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Comment by dmitrygr | Hacker News Reader

> These nations chose to for it to have authority over them.

Refresh my memory, what did USA choose about that?

So far the last several Presidents of the USA have decided they don't want that.

If you equate what the Presidents of the USA want to what the USA itself wants, then the USA have decided they don't want that.

If not, then you'd need to organize a referendum and let the population itself decide on a one person, one vote basis.

Where the "what" is human rights. Pretty much horrific things I'd rather not describe.

Then they got mad that the rest of the world didn't approve of actually doing the horrific things.

And then no one wanted to buy bonds from the country endorsing the horrific acts.

> If not, then you'd need to organize a referendum and let the population itself decide on a one person, one vote basis.

Our founders smartly chose against direct democracy. The more I look around, the more right I see they were.

The US created its predecessor with the Nuremberg Trials. (Which I'm pretty sure Nazi Germany never signed up for, fwiw)

Rules for thee, not for me.

Rules apply to those on whom they are enforced by those who can enforce. News at 11.

I see we went from feigned concern over consent to just open hypocrisy. Telling, and a very appropriate representation of American policy. I wonder why your global power is waning?

Nothing to do with America. This is how the world works.

Again, you started by talking about consent.

This pivot to brute force exposes the hypocrisy not in the world, but specifically in America, as represented by the American citizen I am talking to.

It's also not "how the world works", it's how the world works while America has the power to make it work that way.

Thankfully, it is a self-defeating approach.

Those with power setting the rules is the way the world worked long before America. It never changed nor could it, as anyone with power would eventually tire of being told how to live

I think you are desperately trying to universalize the particular as a way to reconcile the two conflicting ideological frames you're trying to uphold, and I think your country exhibits the same ideological crisis.

As a simple counterexample to this universalism, think of the European Union. Germany and France could impose their will on smaller neighbors (and did, in less enlightened times!), but they don't, because y'know, they actually believe in rule of law, consent and consensus.

Or as an example closer to home - the Canada / US relationship before recent American aggression.

Things don't have to work by unilateral aggression. It is a specific ideological choice, it is not a law of nature. Now I understand it might feel different while enveloped in said ideology (it literally determines what we perceive to be possible after all!), the same way a Muslim fanatic would attribute everything to Allah's plan, but I'm not really interested in self-justifications.

> Germany and France could impose their will on smaller neighbors

and do...

For example Hungary is being fined daily for attempting self-determination https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clww729180po

It is hilarious that you think they WANT to be fined.

My dude, Hungary being fined by the club it signed up for makes your point only if your point was that the library dominates you with their late return fees. Not only did Hungary consent to these rules, it could've at any point withdrawn consent through Article 50.

Additionally, this is from 2024, Hungary has since democratically elected a government on the express platform of getting rid of the wannabe dictator that got them fined.

You've mistaken the mere existence of enforcement for domination, just like you keep mistaking ideological preference for natural law.

Also notice the words you used: "attempting self-determination". Weren't you just making the point that might makes right? In that view, Brussels has the power, Hungary doesn't, News at 11, yada yada.

But nobody actually lives by "might makes right", you included. As soon as its somebody you're sympathetic to, the cold realism drops and we're back to consent and sovereignty. That is my point. It's just a line people use to defend power arrangements they like, to be dropped for ones they don't.

They didn't. But they're big mad that ICC put out warrants for Netanyahu etc.

EDIT: forgot the peace prize, trump likely mad over that again.

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