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Comment by happy_man | Hacker News Reader

"The US is a representative democracy that has rule of law"

The above statement holds, whoever it never stopped the support (material, logistical, etc) of murdereos regimes all over the world. Look, I'm not an idealist, I understand that the US is a power hegemon and as such it will always impose its will on smaller countries, same as the UK or France did in the past. What irritates me is that its citizens are convinced that they are "the good guys", when evidence against that is so overwhelming. At least the UK was clear in its intentions "we are building/defending the British Empire"

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Comparing mercantile colonial Britain with USA of today is like comparing slavery to low-income job, they may look and feel the same from outside but there is a world of difference.

Ironic comparison given that the British Empire banned slavery before the American Civil War.

“Past empires were even worse” is not much consolation if the US uses its economic might to drive your country to ruin and your countrymen to unemployment and starvation, trains and arms paramilitary soldiers to come rape and massacre your neighbors, bombs your village to rubble, props up the autocratic military dictatorship ruling your country, etc.

There are dozens of countries and millions of lives around the world which US military/foreign policy has left in ruins.

Which is not to say that the US is any worse than other global powers, or that a world where the US was completely isolationist would necessarily be better. But its hardly the force for divine progress and prosperity that we Americans often pretend it is to ourselves.

> They may look and feel the same from outside

This isn't as comforting as you seem to think it is, when you're talking to people on the outside.

the good old "i only shot you once when all those people would have shot you 3 times" defense.

> What irritates me is that its citizens are convinced that they are "the good guys"

It will be interesting to see how well this ages. Looking at past iterations of global power(s), this era seems like one of the best. Sure, the US has done some evil, but it at least pretends to follow the law most of the time. It may have started some wars and interfered where it shouldn't, but nowhere to the degree of past global powers.

At the end of the day, the US never interferes with religious freedom, accepts homosexuality, and tends to treat men and women as equal. That has literally never happened before in the history of world powers.

I'm pretty sure the Persian empire did all those things.

Treat men and women as equals?

"In general, we can say that Persian women enjoyed power, influence, and economic opportunities. They were involved in the military and owned businesses, and held the same jobs as men. Some women never married or had children, but this wasn't seen as a problem. However, Ancient Persian society was still patriarchal, and for the most part, men held higher positions than women.

One of the reasons that Ancient Persians held women in high regard might have been their religion. Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion, and its ideology stressed that men and women were equals. Naturally, this would shape the worldview of Ancient Persians, and we can say that overall women were seen as important figures in society."

https://study.com/academy/lesson/women-in-ancient-persia-roy...

Funny fun fact about Zoroastrianism: "British musician Freddie Mercury, lead singer for the rock band Queen, was of Parsi descent. Mercury, born Farrokh Bulsara, practiced Zoroastrianism."

The description in the first paragraph perfectly fits a lot of Western countries today.

Yes, what you see today in Iran has nothing to do with thousands of years of Persian empire. Persians are quite far from arabs in many aspects. I blame US and Britain, but mainly US for today's situation - their constant meddling, installing corrupt leaders and eventually pissing off radicals enough to revolt and take power.

You know why US embassy was stormed like it was? Because CIA was actively using it as a base of their operations. How you would like if your own resource-rich country was constantly interfered with bunch of spies who hide in their embassy but feel so comfortable that they don't even hide it too well?

They should have kicked staff out of country (even though most didn't have diplomatic immunity and were helping subvert the state they were in - this is still heavily punishable everywhere around the world today). Instead jailing them gave US marketing fodder to paint them as pure evil. Not that they are saints, but Saudi Arabia just next door ain't much better but was, is and will be a big US friend, as seen with treatment of horrible Khashoggi case.

Countries don't have friends. They have interests...

I didn't imply it as a reference to today's Iran, but specifically to e.g. Parthian Persia.

People in US know so little about other countries history... Women were treated equal to men long time ago in the USSR, for example (about 100 years ago).

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