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Yeah the US we knew is gone. I think about this sometimes when I am listening to American music from the 20th century, how much soft power they had, how great
by jjtwixman 7mo ago
Yeah the US we knew is gone. I think about this sometimes when I am listening to American music from the 20th century, how much soft power they had, how great they made America sound either directly or indirectly. That America that we all looked up to and admired is gone. Pity.
- butILoveLife 7mo ago[flagged]
- jacquesm 7mo ago[flagged]
- jagged-chisel 7mo ago> ... but seeing how quick Europe and Canada turned on the US ... I think they rightfully turned defensive in light of the current administration. Remains to be seen how/if they change when the administration changes.
- StefanBatory 7mo agoUS turned on the Europe and Canada*
- jjtwixman 7mo agoOK but this is just an argument in favour of forever wars lol. That's realism I guess in the way that Nazi Lebensraum was also realism. > how quick Europe and Canada turned on the US It's YOU that turned on YOUR allies. YOU threatened to invade YOUR allies. Jesus fucking Christ. You are living in a different universe entirely. I agree that countries apparently can "turn on a dime" as you say, but it's not us that's "turned on a dime" it's YOU. America is lost.
- mcv 7mo agoExactly. It's the US that turned against its allies. Those allies are still loyal to each other; they didn't turn on anyone. Look at how many countries immediately sent troops to Greenland. There's no doubt who is the traitor and who is loyal here. If you want to rule purely through hard power, you become Russia.
- 3form 7mo agoWhich actually shows that trying to exercise that hard power made everything worse instead of better.
- terminalshort 7mo agoThat is the state of nature. It's not an argument. I don't argue in favor of "forever wars" for the same reason I don't argue in favor of gravity.
- the_af 7mo agoForever wars are a law of nature now? Such a cynical view of life. With this mindset, we can never change. We're stuck in the cycle of violence. I believe it can change. We need to get out of the "oh well, this is life" mindset and stop giving the hawks and warmongers a free pass.
- terminalshort 7mo agoThe laws of human behavior are certainly less fundamental to the iniverse than the laws of physics, but, since we are humans, they are equally as binding on us.
- the_af 7mo agoHuman behavior, and human society, have changed tremendously through the ages. It's the fastest sort of "evolution", to stretch that term a bit. Plus there's nothing natural about widespread global war. It's not like you getting angry at your neighbor over some domestic dispute. Global wars are artificially engineered by guys who want to profit from them. It's not "human nature". Those willing to go to war exploit human nature, sure, but this is done intentionally; and just as intentionally, it could be downplayed or mitigated. And if it's about egoism and greed, we've learned to reign those in in multiple situations. If we can attempt to go to Mars or whatever, I'm sure we can first try to sort things out on Earth. Get out of your mindset. It's bad for you. In Cosmos 2, Neil de Grasse Tyson has a reflection about that saying, "what are you going to do? It's human nature!". I encourage you to find the clip on YouTube and watch it. Edit: well, I wanted to find the transcript or clip, but I cannot now. The Cosmos sequels are infuriatingly hard to find, and in my country there are no legal ways of watching them anymore (fuck you, Netflix and Disney! I pay you yet you remove stuff I like). Here's Sagan's last paragraphs from his Pale Blue Dot speech instead: "The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
- cindyllm 7mo ago[dead]
- bitmasher9 7mo agoI’d rather give up the empire, then be the type of empire that’s “full focus on hard power.”
- moogly 7mo agoWho turned on whom again?
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- lnsru 7mo agoI am the guy who participated in Green Card lottery for few years willing to work in most advanced planet‘s semiconductor companies. I changed my mind recently. Speedboat ambushes, Greenland, public executions by ICE „officers“ and now Iran war. US I knew is definitely gone. That’s not the country sharing culture and values peacefully anymore: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika-Haus_(M%C3%BCnchen) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika-Haus_(M%C3%BCnchen)
- lores 7mo agoTo be fair, the US has never been peaceful, and it's the country that started the most wars since WW2. It's just that it used to be in our team, and human nature makes the aggressiveness of our team justified, or at least understandable, or at least ignorable, or at least not quite changing our deep feelings.
- benterix 7mo agoAnd, at least regarding the more recent ones in Iraq and Afghanistan, Europe witnessed the largest anti-war protests in history. From that perspective, the current "emperor is naked" development might be positive in the sense that Europe can relatively soon have enough military power to be taken seriously, and at the same time become impossible to drag into an offensive war because none of its countries wants any war and we only went there because US pressured us into - but now that the USA has became unreliable, there's no reason to sacrifice oneself.
- srean 7mo agoI really wish hard that Europe gets it shit together. They are adults now (rare commodity), but can still be pushed around, have their leash yanked. They have to come to terms with their islands of racist tendencies. My hope hasn't died yet
- AlexandrB 7mo ago[flagged]
- 7mo ago
- srean 7mo agoDid that US really exist without a self imposed convenience of blindness ? The brutality of the School of Americas might indicate otherwise. Now rebranded as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_for_Security_Cooperation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_f...
- jacquesm 7mo agoThat's a tough question. There has always been a meddlesome quality to the USA that the rest of the so called developed world turned a blind eye to. Along the lines of 'their bastards, but at least they're our bastards'. Of course that does not make it good, but the balance calculation worked out in favor of toeing the line and being careful not to get pulled out of joint too much. 9/11 changed all that and effectively Bin Laden forced the USA to lower its mask for long enough that the world could no longer ignore the bad sides of Uncle Sam. Even that would have not been enough to seal it, but Trump has managed to accomplish this in record time.
- srean 7mo ago"Meddlesome" is certainly a light way of labeling torture training. What I find more troubling is that Trump has popular support. It's just not Trump. The rot goes far deeper.
- jacquesm 7mo agoFair enough.
- TheOtherHobbes 7mo agoTrump doesn't have popular support. Many of his 2024 voters are furious with him. What Trump has is oligarch support - an unholy alliance of weird and cranky tech billionaires, old(ish) money, foreign money, media owners, and insane white supremacist patriarch-wannabes, some of whom operate through think tanks, some through megachurches. The media are doing an excellent job of normalising this, not least - but not only - sanewashing Trump's obvious mental and physical decay.
- keybored 7mo agoReminder that “Born in the USA” was not a “patriotic” song.
- srean 7mo agoNeither was "This land is your land" Where is Guthrie's guitar ?
- imjonse 7mo agoAs a european I see what you mean, but that 'we all' in your sentence probably hasn't included those from Latin America, and large parts of Africa or Asia since long before Trump. The US pulled quite a few less than admirable tricks (to use an euphemism) on non-europeans during the 20th century.
- srean 7mo agoExactly.
- nxor2 7mo agoYou are seeing a side that always existed. Arguably in the past it was worse.
- ekianjo 7mo ago> how much soft power they had, Soft power? Have you been sleeping during the 20th century? The formidable military power of the US comes from a constant state of war.
- lambdasquirrel 7mo agoI wouldn't be that cynical. From the interactions I've had with people from mainland China, particularly those in the educated classes, I can say for certain that it was soft power that drew them towards the West and the US in particular. China already beat back the West in the Korean War.
- jjtwixman 7mo agoYes and they had a lot of soft power too.
- collingreen 7mo agoAs an American I feel this way too - there is a nostalgia and disappointed yearning for what was probably a propaganda pipe dream. I find myself disappointed and indignant at the long list of bullshit we are doing right now but I'm surprised by my own extreme sense of betrayal over how we don't even -want- to be "the good guys" anymore. I know the US has a long history of evil, dont get me wrong, but until recently (~covid) I thought most of us at least wanted to be a positive force in the world. For me, Dan Carlin said it perfectly - I want the America from the promotional material.
- jacquesm 7mo agoI think a lot of us do. But right now that promotional material looks more like a rigged Microsoft demo than the real thing.