6 ms·

I don't think that's true. Lots of countries out there led by thugs. It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously and believed in its i

I don't think that's true. Lots of countries out there led by thugs. It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously and believed in its ideals to do the right thing (not that it always succeeded, but it did its best). Looks like that time has passed.

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
usrnm 11mo ago
Not sure about that. Internally, maybe it was true at some point, cannot say, but if we look at the US as an international player, when exactly was it ready to sacrifice its own interests for any kind of justice or greater good? And if you are not ready to pay the price, then all this talk of a higher moral ground is just that, an empty talk.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 11mo ago
  I don't disagree, but I think there was a genuine perception by many people that the US were the good guys. The change is that its not even trying to pretend to be this anymore.
skrebbel 11mo ago
> It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously and believed in its ideals to do the right thing The "The Hague Invasion Act", where the US authorizes itself to invade an ally (the Netherlands) to break war criminal suspects out of prison, was signed in 2002. The US has always been a "rules for thee but not for me" type of place and the digital sanction discussed here fits in a long line of behaviors by the US government. Trump has changed the scale and intensity of it all but the basic direction has always been the same.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 11mo ago
  Well the fact that they made a law to enable this is a sign of at least some belief in the law. These days Trump would just do the invasion regardless of what the law says, and get away with it. Case example: ordering the navy to blow up Venezuela boats.
  - skrebbel 11mo ago
    Good point! From that perspective the comment I replied to does indeed check out.
- ApolloFortyNine 11mo ago
  The US never ratified any law claiming the ICC has jurisdiction over Americans. And they basically put it into writing, they're not the only country that would do something if an active duty military officer was arrested. Here's a map. [1] [1] https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2024/05/ICC-Members.png https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2024/05/ICC-Mem...
embedding-shape 11mo ago
> It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously and believed in its ideals to do the right thing I think it looked like that, because the US always been very effective at propaganda, and until the internet and the web made it very easy for people to communicate directly with each other without the arms of media conglomerates. It's now clearer than ever that US never really believed in its own ideals or took their own laws seriously, there are too many situations pointing at the opposite being true.
- DangitBobby 11mo ago
  I'm skeptical things would have lasted this long if the "US never really believed in its own ideal or took their own laws seriously". I think you're letting your cynicism for this moment run away with you.
  - TimorousBestie 11mo ago
    American involvement in the Nuremberg trials set the stage for the modern era of international law. It began with the United States, along with the allied nations, constructing a post-facto legal definition of crime against humanity that somehow included the Holocaust but excluded both the American campaign in Japan and various Russian war crimes on the Western Front. It’s not cynicism to point out the clear hypocrisy.
    - embedding-shape 11mo ago
      Not to mention Jim Crow was still in full effect in the US at the time, but somehow wasn't deemed "Crime against humanity". The winners truly do control the history.
      - vlovich123 11mo ago
        Was Jim Crow a federally organized policy bent on extermination? It was state level discrimination that Nazi Germany copied in 1933-1938 to deal with their “Jewish problem”. By 1939 you had formal government-enforced ghettos with forced labor (no equivalent in America at the time) and by 1941 you had mass extinction. Don’t get me wrong - Jim Crow was horrific. But it was state level after effects of the civil war and failure to establish absolute dominance over the southern states in reconstruction. Cultural problems we fought a civil war over and we’re still dealing with today. But one difference of the goal with slavery and Jim Crow is subjugation not extermination
gessha 11mo ago
> used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously The US looked like it stood out but it has its own internal and external legal problems such as slavery, Native American repressions, the legacy of slavery, anti-Asian policies, coup-ing foreign countries, etc etc etc
- DangitBobby 11mo ago
  We are a country made up of apes, just like all the others. Nothing is perfect, and us constantly fucking it up doesn't mean we didn't care about it, as a nation.
- IAmBroom 11mo ago
  You are conflating morality with legal jurisprudence. The US obeyed its own (highly immoral) laws on slavery, genocide of Native Americans, etc. I'll give you the point about promoting coups in foreign countries (couping is actually the verb).
  - gessha 11mo ago
    When I mentioned Native American repression, I had the federal government breaking treaties in mind which falls under legal category but you’re right that the gov also did the genocide. More generally, as a foreigner who now lives in the US, I held Americans to a higher standard than, say my own government or major other governments. Not anymore, I feel like there’s just different trade offs in living in different countries.
demarq 11mo ago
Remember all the thuggery and whatever we are seeing now was happening back then. What has changed is we know about it.
zidad 11mo ago
The US has always been led by Thugs. If you think they ever took international or humanitarian law seriously they would not be scared to join the ICC, and you've only been paying attention to propaganda, not what the US has actually been doing since the inception of those laws.
RobotToaster 11mo ago
> It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously The US took everyone's gold under the bretton woods system, and then Nixon "temporarily" ended dollar gold convertibility when France asked for it's gold back.
naasking 11mo ago
> It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously and believed in its ideals to do the right thing You're in a bubble.
yodsanklai 11mo ago
> believed in its ideals to do the right thing Do the right thing to serve their own interests.
Phelinofist 11mo ago
I'm pretty sure no one outside of the US thought of the USA in that way, ever.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

usrnm 11mo ago

Not sure about that. Internally, maybe it was true at some point, cannot say, but if we look at the US as an international player, when exactly was it ready to sacrifice its own interests for any kind of justice or greater good? And if you are not ready to pay the price, then all this talk of a higher moral ground is just that, an empty talk.

Eddy_Viscosity2 11mo ago
I don't disagree, but I think there was a genuine perception by many people that the US were the good guys. The change is that its not even trying to pretend to be this anymore.

skrebbel 11mo ago

> It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously and believed in its ideals to do the right thing The "The Hague Invasion Act", where the US authorizes itself to invade an ally (the Netherlands) to break war criminal suspects out of prison, was signed in 2002. The US has always been a "rules for thee but not for me" type of place and the digital sanction discussed here fits in a long line of behaviors by the US government. Trump has changed the scale and intensity of it all but the basic direction has always been the same.

Eddy_Viscosity2 11mo ago
Well the fact that they made a law to enable this is a sign of at least some belief in the law. These days Trump would just do the invasion regardless of what the law says, and get away with it. Case example: ordering the navy to blow up Venezuela boats.
- skrebbel 11mo ago
  Good point! From that perspective the comment I replied to does indeed check out.
ApolloFortyNine 11mo ago
The US never ratified any law claiming the ICC has jurisdiction over Americans. And they basically put it into writing, they're not the only country that would do something if an active duty military officer was arrested. Here's a map. [1] [1] https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2024/05/ICC-Members.png https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2024/05/ICC-Mem...

embedding-shape 11mo ago

> It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously and believed in its ideals to do the right thing I think it looked like that, because the US always been very effective at propaganda, and until the internet and the web made it very easy for people to communicate directly with each other without the arms of media conglomerates. It's now clearer than ever that US never really believed in its own ideals or took their own laws seriously, there are too many situations pointing at the opposite being true.

DangitBobby 11mo ago
I'm skeptical things would have lasted this long if the "US never really believed in its own ideal or took their own laws seriously". I think you're letting your cynicism for this moment run away with you.
- TimorousBestie 11mo ago
  American involvement in the Nuremberg trials set the stage for the modern era of international law. It began with the United States, along with the allied nations, constructing a post-facto legal definition of crime against humanity that somehow included the Holocaust but excluded both the American campaign in Japan and various Russian war crimes on the Western Front. It’s not cynicism to point out the clear hypocrisy.
  - embedding-shape 11mo ago
    Not to mention Jim Crow was still in full effect in the US at the time, but somehow wasn't deemed "Crime against humanity". The winners truly do control the history.
    - vlovich123 11mo ago
      Was Jim Crow a federally organized policy bent on extermination? It was state level discrimination that Nazi Germany copied in 1933-1938 to deal with their “Jewish problem”. By 1939 you had formal government-enforced ghettos with forced labor (no equivalent in America at the time) and by 1941 you had mass extinction. Don’t get me wrong - Jim Crow was horrific. But it was state level after effects of the civil war and failure to establish absolute dominance over the southern states in reconstruction. Cultural problems we fought a civil war over and we’re still dealing with today. But one difference of the goal with slavery and Jim Crow is subjugation not extermination

gessha 11mo ago

> used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously The US looked like it stood out but it has its own internal and external legal problems such as slavery, Native American repressions, the legacy of slavery, anti-Asian policies, coup-ing foreign countries, etc etc etc

DangitBobby 11mo ago
We are a country made up of apes, just like all the others. Nothing is perfect, and us constantly fucking it up doesn't mean we didn't care about it, as a nation.
IAmBroom 11mo ago
You are conflating morality with legal jurisprudence. The US obeyed its own (highly immoral) laws on slavery, genocide of Native Americans, etc. I'll give you the point about promoting coups in foreign countries (couping is actually the verb).
- gessha 11mo ago
  When I mentioned Native American repression, I had the federal government breaking treaties in mind which falls under legal category but you’re right that the gov also did the genocide. More generally, as a foreigner who now lives in the US, I held Americans to a higher standard than, say my own government or major other governments. Not anymore, I feel like there’s just different trade offs in living in different countries.

demarq 11mo ago

Remember all the thuggery and whatever we are seeing now was happening back then. What has changed is we know about it.

zidad 11mo ago

The US has always been led by Thugs. If you think they ever took international or humanitarian law seriously they would not be scared to join the ICC, and you've only been paying attention to propaganda, not what the US has actually been doing since the inception of those laws.

RobotToaster 11mo ago

> It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously The US took everyone's gold under the bretton woods system, and then Nixon "temporarily" ended dollar gold convertibility when France asked for it's gold back.

naasking 11mo ago

> It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously and believed in its ideals to do the right thing You're in a bubble.

yodsanklai 11mo ago

> believed in its ideals to do the right thing Do the right thing to serve their own interests.

Phelinofist 11mo ago

I'm pretty sure no one outside of the US thought of the USA in that way, ever.