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For me, this actually was the tipping point. In social groups I hung out I was usually the guy who'd defend America on numerous accounts, but in the last few we

by clicks 13y ago

For me, this actually was the tipping point. In social groups I hung out I was usually the guy who'd defend America on numerous accounts, but in the last few weeks I've been bombarded by a load of information which I find to be truly chilling. By the way, it is interesting to note how we separate our past history from our active perceptions of the place. America's early history is not too bright -- we did some of the most batshit evil stuff you could think of: genocide of Red Indians, slavery (which to me when I really sit down and think deep about, sometimes, seems worse than just killing a person -- it's fucking killing the very dignity and respect every human being is owed, it's depriving them of any and all pleasures to life). I don't think we've made much amends for it -- the cycle of poverty still persists for a lot of African American folks, there are rather few social programs that really try to help them in meaningfully substantive ways. There are folks alive to this very day who faced system institutional racism from our government. We did some pretty evil stuff during and after the Cold war too -- someone linked this in another post yesterday: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio... -- this one truly shocked me: Researchers in the United States have performed thousands of human radiation experiments to determine the effects of atomic radiation and radioactive contamination on the human body, generally on people who were poor, sick, or powerless. It has suddenly become a lot more uncomfortable for me living in America in these few weeks after some reading (especially as I'm actually a foreigner to this land -- I escaped a different country through asylum some while back). It is apparently completely uncontroversial that United States experimented on poor people with radioactive contamination... how do I know the US won't poison me with some biological weapon as an experiment, or because I'm currently unemployed (and thus poor)?

alan_cx 13y ago
Thanks for that. I understand your position a lot better now. Interesting that you chose to escape to the US. So, its not like you had negative feeling form the start, in fact, the exact opposite. The US represented not just freedom, but perhaps life for you, perhaps too your family. So, I guess it must be quite hard for you to have to re-evaluate that. For me, the jarring thing is that for years I was able to sit here in the UK claiming some sort of moral superiority and intelligent of policy/thought. I suppose that deep down I know that was BS, but in this spying think I feel we are actually worse. To be honest, the tow post 9/11 wars were a huge dent, but this is twisting the knife as it were.
ims 13y ago
The history of human civilization in general has been one of force and savagery, gradually (and not monotonically) becoming more civilized. It's an interesting idea that a country (that is, the people living in a certain country) should have some kind of "original sin" for things that happened before they were born. Ask a German how they feel about that idea. Even so, there is nothing special about the United States in the respects that you mentioned. Learning about history is the antidote to that belief.
- mpyne 13y ago
  > It's an interesting idea that a country (that is, the people living in a certain country) should have some kind of "original sin" for things that happened before they were born. Interesting, but not at all controversial, especially here.

by clicks 13y ago

alan_cx 13y ago

Thanks for that. I understand your position a lot better now. Interesting that you chose to escape to the US. So, its not like you had negative feeling form the start, in fact, the exact opposite. The US represented not just freedom, but perhaps life for you, perhaps too your family. So, I guess it must be quite hard for you to have to re-evaluate that. For me, the jarring thing is that for years I was able to sit here in the UK claiming some sort of moral superiority and intelligent of policy/thought. I suppose that deep down I know that was BS, but in this spying think I feel we are actually worse. To be honest, the tow post 9/11 wars were a huge dent, but this is twisting the knife as it were.

ims 13y ago

The history of human civilization in general has been one of force and savagery, gradually (and not monotonically) becoming more civilized. It's an interesting idea that a country (that is, the people living in a certain country) should have some kind of "original sin" for things that happened before they were born. Ask a German how they feel about that idea. Even so, there is nothing special about the United States in the respects that you mentioned. Learning about history is the antidote to that belief.

mpyne 13y ago
> It's an interesting idea that a country (that is, the people living in a certain country) should have some kind of "original sin" for things that happened before they were born. Interesting, but not at all controversial, especially here.