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Comment by llamaimperative | Hacker News Reader

Considering in recent history the other contenders were imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, the USSR, or communist China… yeah the US is preferable to all of those by a wide margin.

You know, simple things like 1) not forcing their own women and children to march into machine gun fire [Japan], 2) not building concentration camps and exterminating whole races [Germany], 3) not building a prison state that people regularly got shot trying to escape [USSR], or 4) a combination of all of those prior “techniques” plus a highly capable surveillance state [China]

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This seems like moving the goalpost a bit from the original statement. Surely, US is preferable when comparing them to our foes during WWII and the Cold War -- that is a pretty loaded comparison. I think the original assumption was that you were comparing US to modern-day nations. We can argue back and forth all day about the weight of the sins of the past.

It’s not moving the goalposts at all. There are a million alternate histories that were extremely unlikely to ever come true, like benevolent EU sprouting out of nowhere and providing free healthcare all over the world, or there are the “almost-true” alternate histories, like Germany winning WW2 or USSR winning the Cold War or Japan conquering and holding all of Asia.

Of the almost-true scenarios that were available in actual reality, we got a pretty good one with regard to US hegemony.

Sorry, seems like we are speaking past each other. Considering that everything you have just said may very well be true, I believe what the original question meant to ask is "how is the [modern-day] US a preferable super power to [the other modern-day options]". I do not think the original question was engaging in a thought experiment of "almost true" realities or alternate histories.

What other options are those? I tried to list all recent and current alternatives (China being the only current one IMO?). Who’d I miss?

do you think the USA hasn't done the things you've cited?

US operates secret prisons, overthrows governments they don't agree with, and murders innocent people.

Yes, and? Are you under the impression those other regimes wouldn't be doing those things after they had gained superpower status?

Because if they would, then this point isn’t relevant to which is preferable, is it?

i was just wondering why the US is a preferable superpower like you said.

edit: the > a

All the other contenders that I'm aware of do these things, except much worse, and then on top of it, hide it much better (because that's possible to do if you're a one-party system)

https://reason.com/2014/05/15/be-antigovernment-and-proud/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide

Democratic, capitalist states commit the least democide.

Nope can’t remember the last time (1) or (3) happened. The treatment of Natives long ago comes close to (2) but obviously is not ongoing (not to imply the effects aren’t still disastrous). And no, when Americans complain about the US surveillance state they’re either talking about a much different thing than China, or they’re an idiot.

Don't forget the concentration camps for Japanese Americans in WWII: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Ameri...

However much of an injustice they were, the US closed its internment camps (via constitutional balances) without the need for coersion by foreign powers. That to me makes them much more forgivable than Jim Crow or Gitmo.

These were not an extermination campaign and so are not really analogous to Indian reservations or Nazi concentration camps. Obviously they were awful!

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