The reality is our government has interests. Morality and interests are orthogonal, with the latter being influenced primarily by profits or some perceived direct or indirect threat to America’s elite.
Sounds like the USSR, only that we get rid of this delusion almost 30 years ago. Now it's slowly coming back thanks to the Russian government's propaganda, but it is still far from the present US level.
What is unsettling is that the US is clearly not a dictatorship (or at least, not like "any dictatorship ever"). It manages to stay reasonably democratic even with this and other dictatorship enabling mechanism (powerful Executive Power, heavy sectorial financing of the government, etc). On this point, they are exceptional.
I don't understand how people still believe the US is an exceptionally democratic country even after learning about how democracy is implemented here. The whole thing with Electoral College and two-party system is just the tip of the iceberg. For me, it was the revelation about the existence of riders [0] that was the final nail in the coffin of my belief in democracy.
+ significant increases in secret courts and endless budgets and free reign for intelligence agencies that report to executive branch.
All shifts that have been happening over the last two decades.
It only becomes a problem to most people when someone they don't like is given those powers. Which is why they should never have those powers in the first place. Something many have warned about this for a long time and something the US has had a unique history of pushing back against, which is now long ago.
Even when the plot will cast doubt on the legitimacy of the conflict and the actions of the heroes, those will still be the protagonists (and with the humanizing superiority of at least being able to be morally conflicted about their actions), whereas the nuances of the other side are either hidden altogether, or obscured by some "we're all human after all/both sides are equally at fault" message.
I think I can give you a simple reason: Hollywood. Through movies and TV shows, America has been defining the mass culture for the past few decades, for almost the entire world.
[1] https://theconversation.com/washington-dcs-role-behind-the-s...
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-...
I think this can conflate cause/effect. Hollywood creates these movies and stories because the people producing them believe the narrative.
It's interesting to me which narratives are questioned, and which aren't. The Vietnam War is widely considered controversial, but World War 2 was about defeating the evil Nazis, period, right? Adam Curtis has some interesting interviews with soldiers in The Living Dead about this topic; often the men on the ground couldn't tell good from bad.
Much of the mess we are facing in last 20th century till now is due to that. Countries literally raped for centuries, all their wealth stolen. Generations raised as servants to powerful overlords. Promoting more submissive minorities into ruling classes. Afterwards some idiots in their tea club draw semi-random lines on the maps when creating new countries, creating perfect storm for future conflicts.
And what we have today? Colonialism with a modern face - continuous brain drain so that only poor uneducated or lazy stay in their home country. And of course resource drain never stopped, look at companies like Royal Dutch Shell or DeBeers and many, many others.
I think it’s pretty obvious why people aren’t ashamed. Because they didn’t do the act. Take your expectation of shame to it’s conclusion: It’s very selective to only call out European colonialist countries as being ones where shame should be expected. If we are looking at crimes across history everyone on the planet must end up ashamed of their ancestry as there are few innocents. Not like the current borders and genetic make up of countries in Europe has been static throughout history, let alone every other plot of land in the world.
How else could any human or organization function if not by acting in ways they believe are right?
>The reality is our government has interests.
The reality is everyone has interests. The "government" isn't some homogeneous entity pushing towards a single plan; it's an incredibly complex network of individuals.
The nation isn't perfect, but does anyone really believe that, on net, America hasn't been a force for good in the world? What is your benchmark?
Wow. You really never moved out of your bubble, did you?
There are many people(not just IS extremists) who consider the US-Empire as plain evil.
And much more who just think of US as arrogant, ignorant, self righteous bricks who try to enforce the american way of life on the whole world. And covertly or openly destroy anyone who opposes.
Now I am not that extreme, in my view and I actually think that good or bad, all in all, probably yes, but there is too much truth in the accusation. And you proved the ignorant part very well.
(btw. technology and science are the things that do the net good for me ... but politicaly, hell no. Just another empire posing as nice to go after selfish motives. Nicer than other empires maybe but still a empire)
What seems especially confusing to me is that "empire" has a very specific negative connotation but it's rarely out and out said what people who say "empire" actually think the US's crime is. I could imagine it to mean the way we treated Native Americans, but it doesn't seem like that's actually what's being talked about most of the time. Furthermore if we're talking just about global economic and cultural influence, that's voluntary(?) so the connotation meant doesn't work there.
What's the real deal here? What are we actually talking about?
And just to be clear I'm very much against US interventionalism but that doesn't constitute an empire... Or does it?
Also, openly destroying people for disagreeing with the "American Way Of Life" isn't something I've seen before. Are your referring to the Cold War, or stuff with the Middle East?
And yes, for people being dominated by it, it has a negative connotation.
Different from a democracy and federation. Because a democracy fighting for freedom and ... well democracy, would not do this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in...
"During the Cold War in particular, the U.S. government secretly supported military coups that overthrew democratically elected governments in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, the Congo in 1960, Brazil in 1964 and Chile in 1973. "
This is what empires do.
Dominating their way onto weaker states, by all means. Sanctions, assasinations, supporting, supressing, blocking, sending weapons and ultimatively troops. There is a reason why there are US bases all over the world.
And yes, sometimes that can be a net gain, like in Nazi Germany, but usually all the human rights democracy talk is just facade.
And also yes, smaller states do the same, act like empires, but the US is by far the largest Power since the USSR vanished.
But china is on the rise and europe likes to be an empire as well ... but for example with europe I have the hope that we tend to stay more a democratic federation and not go down that path as well.
It's important to note that, at some size any nation becomes an "empire" by that definition-- it really isn't possible to not do that, and survive. Beyond a certain amount influence, there will be constant threats to security and prosperity and people trying to harm you, and rightly or not the solution any government would look to for these problems is violence. Because government is fundamentally based on force, inside and out (government is enforced at the point of a gun). So to say that the US's government is uniquely terrible is not really true.
Also for the most part the actions of the US are in service to what they say they are in service to. On this I disagree with you slightly: the values US talks about are usually not a facade. And the times that they are, those become highly contentious actions, even in the US, whereas in other countries I don't know that they would be-- so to act as if the US's people are uniquely terrible is again very disingenuous.
In the example that you quote, those actions were clearly in the interest of toppling an even greater evil. I don't think this rationale is morally right, but you could say we went with the "lesser evil".
So I agree with you, that the US does act like an empire, and that other countries would too if they had to or could.
However I see a lot of specific condemnations of the US as if it were unique. That's more what I was responding to. I don't think either of us think that's right.
I never said that. What is unique with the US is just that you are the biggest power today. That's why so much of the negativity is focused on your empire. If china would be dominating, it would be them. (and I know their human right standards are much lower)
But with this I disagree very much:
"It's important to note that, at some size any nation becomes an "empire" by that definition-- it really isn't possible to not do that, and survive"
If you are powerful, because your people work hard and efficient, why do you have to invade other countries?
"Beyond a certain amount influence, there will be constant threats to security and prosperity"
Because they are a threat to your prosperity, because they don't sell you their ressources at a price you want?
Note that many people think, that terrorism is the answer because their land was exploited.
Understood. (: I was mostly going on a tangent there, where I was responding to the kind of comments my OG comment in this thread responded to.
> If you are powerful, because your people work hard and efficient, why do you have to invade other countries?
Perhaps because a country is funding terrorist attacks against you and/or preparing nuclear weapons or ICBMs to attack you with?
> Because they are a threat to your prosperity, because they don't sell you their ressources at a price you want?
I'm very against force retaliation for things that are not force initiation. That's not what I meant so perhaps I should elaborate, although it's a red herring away from my main point: what is included in acting like an empire is anything that expands a nation's influence and domination. That doesn't specify the use of force. So something like having trade wars with countries that refuse to stop ignoring copyright and subsidizing their own products in a dubious way, would be included in acting like an empire. And since those countries are leveraging state power to control the market, why shouldn't the US be allowed to retaliate in kind, since that's apparently OK?
(Side note: I don't think we should have started the trade wars, personally. I think it's an unfortunate circumstance for the economy. But I think doing that kind of thing, once again, is an inevitable necessity for a state because it has to prove it can't be taken advantage of).
> Note that many people think, that terrorism is the answer because their land was exploited.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean here.
It seems like American Exceptionalism has been shifting from a definition of “America is unique” to “America is perfect”. Obviously no country can meet the 2nd definition.
America has definitely been a force for good in the world, but just like every other organization run by humans, it makes mistakes and sometimes succumbs to human weakness like greed and overconfidence.
>How else could any human or organization function if not by acting in ways they believe are right?
Being convinced that you're always right is not the same as doing the right thing or acting the right way.
>The nation isn't perfect, but does anyone really believe that, on net, America hasn't been a force for good in the world? What is your benchmark?
Hoo, boy. No, America hasn't been "a force for good in the world", because that's a really naive, simplistic idea. America has done many things in (and to) the world. Some of them have been good for certain groups of people at certain times.
Lots of people all over the world who have been on the receiving end of US military or economic aggression enacted in the interests of the US plutocrats.
African Americans, Native Americans, most of South America, pretty much all of the Middle East and North Africa, anyone who has suffered structural violence as a result of the US's insistence on a morally bankrupt Friedman hack-job neoliberal economic ideology.
The US has done a lot of good things, but on balance I think it's done more damage and has merely replaced the British Empire as the current Anglo-sphere imperialist power.
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-icc/u-s-imposes-visa-... https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2009/0213/p05s01-woeu...
Do you believe that in the countries where the US has intervened that without US involvement things would be that much better? Seems to me that when the US supported a dictatorship, the alternative wasn’t a thriving democracy but just another dictatorship aligned to a different power.