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> If the past year has taught us anything, it’s that the US can’t really be seen as the “good guys” in such a simple way. More like the past 200 years. America

> If the past year has taught us anything, it’s that the US can’t really be seen as the “good guys” in such a simple way. More like the past 200 years. America have never been the "good guys", and it is only Americans who seem to think they ever were.

cuuupid 7mo ago
If a majority of the Americans believed America was not generally the "good guys" it would be a sign of a failed democracy. Similarly normal for the population of any country that has net negative externalities from America to view them as the "bad guys". The current and growing anti-US sentiment is an expected result of an increasing gap between the US and the rest of the first world on economy and defense. The existence of a superpower is precluded on being viewed negatively by the rest of the world
- pezezin 7mo ago
  > If a majority of the Americans believed America was not generally the "good guys" it would be a sign of a failed democracy. No, it would be a sign of critical thinking and self reflection.
  - remarkEon 7mo ago
    I've thought about it a lot, and done some self reflection, and concluded that America is, in fact, the "good guys".
- somenameforme 7mo ago
  Imagine democracy playing out in literally any measurable field. Think about society getting to vote on who should be on a basketball team, but without any real knowledge of the candidates' abilities beyond what they said and advertised about themselves. And then we put the winners of the vote on a team. They'd get face-stomped by a D-tier NBA team pretty much always. Democracy isn't about maximizing outcomes, because maximizing outcomes entails the possibility of minimizing outcomes. Marcus Aurelius was perhaps one of the best rulers in all of history. His son, Commodus - raised by him from birth, was certainly one of the worst rulers in all of history. Minority rule systems oscillate between extremes of the best of times and the worst of times. Democracy is always just kind of meh, never particularly great, never particularly awful. But it creates a stable system because while it's meh in the present, you can always envision that things will be totally different in 4 years. Of course they won't be, but there's this weird bug in our psychology that we can't help but remain optimistic, even though in reality candidate after candidate it always feels like 'well it can't get any worse than this at least' and then the next guy is like 'hold my beer.'
awesome_dude 7mo ago
To be fair, almost every society portrays itself as the defender of whatever is right/good. And, to be equally as fair, the only genuinely good guys are the ones that are too small to enforce their will upon others directly - small countries without arms who are forced to find other ways to engage with others in order to achieve whatever goals they have (resource acquisition) The Americans have been extremely adept at dominating the discourse via non-government pathways (Hollywood)
nixon_why69 7mo ago
An American and a Soviet Russian were on a plane chatting. The American says "I'm very impressed with the quality of Soviet propaganda". The Soviet says thanks, but it's nothing compared to American propaganda. The American says "But we don't have propaganda", the Soviet says "Exactly".
- xarope 7mo ago
  And been written about since the 80s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
remarkEon 7mo ago
If only Americans think we're the good guys, then why does everyone want to live here?
- dragonwriter 7mo ago
  Well, first, that's two overgeneralizations. But, second, often precisely because they think we’re the bad guys. If you see the world as dominated by an evil, overwhelmingly powerful empire that uses violence in a way that shows no concern for the continuation or quality of human life outside of the metropole then, even if it is bigoted, repressive, and unjust within the metropole, you still want to be in the metropole rather rhan peripheries.
  - remarkEon 7mo ago
    [flagged]
- somenameforme 7mo ago
  I think that should be fairly obvious - money + ease of traveling to. America is, relative to the world, perceived as quite wealthy. South America is full of places that are quite poor. Put the two side by side and many guys coming here speaking not a lick of English, and with no skills to boot, probably envision themselves coming home rich. It's even relatively easy to put yourselves in their shoes. Columbia's GDP/capita is about $8k. In the US it's about $80k. Imagine how you'd feel if Canada had a GDP/capita of $800k. To many people it'd seem like a great idea to move there completely regardless of everything else about the country. People warning you that you'll end up mowing yards and painting houses while making barely enough to put a roof over your head. Bah! Nonsense! How can that be true on $800k/year!? Canada, here I come! You can see this play out the same in places like Saudi Arabia. Not many place have the taste for their policies, religion, or much of anything else - yet they have a massive immigrant population, far higher than the US (as a percent) precisely because they pay stupidly high wages, often tax free, and have a low cost of living. You can easily become a dollar millionaire teaching English there if money is what you're after simply because you can easily save thousands of dollars a month. And if you get bored you can go watch somebody get crucified for witchcraft on a weekend now and again.

cuuupid 7mo ago

If a majority of the Americans believed America was not generally the "good guys" it would be a sign of a failed democracy. Similarly normal for the population of any country that has net negative externalities from America to view them as the "bad guys". The current and growing anti-US sentiment is an expected result of an increasing gap between the US and the rest of the first world on economy and defense. The existence of a superpower is precluded on being viewed negatively by the rest of the world

pezezin 7mo ago
> If a majority of the Americans believed America was not generally the "good guys" it would be a sign of a failed democracy. No, it would be a sign of critical thinking and self reflection.
- remarkEon 7mo ago
  I've thought about it a lot, and done some self reflection, and concluded that America is, in fact, the "good guys".
somenameforme 7mo ago
Imagine democracy playing out in literally any measurable field. Think about society getting to vote on who should be on a basketball team, but without any real knowledge of the candidates' abilities beyond what they said and advertised about themselves. And then we put the winners of the vote on a team. They'd get face-stomped by a D-tier NBA team pretty much always. Democracy isn't about maximizing outcomes, because maximizing outcomes entails the possibility of minimizing outcomes. Marcus Aurelius was perhaps one of the best rulers in all of history. His son, Commodus - raised by him from birth, was certainly one of the worst rulers in all of history. Minority rule systems oscillate between extremes of the best of times and the worst of times. Democracy is always just kind of meh, never particularly great, never particularly awful. But it creates a stable system because while it's meh in the present, you can always envision that things will be totally different in 4 years. Of course they won't be, but there's this weird bug in our psychology that we can't help but remain optimistic, even though in reality candidate after candidate it always feels like 'well it can't get any worse than this at least' and then the next guy is like 'hold my beer.'

awesome_dude 7mo ago

To be fair, almost every society portrays itself as the defender of whatever is right/good. And, to be equally as fair, the only genuinely good guys are the ones that are too small to enforce their will upon others directly - small countries without arms who are forced to find other ways to engage with others in order to achieve whatever goals they have (resource acquisition) The Americans have been extremely adept at dominating the discourse via non-government pathways (Hollywood)

nixon_why69 7mo ago

An American and a Soviet Russian were on a plane chatting. The American says "I'm very impressed with the quality of Soviet propaganda". The Soviet says thanks, but it's nothing compared to American propaganda. The American says "But we don't have propaganda", the Soviet says "Exactly".

xarope 7mo ago
And been written about since the 80s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

remarkEon 7mo ago

If only Americans think we're the good guys, then why does everyone want to live here?

dragonwriter 7mo ago
Well, first, that's two overgeneralizations. But, second, often precisely because they think we’re the bad guys. If you see the world as dominated by an evil, overwhelmingly powerful empire that uses violence in a way that shows no concern for the continuation or quality of human life outside of the metropole then, even if it is bigoted, repressive, and unjust within the metropole, you still want to be in the metropole rather rhan peripheries.
- remarkEon 7mo ago
  [flagged]
somenameforme 7mo ago
I think that should be fairly obvious - money + ease of traveling to. America is, relative to the world, perceived as quite wealthy. South America is full of places that are quite poor. Put the two side by side and many guys coming here speaking not a lick of English, and with no skills to boot, probably envision themselves coming home rich. It's even relatively easy to put yourselves in their shoes. Columbia's GDP/capita is about $8k. In the US it's about $80k. Imagine how you'd feel if Canada had a GDP/capita of $800k. To many people it'd seem like a great idea to move there completely regardless of everything else about the country. People warning you that you'll end up mowing yards and painting houses while making barely enough to put a roof over your head. Bah! Nonsense! How can that be true on $800k/year!? Canada, here I come! You can see this play out the same in places like Saudi Arabia. Not many place have the taste for their policies, religion, or much of anything else - yet they have a massive immigrant population, far higher than the US (as a percent) precisely because they pay stupidly high wages, often tax free, and have a low cost of living. You can easily become a dollar millionaire teaching English there if money is what you're after simply because you can easily save thousands of dollars a month. And if you get bored you can go watch somebody get crucified for witchcraft on a weekend now and again.