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The nineties was a very different time. There was generally a lot more goodwill towards America on all fronts, the collapse of the Soviet Union was framed, and
by specproc 2mo ago
The nineties was a very different time. There was generally a lot more goodwill towards America on all fronts, the collapse of the Soviet Union was framed, and in some quarters accepted, as something that would lead to global peace and prosperity. That America was left standing was deemed to be a validation of its economic model.
There was genuine optimism at the time, we were coming out of the shadow of thermonuclear war. Globalisation was discussed as a global phenomenon, less about America specifically, and more about networks and opening of borders.
Also Linux was unusable by any but the beardiest.
Today, after 30-40 years on top, it's hard to see America as anything other than an incredibly dangerous threat to global stability with an utterly broken economic model. On the geopolitical front, it's squandered this goodwill time and time again, and gets worse with every new presidency. Domestically, we've seen our economies hollowed out, bought up, and skimmed at every turn.
The challenge the world faces now is the question of how we unplug ourselves as this increasingly deranged machine becomes ever more aggressive and hostile.
- _trampeltier 2mo agoThats why people wrote books like .. The End of History and the Last Man is a book of political philosophy written in 1992 by American political scientist Francis Fukuyama which argues that with the ascendancy of Western liberal democracy—which occurred after the Cold War (1945–1991) and the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991)—humanity has reached "not just ... the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: That is, the end-point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Las...
- Geezus_42 2mo agoSo now we just wait for it to burn itself out?
- AnimalMuppet 2mo agoNow we acknowledge that we were wrong in the 1990s. Even if liberal democracy is better than tyranny, it takes maintenance to keep. And if any country falls into tyranny, it has the potential to become a threat to countries around it.
- _trampeltier 2mo agoNot now, 2001 changed everything (9/11).
- Geezus_42 2mo agoI hope this current liberal democracy is not the final form of human government given the great mass of human beings its leaves behind or crushes under foot.
- HolyLampshade 2mo agoThere certainly was a lot of navel-gazing and patting of backs with the dissolution of the USSR… Truth is while the govt model and Union failed, the people who made it up didn’t vanish into thin air. You can draw a pretty straight line from 1991 to how Putin acts against the US and Europe. The 90s were definitely a different beast. Beginning of a unipolar geopolitical push from the US. Seems after 30yr we’re starting to finally get some real push back, which is simultaneously concerning and nice to see.