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Did that US really exist without a self imposed convenience of blindness ? The brutality of the School of Americas might indicate otherwise. Now rebranded as

• jacquesm 8mo ago
  That'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 8mo 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 8mo ago
      Fair enough.
    • TheOtherHobbes 8mo ago
      Trump 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.
      • srean 8mo ago
        I want to believe this desperately, but from what I see (well, on YouTube videos, surveys and polls) it makes it very hard for me to do so. I still see massive endorsement from the not so well to do in the hinterlands. I will however grant you that my sampling is no where close to uniform.
        • jacquesm 8mo ago
          Unless all of the useful idiots in this thread are bots there is plenty of popular support. And it's not like they couldn't know better.
      • nxor2 8mo ago
        Does JB Pritzker, who many people want to run in 2028, have oligarch support?
      • YCpedohaven 8mo ago
        [dead]
    • nxor2 8mo ago
      It's the two party system. If liberals are okay with 'pro lgbt muslims' and say things like 'gang violence isn't a problem' then people no longer vote for liberals.
  • foobarian 8mo ago
    I think that a big part of it is the transparency brought on by the vast communication bandwidth that came online starting after the dot com years. This stuff happened before just the same, but was concealed by media gatekeepers. Bay of Pigs, regime changes all over including Iran, South Asia wars, Afghanistan (not the recent one, the one in the 80s), all the cold war stuff, etc etc.
• JeremyNT 8mo ago
  The US was historically self-interested in empire building, with an excellent PR campaign in front of it, but... it also did useful and good stuff, both for its allies and for unrelated parties. USAID was a testament to this. PR spin aside, it was largely a force for global stability (a few notable and disastrous military quagmires aside). "Free trade" isn't much of a philosophy to hang your hat on but it is an ideal of sorts, and it allowed a more connected world. Now? Brazen corruption, kleptocracy, hostility towards allies... It's certainly fair to say the US never lived up to the ideals it espoused, but now it's not even espousing those ideals and seems to actively be working against them.
  • keybored 8mo ago
    > PR spin aside, Then the comment repeats the same PR spin.
    • oblio 8mo ago
      The thing is, look at all major military alliances in history. How many of them have a wealthy hegemon and wealthy minor partners? It's <<extremely>> rare for that to happen and the US managed that for about 80 years. Ignore all the propaganda and look at the results. Actions, not words. In the modern era there are basically 0 wealthy Russian (similar story for the Soviets) or Chinese allies.
      • keybored 8mo ago
        That’s a different topic. This is about how America acts towards the world, historically the so-called second and third world but now apparently to potentially everyone.
        • oblio 8mo ago
          They're related, though. Most other hegemons sought absolute domination and a weakening (and impoverishment) of everyone else. The US was generally confident in its security and prosperity that it allowed others to become prosperous, too.