh... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...

aguaviva 2y ago
It's not a defense; just a (much) more grounded contextualization, in my view. This amounts to "other people are bad too". It's also not whataboutism. To suggest that it is amounts to, well, an "either/or" response. All I'm saying is: it seems you're trying to essentialize the woe and evil the world in a way I don't find valid or useful.