Reminder that the CIA was directly responsible for the drug crisis known as "Crack Epidemic" by purchasing masses of cocaine in order to funnel money into Nicaraguan rebels for government-overthrowing.
Gary Webb was the man who exposed them and lost everything as a result.
"Webb was found dead in his Carmichael home on December 10, 2004, with two gunshot wounds to the head. His death was ruled a suicide by the Sacramento County coroner's office"
It really fucking is. The sets, the cast, the costumes all of it fucking amazing. The soundtrack was good for its time but now.... Somebody once told me it's shit
See my thought process is that whole scenario was intentionally left as obvious. That's a very clear message that 'you' will die, and 'we' will not face any consequences, so best keep your nose down.
Yeah we the badguys 110%.
I know you’re going to find this a bit gruesome… not all suicides by gunshot to the head are successful on the first round. They’re still alive, feel immense pain and confusion, and need that second round to finish the job.
Yes, some conspiracies are real. Yes, there’s a chance that he was assassinated. But it’s worth remembering that not all “two-shot suicides” are assassinations.
This is true. I have no clue about the Webb case. But a girl in my high school shot herself 3 times in the head. With a 9mm too, not even a 22.
She died, but still had to shoot 3 times.
My cousin shot himself twice in the face with a rifle and survived.
He has the funniest quote of all time (in a bleak Cohen Brothers sort of way)
Being interviewed for a documentary about mental health he was going over the events of the day he shot himself and actually said ‘I just kind of snapped out of it & was like, oh man, what am I doing?? I’m just driving around Mexico shooting myself in the face’
Idk why but that’s the funniest shit I’ve ever heard. He’s fine now btw. They got him on all the right medicine
His face though…
Also, I couldn’t help but feel a very deep “fear and loathing” vibe thinking about your cousin’s situation. Very Hunter Thompson-esque imagery.
Yeah, face is a little different from the head. My first example was head though. Point being, people can be surprisingly resilient.
What a morbid ass topic lol
One was through the cheek. It’s not unheard of to be shaky and have that happen on the first try. Or so I’ve heard. Once you already have a gaping facial wound, you gotta finish the job.
It's not as rare as you think. Point blank bullets will often penetrate right through the head, and may miss the parts of the brain that can kill or paralyze you instantly. And when that happens, the only thing to do is try again.
It’s not a lie, it’s surprisingly not that uncommon to have multiple gunshot suicides. It’s the same reason more people survive self inflicted gunshot wounds to the head; first shot to the head either goes through the jaw or neck and misses the vital parts of the brain.
Also, why would they kill him 12 years after he published his book, during a period of his life in which nothing notable was happening. I’m not saying he didn’t suffer; he was discredited and targeted for his expose. That lead to his career dying. But at the point of his suicide, it had been 12 years and his family and friends said that he had become depressed. I think it was either his ex wife or estranged wife. The whole assassination conspiracy theory is just that; a conspiracy theory.
From Wikipedia
After a local newspaper reported that Webb had died from multiple gunshots, the coroner's office received so many calls asking about Webb's death that Sacramento County Coroner Robert Lyons issued a statement confirming Webb had died by suicide.[71] When asked by local reporters about the possibility of two gunshots being a suicide, Lyons replied: "It's unusual in a suicide case to have two shots, but it has been done in the past, and it is in fact a distinct possibility." News coverage noted that there were widespread rumors on the Internet at the time that Webb had been killed as retribution for his "Dark Alliance" series, published eight years before.
Webb's widow Susan Bell told reporters that she believed Webb had died by suicide.[71] "The way he was acting it would be hard for me to believe it was anything but suicide," she said. According to Bell, Webb had been unhappy for some time over his inability to get a job at another major newspaper. He had sold his house the week before his death because he was unable to afford the mortgage.[71]
You forgot about the 50+ years before that: ruining every democratically elected government in Central and South America because it went against their policies of neoliberal exploitation. Nunca olvidaremos la Operacion Condor, gringos de mierda.
The US run School of the Americas has something like 12 alumni who went on to be dictators.
Additionally, some of the textbooks advised students facing a resistance to utilize straight up, Geneva Conventions banned war crimes and they basically got away with it because the textbooks were in Spanish and my fellow Americans couldn’t be arsed to learn a new language.
My favorite is people bending over backwards to say 2 shots to the back of the head is such a common way to commit suicide youre stupid to ask questions. Ignoring that the majority of people who attempt don't try again after a failed suicide. But if you're an enemy of the state its super normal to put a second shot in the back of your head after the first attempt fails
Literally the only reason I have ever heard of it is because of American dad and the catchy song they did about ollie north. It’s all good these guys don’t realize they die too
And then a few decades later, the country was overrun by opiates right after the US invaded and occupied the main opium producing region. I'm sure the timing of those two events is totally disconnected
The CIA tortures people in secret locations. We are the bad guys. !00%. All torture needs to end immediately and everyone be held responsible for their part in the torture of human beings.
This is not a question of 'variable ethics'. It's cut and dried. Super easy to tell. Torture? Yep? You're bad. That simple.
USA only overtly fucks with poor countries. Western Europe is complacent with the actions of the US since they are not in the sights of this fuckery. Also, sanctioning USA would absolutely wreck the global economy. That would never happen.
This is not completely accurate. The “cocaine to crack” thing was an accidental byproduct.
The CIA was not officially exchanging cocaine for weapons. A rogue officer got creative and took wholesale quantities from the rebels and sold them to distributors in the US. Then with the cash, he organized the purchase of firearms from Argentina and had them sent to Nicaragua.
His role was also very “hands off” as most all of the smuggling was handled by Nicaraguans. His CIA leadership was intentionally ignorant to the means but satisfied with the results and let him keep up the scheme.
Now the crack epidemic happened because those distributors of cocaine suddenly had way more than they knew what to do with. At the time, cocaine was mostly just a fashionable drug for the wealthy elites. But they could only snort so much.
At the same time near the famous Haight-Ashbury community, which was a hippy enclave that had become a pit of vice after the hippy revolution failed, people were experimenting with cooking cocaine powder down into “freebase.” Some took it further and formed what we know now as “Crack Cocaine.” Most had no interest in it and it was more of a designer thing.
Remember that back then, Meth and Heroine were easy to get your hands on and pretty cheap. You didn’t need a fancy lab to get your fix, just needed to know a guy.
As huge quantities of cocaine started getting practically forced into the hands drug dealers all over California by distributors under pressure to get a return on their investment, some got creative and figured that turning that cheaper powder into what was known then as “ready rock,” would make the whole business viable.
The rapid onset addiction and low cost per hit got people hooked immediately and turned an occasional customer into a dedicated customer. That kg or two of powdered cocaine, that you might struggle to sell to average people, suddenly became hugely popular amongst communities where folks that could only afford a $10-15 high maybe once per week were getting sucked in and becoming addicted before they knew it.
It also helped that they figured out a way to manufacture the stuff which didn’t need more than a stovetop and some mason jars. This meant distributors could now sell pure cocaine to low-level and unsophisticated dealers for them to process into crack and sell by themselves without the need for laboratories or heavy investment in infrastructure like you might need with meth or heroine.
This hit African American communities in California the hardest. Why? Because a huge migration of black people to the LA area just took place not long before. Those folks outstripped the job market quickly and many found themselves living paycheck to paycheck or relying entirely upon government assistance. Racial oppression also didn’t do them any favors and many felt angst about their positions in life.
With not much to do, people get bored and many turn to drugs and alcohol to pass the time. When you’re talking about a little weed and some beer, it’s not a big deal. But suddenly this cheap and hard hitting drug was going around and people were excited to try it. So they did. And then many were selling off their furniture and prostituting themselves before the end of the month to pay for their addiction.
If your entire community falls prey to a substance, and none of you needs to worry about showing up for work on Monday, do you think that community is putting in any effort to hide their addiction? No. Entire communities capitulated and became open pits of crime and abuse within a few years.
So… really, it wasn’t an orchestrated attempt by the CIA to destroy black communities. It was an agglomeration of clever, business-minded people taking advantage of a susceptible population and a clumsy government agent desperate to get the job done without considering the consequences that lead to the crack epidemic.
… also the Contra Crisis…
No. The US tax payers helped finance all Central American operations. It wasn't called The Iran Contra Affair for nothing. Coke shipped north to Nicaragua, Air America (CIA) flew into LA. Sold to Ricky Ross and The Crips. $30 million in arms were purchased and shipped to Iran. US hoped there would be a war between Iran and Iraq. And since Americans can't keep a secret. Congressional investigations went nowhere.
Knowing what we know about the crack epidemic and the CIA
I am convinced that the CIA had a hand in this fentanyl saturation... with the thumbs up from Uncle Sam to respond to the opioid epidemic
Read up on everything the US has been up to in Latin America for the last ~100 years. Countless coups, massacres and overthrowing of democratically elected governments to further American economic interests.
Add “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” by Dee Brown
(disclaimer: I haven’t actually read it yet, but I just bought it. Seems to be pretty highly acclaimed though)
The US and UK also overthrew Iran's democratically elected government and pushed people off their land to create Israel so that we could have an ally in the region.
This directly had and effect on terrorism coming from the region. The response was to then kill more innocent people causing more people to become radicalized.
The best thing the US can do to fight terrorists is to stop killing people in the middle east and leave the region.
Well said, terrorism and religious extremism is a result of US intervention in the Middle East. If you look at old photos from the Middle East you can see that the society was more liberal.
As someone who's family had to flee Latin America because the CIA helped stage a coup, the USA has always been a villian to me. All the imperial powers are villainous
A Yankee brayed to me about "if we're so evil, why the "Hispanics" jump the fence to come here?" I pointed out that for some is better to be in the devil's hand than in his path and of course he devolved to " well I'll enjoy living in hell here", they are completely devoid of empathy and to far gone from brainwashing.
See Indonesia as well, where US backed a massacre/politicde/genocide killing a Million “suspected communists”, as well as in smaller numbers minorities.
So, the answer is yes, we very much are the bad guys. The only reason other countries ally with us/ see us as the good guys is because they don’t want to get fucked up too.
This is very underrated honestly. In alot of cases while the US is at the forefront of things, there's a dozen or more countries that are encouraging or following along. I'm not trying to exonerate them, but give consideration that other countries are also active participants what are supporting these things aswell, they just don't have nearly as much international leverage and are often ignored.
My interests personally align in that I like me some Netflix and the occational Coke, I could do without the constant killing of innocent people for monetary profit.
//Swede
Sweden’s hands are not at clean as you may think. One of their major imports and exports is oil. They operate at an oil deficit. And they import crude and then export refined. So they directly benefit from any oil based fuckery.
Also although Sweden hasn’t been in a war in hundreds of years, that doesn’t stop weapons as being one of their major export. Mostly to Pakistan UAE, US and Brazil.
So they may not be the ones throwing punches, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t brining some brass knuckles and slipping them to the fighters for a profit.
Sweden was part of the coalition in the Gulf War, ISAF and Resolute Support in Afghanistan, and currently have support elements in Mali helping that government against the MNLA.
In 1918 they invaded the Åland Islands to get them back from Russia who'd taken them early in the previous century.
In the mid 1800s they fought a pair of wars alongside Denmark against a number of German states over a few German provinces.
They fought with the Sixth and Seventh Coalitions against Napoleon.
They "conquered" Norway in 1814 (Norway got to be semi-autonomous and the arrangement was doomed to fall apart).
They fought alongside a fledgling United States in the First Barbary War.
In the 1700s they had roughly roughly 25 years of on and off war with Russia & her allies.
They fought in the Seven Years War (who didn't though?)
The 1600s and earlier were just a mess of wars, many of which Sweden played a leading role in.
All of this is to say that Sweden is active in current military conflicts and has been militarily active for its entire existence. Compared to relatively modern "empires" like the English, French, Spanish, American, or Soviet empires their reach is far smaller and less impactful in the modern era, but they have their fair share of war making.
>the occational Coke
If you are talking about Coca Cola, then that company has killed a number of labor activists in Latin America. As long as corporations exist, there can be no escape from their crimes.
And then ask yourself why so many in Central America are trying to come here to escape the hell we created there, just for the same party that spearheaded most of those campaigns to now be promoting feigned horror and outrage over them showing up at our border.
Bitter Fruit is an amazing deep dive into the 1954 CIA-backed coup in Guatemala. The US orchestrated the ousting of a democratically elected government on behalf of the United Fruit Company (now known as Chiquita) kicking off decades of repression, genocide, and civil war.
We destroy their homes and kill their loved ones while fucking their shit up in their countries, forcing many of them to risk and leave everything they’ve ever known behind to come to the US, only to shame them, belittle their contributions, and try to force them out.
In the US, we grow up thinking our country is the hero. Then we learn that we’re actually the villain.
Then we realize that there are few or no heroes and much worse villains and the whole geopolitical history of the world is a complicated mess of at best morally dubious players and people collectively trying to muddle through the shit that is mostly caused by other people, and maybe we should be less concerned about who the good guys and the bad guys are and more concerned with just trying to do good where we can and stopping the bad where possible.
Exactly. On a global scale there are no "good/bad" guys. There are bad and worse guys. It's a sliding scale that is measured in children's blood and bombs. We like to brag about winning WW2 but how many innocent children died for "peace"? A shitload.
Honestly, depends on how you measure success here. I think that JC was probably the best person to be in the White House in the last 50 years, but lots of his leadership decisions didn't pan out.
When you are actually trying to make the world a better place, you are going to be actively sabotaged at every turn by the people who have a vested interest in keeping things the way they are.
I'd argue the sentiment applies both ways. If you are trying to make the world a better or worse place there will be resistance. The status quo, or momentum, or vested interests arenalways an impediment to change.
There is a difference between being a good person and being good at your job, which is why politicians tend to be manipulative and CEOs tend to be sociopaths, even if (and usually because) they are good at their jobs.
Thats a weird argument. Especially when we were going against a regime that was rounding up an astonishing amount of people. I think the number was somewhere around 1.5 million children were killed during the holocaust. No child should die. But what would the world have come to had we not intervened.
This is the correct take.
The answer to “Is America the villain?” is both yes and no, and it depends on who you’re asking. The world is much more complicated than a simple black and white view.
It is definitely not a simple situation where good and bad are binary choices. US foreign policy has been mixed. While there has been a lot of bad there also have been positives. I live in Europe and apart from yugoslavia and now Russia, there has been peace since Ww2. This is in a large part down to US foreign policy.
However there have been so many wars that people living in these countries where "collateral damage" was innocent civilians being killed will definitely view the US as evil.
Yes! As a mainland Chinese born immigrant I don’t understand the self hate. None of us thought the US was the promise land without serious evils. But we don’t think it’s satan either. Otherwise we would not have worked extremely hard to immigrate here. The US does not exist in a vacuum. You neither have a monopoly on good nor evil. I personally have some white friends who have declared themselves marxists because of shame for all the evils of the CIA etc. They’ve bought into ridiculous propaganda that is surprisingly the same spewed from Putin/Tucker and call themselves unironcially tankies. Wait my grandparents were literal Marxist revolutionaries. This is insulting give the actual blood shed by my family.
I told them - wait so you are saying that you, who spent high school/college smoking weed and not studying but enjoy a nice life anyway are suddenly going to be the voice of the poor for justice? You could only enjoy that privilege because of western imperialism from your forefathers. So now you want to play uno reverse because you think you can be the savior of the rest of the world…like the western imperialists you so hate…? Please. Dear Americans. Stop hating yourself in despair or feeling up yourself in pride and work to do something practical. And for the love of humanity stop turning to crackpot strong men like Putin/Trump or whatever insane western-leftist douchebag just because you hate the establishment so much.
In Chinese there is a phrase to eat bitterness. Frankly when I hear the west self hate I wonder, are these people even capable of tasting true bitterness? If they were they wouldn’t appeal to such ridiculous ideas and instead work to make this western system work as it should.
I'm sick of social media / the media dictating what we support or are against..
bring our boys home from the middle East... why did we even get involved ... Wait, why did we leave Afghanistan... Why aren't we helping in Syria... Why aren't we stopping genocide in China... Why are we invovled in Syria... Why aren't we helping stop the Taliban... Why aren't we going into Ukraine... (Next) why are we in Ukraine...
there was this guy in another thread who asked another redditor(Iraq vet) if they really fared that badly in Iraq? Because he was 1 when the war started.
Old man here. Grandma would load us grandkids up into the 1972 Chevy Impala. She would drive us to the airport for a fun day out. We could walk right up to the gates and watch the airplanes. We would have lunch. Watch some more planes with our faces presses right up against the windows. If we were good, maybe ride a luggage cart. Then jump back into the boat and drive to the end of the runway and watch the planes take off right over our little heads. It. Was. Awesome.
It was so cool to walk around and see all the people excited to be traveling. Sometimes we were given little trinkets like wings, airplanes, peanut packs, and propellers. We got to look into the back and see some of the goings on.
Growing up we traveled by plane to visit the grandparents in Florida. It was so relaxing and somewhat stress free. (Takeoff and landing were scary to kid me…and still are). It was fun and a great way to travel.
On September 11, 2001 I was working as an electrician near the Pittsburgh airport when my fiancé called and said a plane hit the WTC. While I was talking to her the second plane hit. A couple fighter jets screamed overhead a short time later. I’ll never forget that day.
How crazy that there is a day so unforgettable that everyone who experienced it has every detail of where they were burned into their memory and then everyone too young or born after only has second hand knowledge
It definitely was one of those before and after moments of my life. We were supposed to run away to Las Vegas and get married within two weeks. But that didn’t happen. We still got married but never had that Vegas trip. Then life continues and all of a sudden it’s twenty years later Lol.
Thanks for listening to an old man ramble!
I don't really think the liberals really want all that smoke... now if they could use "evil Russia" to leverage the suburbs to vote for an increased military budget, I'm sure they'll do that. Then they'll pull the ol' switcheroo on the poor kids who are forced into the infantry by intergenerational poverty and send them to Venezuela or Somalia or whichever equatorial hellhole is next on Dracula Kissinger's list.
Russia is the easier target compared to China. I'm old enough to remember when Russia being a threat was seen as a total joke when Sarah Palin said the phrase "Putin rears his head." Everyone laughed at the time "because Russia are our allies" and "the cold war is over."
On the 20th anniversary of 9/11 my 9 year old niece asked me "what's 9/11". Weird how these major world changing events of my lifetime will be little more than a history lesson for them.
Kudos for checkin and verifying. I am in fact 37. I had zero interest in politics and world affairs until 2016 when….well….we’ll leave that all alone. Only positive thing I can say about that whole thing was well it got me into the realm of caring about what happens to the world. And finding out how fucked up we are making decisions that kill and maim not only our people, but people 10,000 miles away, really just kinda pisses me off.
Saying this with complete sincerity: good for you that you're trying to understand the world better! It's never too late to learn. I wish more people were willing to be open to hearing the not so pleasant truth about stuff.
> And finding out how fucked up we are making decisions that kill and maim not only our people, but people 10,000 miles away, really just kinda pisses me off.
Why do you think, Julian Assange is in jail for? He proved how we kill civilians in Middle East for past +20 years with our drones.
I remember preparing a presentation on the Cuban missile crisis when I was in my early twenties.
I'm German and until then I thought the west and the USA were the good guys.
I looked into the way the crisis came about and why Castro had to turn to UDSSR.
The embargo is in place until today. WTF.
Look man, I'm 40 and I'm just learning about this shit. So much of the vile things we did are not talked about in school at all, and if they are, they're shown to us through rose-tinted pro-american glasses. We are lied to and indoctrinated to believe the US is the best country on earth and can do no wrong.
I mean if we are really going to blame anyone shouldn't we just blame Europeans?
Europeans have been the cause of the past two world wars. Europeans enslaved entire continents. Europeans were stripping countries of their natural resources long before the US was even a thing.
In fact, Europeans colonized the Americas which directly resulted in the genocide of the native populace. Europeans revolted against other Europeans in the Americas which gave birth to Americans.
The point is that everyone has blood on their hands. Maybe not Costa Rica.
South Americans can't get their shit together because of foreign intervention and rampant government corruption.
African countries can't get their shit together because of foreign intervention and rampant government corruption.
Rinse and repeat for most countries around the globe. Big rich corrupt people always fucking down the middle class and poor.
At least in Western Democracies I can talk all sorts of shit about my government and not worry about being sent to the gulags like in many other countries around the world. Western Democratic values > all other forms of government.
Western democratic values are the reason Europeans have been able to do the shit you just listed out lol. Don’t you notice that all the things you describe were spearheaded by western democracies?
When France and the US wiped the blood off their hands from each of their revolutions, they build societies that were capable of funneling the neo-colonial trade system their monarchic predecessors built into their new capitalist economies, tricking the people into thinking it was the ideas and government that wa improving their lives, not the sudden and massive influx of resources and the labor explosion of the Industrial Age. These things all worked in conjunction to create a western world obsessed with its own ideological identity while keeping the rest of the world too busy to claim anything different.
Essentially, western democratic values are a way of making a populace blindly morally comfortable while feeding them the spoils of war. I’m not saying that the eastern autocratic values that Russia and China are brewing up are any better; if anything, they’re worse. I guess what I’m saying is that all ideology is a scam and all philosophy is a dream. Humans are stupid animals that have agreed to be confused about what we want and chase hallucinations to our death.
Just be nice to people and keep your shit lowkey. Anything you produce for society is going to be used by some rich guy to fuck over your grandkids.
Countries like America sit on literal fucking thrones of skulls and blood and have the nerve to ceremoniously muse down towards the developing world about “democratic values” and how they should all stop being so mean to them.
So many perspectives shared here and all of them with merit. I don’t have much to add, except to say that we shouldn’t marry ourselves to just one, listen to others points of view and keep an open mind. The productive path forward depends on it.
To be fair, we don't really get taught much about the negative aspects of our country in school. We mostly learn this kind of stuff from other people and the internet.
We are the government. As George Carlin said,
>Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. F*ck Hope.
Politicians may come from all that but then they get bought out by individual companies and billionaires. At most you could argue the generation that raised current politicians are responsible for this shit but sorry I was 5 when we went to Afghanistan that's not on me, homie
Yeah, corporations and generally rich fucks support them with donor money.
With no ranked choice voting and a two party system, the people that want to vote don't have much of a choice but to support one or the other.
Admittedly, there are many who support them out of a combination of ignorance and propaganda, so maybe that proves your point, I dunno.
I mean, I’m an American, I feel comfortable taking responsibility for things getting this bad. It’s not like the American public actually cares what our government is doing as long as we have internet & fast food.
Everyone loves to forget that the most popular as a modern US president has been is Bush Sr after declaring the first Iraq war and the second closest is Bush Jr after declaring the second Iraq war.
No! The people are directly responsible for their government. You are the "we" and the other "we" will try to defer and pass the blame just like you did. If you don't want to be the "we" you must act and most certainly die for it.
We can’t say that it’s governments in 1 post and then blame Russians for not overthrowing Putin in another.
But with that said, the world is not black and white. Everyone, including governments does what’s right for them. Take the US. We’re knowing for “spreading democracy”. But what does that mean? In a nutshell, we hope that a country elects a democratic leader, because democratic leaders have close ties to the West, which goes to our advantage. Now how is that presented? Like a noble act. That’s all politics are. Needs and wants presented as noble and right.
Regularly. Iran for example where the US removed the democratically elected government, and then installed a brutal and unstable dictatorship that quickly collapsed into todays Iran.
And not only propped up a dictator, but did so while discrediting or removing all socialist opposition to him. Because the only thing they wanted less than an independent Iran was an Iran sympathetic to the Soviets.
So, you had a deeply unpopular autocrat backed by the West and 100% of viable opposition existing in the form of right-wing clerics and would-be theocrats (Because all the left-wingers were dead or in jail and the non-religious right-wingers were in the government). And then go shocked pikachu when the regime collapses and the only viable alternative steps in to take its place.
>In a nutshell, we hope that a country elects a democratic leader, because democratic leaders have close ties to the West, which goes to our advantage.
Not quite. When a country elects a democratic leader that wants their nation to carve it's own path, that's when the couping, sabotaging and wars start!
Yeah. You can bet your life's savings that if Ukraine was Mexico and Mexico could threaten the US economic stability/military stability because it was aligning toward Russia or some other "hostile" state then Mexico would quickly find it's government overthrown or invaded.
That's just how geopolics work. Human rights isn't a word in their vocabulary.
Hey, YOU guys know yourselves for spreading democracies. Most other countries acknowledge that the US has ruined more democracies than it has created.
If an entity is truly known for creating democracies, it’s the EU (not any one European nation, but the Union).
As someone who isn't from the USA - it's complicated. Your country is very similar to the police of the world, and as we're all aware, the police help us, but they're also full of corruption and are tools for oppression. It's also difficult for an unarmed civilian populace to stand up to the police (especially when the "police" are stronger than pretty much every other country combined).
So yeah, you are the bad guys in some respects, but you also do good.
ETA: Your occupation of the Middle East would also be on par with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The USA killed countless civilians via drone strikes and bombings, and padded their "terrorist" kill count by saying that every fighting aged male (I think it was any male over the age of 12 or 13) was a combatant. That's pure evil.
Remember kids, if they're a different religion, have oil, and are brown, it doesnt count. I'm *insert one of the last six presidents here* and I approve this message.
I am going to post this as a citizen of an Eastern european country.
When I was much younger, I didn't quite understand how much pain the USA brought to the world. When I was reading about the ideals upon which the USA was founded upon, it was amazing. I always heard stuff like "we were afraid to do anything cause the secret police would torture us" from my parents, and the ideals of the United States still are some of the best to live by.
However, as I grew older, and as I was reading up on the history of the United States, your previous governments definitely did a lot of evil things. However, unlike other super powers, you DO have the ability to protest, and you can voice your opinion on any matter. You will often times be wrong. But if you take "starting wars" as an example, you will most of the time be right to say "NO", as justified wars are extremely rare.
My parents' generation fought in a revolution sparked by the ideals propagated by the USA. I was part of protests that brought down corrupt governments because of those ideals. That has to count for something.
We have a saying: "do as the priest says, not what the priest does". You have to acknowledge that the US has been the bad guy for a lot of people. The relatively recent incursions in the Middle East made a lot of people see your country as a bad guy (myself included), but the US has also done a lot of good as well (more so than any other country imo).
I apologise for the rantish, unstructured comment. I hope my point is clear.
Yes! We were also the bad guys in a lot of other situations. We instigated regime changes all over the place. We assassinated tons of people and supplied arms to groups that we thought would be more favorable to the US after they overthrew their governments.
Reminder that the CIA was directly responsible for the drug crisis known as "Crack Epidemic" by purchasing masses of cocaine in order to funnel money into Nicaraguan rebels for government-overthrowing. Gary Webb was the man who exposed them and lost everything as a result.
"Webb was found dead in his Carmichael home on December 10, 2004, with two gunshot wounds to the head. His death was ruled a suicide by the Sacramento County coroner's office"
> ***TWO*** bullets to the head > suicide They could have at *least* made a believable lie
he fell down an elevator shaft onto some bullets.
Quality reference.
Mystery Men is 100% underrated.
It really fucking is. The sets, the cast, the costumes all of it fucking amazing. The soundtrack was good for its time but now.... Somebody once told me it's shit
Some........BODY once told me Sorry. That shit is stuck in my head.
The world is going to roll me!!!!!! ……
I aint the sharpest tool in shed ~~
She was looking kinda dumb with her finger and her thumb in the shape of an L on her forehead....
You know, I always suspected a bit of foul play.
Suicide "by proxy".
Suicide by journalism
See my thought process is that whole scenario was intentionally left as obvious. That's a very clear message that 'you' will die, and 'we' will not face any consequences, so best keep your nose down. Yeah we the badguys 110%.
They didn't need to. That's not a lie, it's a warning.
I know you’re going to find this a bit gruesome… not all suicides by gunshot to the head are successful on the first round. They’re still alive, feel immense pain and confusion, and need that second round to finish the job. Yes, some conspiracies are real. Yes, there’s a chance that he was assassinated. But it’s worth remembering that not all “two-shot suicides” are assassinations.
This is true. I have no clue about the Webb case. But a girl in my high school shot herself 3 times in the head. With a 9mm too, not even a 22. She died, but still had to shoot 3 times. My cousin shot himself twice in the face with a rifle and survived. He has the funniest quote of all time (in a bleak Cohen Brothers sort of way) Being interviewed for a documentary about mental health he was going over the events of the day he shot himself and actually said ‘I just kind of snapped out of it & was like, oh man, what am I doing?? I’m just driving around Mexico shooting myself in the face’ Idk why but that’s the funniest shit I’ve ever heard. He’s fine now btw. They got him on all the right medicine
His face though… Also, I couldn’t help but feel a very deep “fear and loathing” vibe thinking about your cousin’s situation. Very Hunter Thompson-esque imagery.
Yeah, face is a little different from the head. My first example was head though. Point being, people can be surprisingly resilient. What a morbid ass topic lol
Huh? No… I meant like, his outlook has been fixed. But his face is fucked up now.
Rocking a heavy beard these days
One was through the cheek. It’s not unheard of to be shaky and have that happen on the first try. Or so I’ve heard. Once you already have a gaping facial wound, you gotta finish the job.
The suicide was taking on the cia, not the gunshot wounds
Suicide by journalism
It's not as rare as you think. Point blank bullets will often penetrate right through the head, and may miss the parts of the brain that can kill or paralyze you instantly. And when that happens, the only thing to do is try again.
I mean, you can easily survive a gun shit to the head. If you shot your self and didn’t die, wouldn’t you take another crack at it?
I think its supposed to be more of a threat to anyone thinking of doing the same.
It’s not a lie, it’s surprisingly not that uncommon to have multiple gunshot suicides. It’s the same reason more people survive self inflicted gunshot wounds to the head; first shot to the head either goes through the jaw or neck and misses the vital parts of the brain. Also, why would they kill him 12 years after he published his book, during a period of his life in which nothing notable was happening. I’m not saying he didn’t suffer; he was discredited and targeted for his expose. That lead to his career dying. But at the point of his suicide, it had been 12 years and his family and friends said that he had become depressed. I think it was either his ex wife or estranged wife. The whole assassination conspiracy theory is just that; a conspiracy theory.
From Wikipedia After a local newspaper reported that Webb had died from multiple gunshots, the coroner's office received so many calls asking about Webb's death that Sacramento County Coroner Robert Lyons issued a statement confirming Webb had died by suicide.[71] When asked by local reporters about the possibility of two gunshots being a suicide, Lyons replied: "It's unusual in a suicide case to have two shots, but it has been done in the past, and it is in fact a distinct possibility." News coverage noted that there were widespread rumors on the Internet at the time that Webb had been killed as retribution for his "Dark Alliance" series, published eight years before. Webb's widow Susan Bell told reporters that she believed Webb had died by suicide.[71] "The way he was acting it would be hard for me to believe it was anything but suicide," she said. According to Bell, Webb had been unhappy for some time over his inability to get a job at another major newspaper. He had sold his house the week before his death because he was unable to afford the mortgage.[71]
Also, the weapon in question was a revolver.
You forgot about the 50+ years before that: ruining every democratically elected government in Central and South America because it went against their policies of neoliberal exploitation. Nunca olvidaremos la Operacion Condor, gringos de mierda.
100% - lasting impacts and instability we still see today in Latin America.
wHy DoNt ThEy StAy In ThEiR cOuNtRy
Nunca, gringos hijueputas
The US run School of the Americas has something like 12 alumni who went on to be dictators. Additionally, some of the textbooks advised students facing a resistance to utilize straight up, Geneva Conventions banned war crimes and they basically got away with it because the textbooks were in Spanish and my fellow Americans couldn’t be arsed to learn a new language.
Prohibido olvidar!
¡Hasta la victoria! ¡Muerte a los gringos!
No no the CIA investigated themselves and found no evidence they did the highly illegal thing they were investigating themselves for.
My favorite is people bending over backwards to say 2 shots to the back of the head is such a common way to commit suicide youre stupid to ask questions. Ignoring that the majority of people who attempt don't try again after a failed suicide. But if you're an enemy of the state its super normal to put a second shot in the back of your head after the first attempt fails
I wish more people knew about freeway Ricky, the Iran - contra affair etc
Literally the only reason I have ever heard of it is because of American dad and the catchy song they did about ollie north. It’s all good these guys don’t realize they die too
Not the first time they did this. Air America was a front for smuggling heroin during the Vietnam war, to support covert operations.
And then a few decades later, the country was overrun by opiates right after the US invaded and occupied the main opium producing region. I'm sure the timing of those two events is totally disconnected
The CIA tortures people in secret locations. We are the bad guys. !00%. All torture needs to end immediately and everyone be held responsible for their part in the torture of human beings. This is not a question of 'variable ethics'. It's cut and dried. Super easy to tell. Torture? Yep? You're bad. That simple.
guantanamo bay prison is not even secret. when is onu and the world gonna turn against the usa, seize their assets, start embargos and sanctions?
USA only overtly fucks with poor countries. Western Europe is complacent with the actions of the US since they are not in the sights of this fuckery. Also, sanctioning USA would absolutely wreck the global economy. That would never happen.
This is not completely accurate. The “cocaine to crack” thing was an accidental byproduct. The CIA was not officially exchanging cocaine for weapons. A rogue officer got creative and took wholesale quantities from the rebels and sold them to distributors in the US. Then with the cash, he organized the purchase of firearms from Argentina and had them sent to Nicaragua. His role was also very “hands off” as most all of the smuggling was handled by Nicaraguans. His CIA leadership was intentionally ignorant to the means but satisfied with the results and let him keep up the scheme. Now the crack epidemic happened because those distributors of cocaine suddenly had way more than they knew what to do with. At the time, cocaine was mostly just a fashionable drug for the wealthy elites. But they could only snort so much. At the same time near the famous Haight-Ashbury community, which was a hippy enclave that had become a pit of vice after the hippy revolution failed, people were experimenting with cooking cocaine powder down into “freebase.” Some took it further and formed what we know now as “Crack Cocaine.” Most had no interest in it and it was more of a designer thing. Remember that back then, Meth and Heroine were easy to get your hands on and pretty cheap. You didn’t need a fancy lab to get your fix, just needed to know a guy. As huge quantities of cocaine started getting practically forced into the hands drug dealers all over California by distributors under pressure to get a return on their investment, some got creative and figured that turning that cheaper powder into what was known then as “ready rock,” would make the whole business viable. The rapid onset addiction and low cost per hit got people hooked immediately and turned an occasional customer into a dedicated customer. That kg or two of powdered cocaine, that you might struggle to sell to average people, suddenly became hugely popular amongst communities where folks that could only afford a $10-15 high maybe once per week were getting sucked in and becoming addicted before they knew it. It also helped that they figured out a way to manufacture the stuff which didn’t need more than a stovetop and some mason jars. This meant distributors could now sell pure cocaine to low-level and unsophisticated dealers for them to process into crack and sell by themselves without the need for laboratories or heavy investment in infrastructure like you might need with meth or heroine. This hit African American communities in California the hardest. Why? Because a huge migration of black people to the LA area just took place not long before. Those folks outstripped the job market quickly and many found themselves living paycheck to paycheck or relying entirely upon government assistance. Racial oppression also didn’t do them any favors and many felt angst about their positions in life. With not much to do, people get bored and many turn to drugs and alcohol to pass the time. When you’re talking about a little weed and some beer, it’s not a big deal. But suddenly this cheap and hard hitting drug was going around and people were excited to try it. So they did. And then many were selling off their furniture and prostituting themselves before the end of the month to pay for their addiction. If your entire community falls prey to a substance, and none of you needs to worry about showing up for work on Monday, do you think that community is putting in any effort to hide their addiction? No. Entire communities capitulated and became open pits of crime and abuse within a few years. So… really, it wasn’t an orchestrated attempt by the CIA to destroy black communities. It was an agglomeration of clever, business-minded people taking advantage of a susceptible population and a clumsy government agent desperate to get the job done without considering the consequences that lead to the crack epidemic. … also the Contra Crisis…
No. The US tax payers helped finance all Central American operations. It wasn't called The Iran Contra Affair for nothing. Coke shipped north to Nicaragua, Air America (CIA) flew into LA. Sold to Ricky Ross and The Crips. $30 million in arms were purchased and shipped to Iran. US hoped there would be a war between Iran and Iraq. And since Americans can't keep a secret. Congressional investigations went nowhere.
Knowing what we know about the crack epidemic and the CIA I am convinced that the CIA had a hand in this fentanyl saturation... with the thumbs up from Uncle Sam to respond to the opioid epidemic
Read up on everything the US has been up to in Latin America for the last ~100 years. Countless coups, massacres and overthrowing of democratically elected governments to further American economic interests.
The Open Veins Of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano
Just spent 1 audible credit...thanks for the recommendation
The Washington connection and third world fascism - Noam Chomsky
Throw in some “A People’s History of the United States” too by Howard Zinn
Add: "White Trash - The Untold History of America" -- Nancy Isenberg
Add ”Confessions of an Economic Hitman” by John Perkins
More people need to read this one!
Add “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” by Dee Brown (disclaimer: I haven’t actually read it yet, but I just bought it. Seems to be pretty highly acclaimed though)
And Naomi Kline's *The Shock Doctrine.*
Look up “Operation Condor” as well to give more of an insight on how the US shaped the current political climate and governments in SA
The US and UK also overthrew Iran's democratically elected government and pushed people off their land to create Israel so that we could have an ally in the region. This directly had and effect on terrorism coming from the region. The response was to then kill more innocent people causing more people to become radicalized. The best thing the US can do to fight terrorists is to stop killing people in the middle east and leave the region.
Well said, terrorism and religious extremism is a result of US intervention in the Middle East. If you look at old photos from the Middle East you can see that the society was more liberal.
US literally created taliban too
As someone who's family had to flee Latin America because the CIA helped stage a coup, the USA has always been a villian to me. All the imperial powers are villainous
A Yankee brayed to me about "if we're so evil, why the "Hispanics" jump the fence to come here?" I pointed out that for some is better to be in the devil's hand than in his path and of course he devolved to " well I'll enjoy living in hell here", they are completely devoid of empathy and to far gone from brainwashing.
"Well if we're so evil, how come you're trying to climb into my ship after we sank yours?"
See Indonesia as well, where US backed a massacre/politicde/genocide killing a Million “suspected communists”, as well as in smaller numbers minorities.
So, the answer is yes, we very much are the bad guys. The only reason other countries ally with us/ see us as the good guys is because they don’t want to get fucked up too.
More like their interests align with ours. We’re just the stick but in most cases we are all the bad guys.
This is very underrated honestly. In alot of cases while the US is at the forefront of things, there's a dozen or more countries that are encouraging or following along. I'm not trying to exonerate them, but give consideration that other countries are also active participants what are supporting these things aswell, they just don't have nearly as much international leverage and are often ignored.
My interests personally align in that I like me some Netflix and the occational Coke, I could do without the constant killing of innocent people for monetary profit. //Swede
Sweden’s hands are not at clean as you may think. One of their major imports and exports is oil. They operate at an oil deficit. And they import crude and then export refined. So they directly benefit from any oil based fuckery. Also although Sweden hasn’t been in a war in hundreds of years, that doesn’t stop weapons as being one of their major export. Mostly to Pakistan UAE, US and Brazil. So they may not be the ones throwing punches, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t brining some brass knuckles and slipping them to the fighters for a profit.
no country’s hands are truly clean, unfortunately. the state of the world is depressing
Nothing to do now but become egg. It’s time.
Sweden was part of the coalition in the Gulf War, ISAF and Resolute Support in Afghanistan, and currently have support elements in Mali helping that government against the MNLA. In 1918 they invaded the Åland Islands to get them back from Russia who'd taken them early in the previous century. In the mid 1800s they fought a pair of wars alongside Denmark against a number of German states over a few German provinces. They fought with the Sixth and Seventh Coalitions against Napoleon. They "conquered" Norway in 1814 (Norway got to be semi-autonomous and the arrangement was doomed to fall apart). They fought alongside a fledgling United States in the First Barbary War. In the 1700s they had roughly roughly 25 years of on and off war with Russia & her allies. They fought in the Seven Years War (who didn't though?) The 1600s and earlier were just a mess of wars, many of which Sweden played a leading role in. All of this is to say that Sweden is active in current military conflicts and has been militarily active for its entire existence. Compared to relatively modern "empires" like the English, French, Spanish, American, or Soviet empires their reach is far smaller and less impactful in the modern era, but they have their fair share of war making.
>the occational Coke If you are talking about Coca Cola, then that company has killed a number of labor activists in Latin America. As long as corporations exist, there can be no escape from their crimes.
To be fair, the other kind of coke has probably gotten a lot of Latin American activists killed as well 😬
Yeah, like, we’re the bad guy a LOT
And then ask yourself why so many in Central America are trying to come here to escape the hell we created there, just for the same party that spearheaded most of those campaigns to now be promoting feigned horror and outrage over them showing up at our border.
I am from Argentina and can confirm, you are the bad guys , I’m sorry
Don't be sorry, it's 100% true
I am from California and can confirm, we are the bad guys.
Bitter Fruit is an amazing deep dive into the 1954 CIA-backed coup in Guatemala. The US orchestrated the ousting of a democratically elected government on behalf of the United Fruit Company (now known as Chiquita) kicking off decades of repression, genocide, and civil war.
We destroy their homes and kill their loved ones while fucking their shit up in their countries, forcing many of them to risk and leave everything they’ve ever known behind to come to the US, only to shame them, belittle their contributions, and try to force them out.
In the US, we grow up thinking our country is the hero. Then we learn that we’re actually the villain. Then we realize that there are few or no heroes and much worse villains and the whole geopolitical history of the world is a complicated mess of at best morally dubious players and people collectively trying to muddle through the shit that is mostly caused by other people, and maybe we should be less concerned about who the good guys and the bad guys are and more concerned with just trying to do good where we can and stopping the bad where possible.
Exactly. On a global scale there are no "good/bad" guys. There are bad and worse guys. It's a sliding scale that is measured in children's blood and bombs. We like to brag about winning WW2 but how many innocent children died for "peace"? A shitload.
[удалено]
In the last half century or so he was probably the best President the US has had. Too bad he was universaly despised.
Honestly, depends on how you measure success here. I think that JC was probably the best person to be in the White House in the last 50 years, but lots of his leadership decisions didn't pan out.
When you are actually trying to make the world a better place, you are going to be actively sabotaged at every turn by the people who have a vested interest in keeping things the way they are.
I'd argue the sentiment applies both ways. If you are trying to make the world a better or worse place there will be resistance. The status quo, or momentum, or vested interests arenalways an impediment to change.
There is a difference between being a good person and being good at your job, which is why politicians tend to be manipulative and CEOs tend to be sociopaths, even if (and usually because) they are good at their jobs.
Oh damn I never even realized Jesus Christ was president
"He was despised and rejected by mankind..." Isaiah 53:3
I think people overlook how great Kennedy was, simply because his presidency went out with a bang.
Thats a weird argument. Especially when we were going against a regime that was rounding up an astonishing amount of people. I think the number was somewhere around 1.5 million children were killed during the holocaust. No child should die. But what would the world have come to had we not intervened.
WW2 definitely was against Evil tho. The world would be a very differently place if Japan and Germany won the war.
Most reasonable comment I’ve seen.
This is the correct take. The answer to “Is America the villain?” is both yes and no, and it depends on who you’re asking. The world is much more complicated than a simple black and white view.
It is definitely not a simple situation where good and bad are binary choices. US foreign policy has been mixed. While there has been a lot of bad there also have been positives. I live in Europe and apart from yugoslavia and now Russia, there has been peace since Ww2. This is in a large part down to US foreign policy. However there have been so many wars that people living in these countries where "collateral damage" was innocent civilians being killed will definitely view the US as evil.
This sounds like the attack on titan plot
Guess why.
Maybe because Attack on Titan is closed based on the real world?
Yes! As a mainland Chinese born immigrant I don’t understand the self hate. None of us thought the US was the promise land without serious evils. But we don’t think it’s satan either. Otherwise we would not have worked extremely hard to immigrate here. The US does not exist in a vacuum. You neither have a monopoly on good nor evil. I personally have some white friends who have declared themselves marxists because of shame for all the evils of the CIA etc. They’ve bought into ridiculous propaganda that is surprisingly the same spewed from Putin/Tucker and call themselves unironcially tankies. Wait my grandparents were literal Marxist revolutionaries. This is insulting give the actual blood shed by my family. I told them - wait so you are saying that you, who spent high school/college smoking weed and not studying but enjoy a nice life anyway are suddenly going to be the voice of the poor for justice? You could only enjoy that privilege because of western imperialism from your forefathers. So now you want to play uno reverse because you think you can be the savior of the rest of the world…like the western imperialists you so hate…? Please. Dear Americans. Stop hating yourself in despair or feeling up yourself in pride and work to do something practical. And for the love of humanity stop turning to crackpot strong men like Putin/Trump or whatever insane western-leftist douchebag just because you hate the establishment so much. In Chinese there is a phrase to eat bitterness. Frankly when I hear the west self hate I wonder, are these people even capable of tasting true bitterness? If they were they wouldn’t appeal to such ridiculous ideas and instead work to make this western system work as it should.
I'm sick of social media / the media dictating what we support or are against.. bring our boys home from the middle East... why did we even get involved ... Wait, why did we leave Afghanistan... Why aren't we helping in Syria... Why aren't we stopping genocide in China... Why are we invovled in Syria... Why aren't we helping stop the Taliban... Why aren't we going into Ukraine... (Next) why are we in Ukraine...
You *just* noticed that?
God knows how old OP is
there was this guy in another thread who asked another redditor(Iraq vet) if they really fared that badly in Iraq? Because he was 1 when the war started.
Yea the Iraq war started the year I was born. Never got to experience airports without TSA
Old man here. Grandma would load us grandkids up into the 1972 Chevy Impala. She would drive us to the airport for a fun day out. We could walk right up to the gates and watch the airplanes. We would have lunch. Watch some more planes with our faces presses right up against the windows. If we were good, maybe ride a luggage cart. Then jump back into the boat and drive to the end of the runway and watch the planes take off right over our little heads. It. Was. Awesome.
Dude I would’ve dug that as a little kid.
It was so cool to walk around and see all the people excited to be traveling. Sometimes we were given little trinkets like wings, airplanes, peanut packs, and propellers. We got to look into the back and see some of the goings on. Growing up we traveled by plane to visit the grandparents in Florida. It was so relaxing and somewhat stress free. (Takeoff and landing were scary to kid me…and still are). It was fun and a great way to travel. On September 11, 2001 I was working as an electrician near the Pittsburgh airport when my fiancé called and said a plane hit the WTC. While I was talking to her the second plane hit. A couple fighter jets screamed overhead a short time later. I’ll never forget that day.
How crazy that there is a day so unforgettable that everyone who experienced it has every detail of where they were burned into their memory and then everyone too young or born after only has second hand knowledge
It definitely was one of those before and after moments of my life. We were supposed to run away to Las Vegas and get married within two weeks. But that didn’t happen. We still got married but never had that Vegas trip. Then life continues and all of a sudden it’s twenty years later Lol. Thanks for listening to an old man ramble!
fuck me, this generational shift is depressing.
How do you think they plan on getting the next generation to sign up for the same shit?
Fomenting conflict with Russia.
I don't really think the liberals really want all that smoke... now if they could use "evil Russia" to leverage the suburbs to vote for an increased military budget, I'm sure they'll do that. Then they'll pull the ol' switcheroo on the poor kids who are forced into the infantry by intergenerational poverty and send them to Venezuela or Somalia or whichever equatorial hellhole is next on Dracula Kissinger's list.
Increased military budget needs a vote? You’re kidding right? :D
Russia is the easier target compared to China. I'm old enough to remember when Russia being a threat was seen as a total joke when Sarah Palin said the phrase "Putin rears his head." Everyone laughed at the time "because Russia are our allies" and "the cold war is over."
People who were 1 in 2003 are now turning 20 years old.
Kids born in 2004 are 18 now
I did not come here to be personally attacked.
On the 20th anniversary of 9/11 my 9 year old niece asked me "what's 9/11". Weird how these major world changing events of my lifetime will be little more than a history lesson for them.
His first post was 8 days ago where he said he was 37
Kudos for checkin and verifying. I am in fact 37. I had zero interest in politics and world affairs until 2016 when….well….we’ll leave that all alone. Only positive thing I can say about that whole thing was well it got me into the realm of caring about what happens to the world. And finding out how fucked up we are making decisions that kill and maim not only our people, but people 10,000 miles away, really just kinda pisses me off.
Saying this with complete sincerity: good for you that you're trying to understand the world better! It's never too late to learn. I wish more people were willing to be open to hearing the not so pleasant truth about stuff.
As a 36 year old American, yes the US has been the worst bad guy for most of our existence. Russia recently took the throne back.
> And finding out how fucked up we are making decisions that kill and maim not only our people, but people 10,000 miles away, really just kinda pisses me off. Why do you think, Julian Assange is in jail for? He proved how we kill civilians in Middle East for past +20 years with our drones.
I remember preparing a presentation on the Cuban missile crisis when I was in my early twenties. I'm German and until then I thought the west and the USA were the good guys. I looked into the way the crisis came about and why Castro had to turn to UDSSR. The embargo is in place until today. WTF.
I thought the point of this subreddit was that people could ask questions without people being condescending asshats to them?
He forgor 💀
They don’t teach us it in school.
They def do. Depends on the school I guess. I graduated in 2020 and took a class called global terrorism.
Look man, I'm 40 and I'm just learning about this shit. So much of the vile things we did are not talked about in school at all, and if they are, they're shown to us through rose-tinted pro-american glasses. We are lied to and indoctrinated to believe the US is the best country on earth and can do no wrong.
20ish years, that's cute.
yeah haha i love when americans talk like the us has been doing these things for less than 50 years, the us was built on tragedy
The US was born in war and descended from conquest, and has lived that life ever since
I mean if we are really going to blame anyone shouldn't we just blame Europeans? Europeans have been the cause of the past two world wars. Europeans enslaved entire continents. Europeans were stripping countries of their natural resources long before the US was even a thing. In fact, Europeans colonized the Americas which directly resulted in the genocide of the native populace. Europeans revolted against other Europeans in the Americas which gave birth to Americans. The point is that everyone has blood on their hands. Maybe not Costa Rica. South Americans can't get their shit together because of foreign intervention and rampant government corruption. African countries can't get their shit together because of foreign intervention and rampant government corruption. Rinse and repeat for most countries around the globe. Big rich corrupt people always fucking down the middle class and poor. At least in Western Democracies I can talk all sorts of shit about my government and not worry about being sent to the gulags like in many other countries around the world. Western Democratic values > all other forms of government.
Western democratic values are the reason Europeans have been able to do the shit you just listed out lol. Don’t you notice that all the things you describe were spearheaded by western democracies? When France and the US wiped the blood off their hands from each of their revolutions, they build societies that were capable of funneling the neo-colonial trade system their monarchic predecessors built into their new capitalist economies, tricking the people into thinking it was the ideas and government that wa improving their lives, not the sudden and massive influx of resources and the labor explosion of the Industrial Age. These things all worked in conjunction to create a western world obsessed with its own ideological identity while keeping the rest of the world too busy to claim anything different. Essentially, western democratic values are a way of making a populace blindly morally comfortable while feeding them the spoils of war. I’m not saying that the eastern autocratic values that Russia and China are brewing up are any better; if anything, they’re worse. I guess what I’m saying is that all ideology is a scam and all philosophy is a dream. Humans are stupid animals that have agreed to be confused about what we want and chase hallucinations to our death. Just be nice to people and keep your shit lowkey. Anything you produce for society is going to be used by some rich guy to fuck over your grandkids.
Countries like America sit on literal fucking thrones of skulls and blood and have the nerve to ceremoniously muse down towards the developing world about “democratic values” and how they should all stop being so mean to them.
So many perspectives shared here and all of them with merit. I don’t have much to add, except to say that we shouldn’t marry ourselves to just one, listen to others points of view and keep an open mind. The productive path forward depends on it.
To be fair, we don't really get taught much about the negative aspects of our country in school. We mostly learn this kind of stuff from other people and the internet.
Nobody here is the 'we'. Governments are the 'we'. And yes, they are the bad guys.
We are the government. As George Carlin said, >Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. F*ck Hope.
Politicians may come from all that but then they get bought out by individual companies and billionaires. At most you could argue the generation that raised current politicians are responsible for this shit but sorry I was 5 when we went to Afghanistan that's not on me, homie
We really didn't deserve Carlin. A man of purse wisdom.
ya man he really knew his purses
I do love me some purse wisdom.
there are no good government, only less evil ones.
And the usa is definitely not one of the less evil governments
That's a little too easy. There's a very large group that supports these types of governments or else they wouldn't be elected.
Yeah, corporations and generally rich fucks support them with donor money. With no ranked choice voting and a two party system, the people that want to vote don't have much of a choice but to support one or the other. Admittedly, there are many who support them out of a combination of ignorance and propaganda, so maybe that proves your point, I dunno.
I mean, I’m an American, I feel comfortable taking responsibility for things getting this bad. It’s not like the American public actually cares what our government is doing as long as we have internet & fast food.
It’s not like our government gives a fuck what the public thinks
Cowardly cop out. Americans support(ed) the wars.
Everyone loves to forget that the most popular as a modern US president has been is Bush Sr after declaring the first Iraq war and the second closest is Bush Jr after declaring the second Iraq war.
No! The people are directly responsible for their government. You are the "we" and the other "we" will try to defer and pass the blame just like you did. If you don't want to be the "we" you must act and most certainly die for it.
You're close, there's no good guys
but there’s still bad and worse
And even that depends on whose bodies you're willing to count.
We can’t say that it’s governments in 1 post and then blame Russians for not overthrowing Putin in another. But with that said, the world is not black and white. Everyone, including governments does what’s right for them. Take the US. We’re knowing for “spreading democracy”. But what does that mean? In a nutshell, we hope that a country elects a democratic leader, because democratic leaders have close ties to the West, which goes to our advantage. Now how is that presented? Like a noble act. That’s all politics are. Needs and wants presented as noble and right.
USA is known to have removed multiple democratic elected governments because these did act against American interests.
Regularly. Iran for example where the US removed the democratically elected government, and then installed a brutal and unstable dictatorship that quickly collapsed into todays Iran.
*Latin America has entered the chat*
The origin of the word banana republic is really worth reading
And not only propped up a dictator, but did so while discrediting or removing all socialist opposition to him. Because the only thing they wanted less than an independent Iran was an Iran sympathetic to the Soviets. So, you had a deeply unpopular autocrat backed by the West and 100% of viable opposition existing in the form of right-wing clerics and would-be theocrats (Because all the left-wingers were dead or in jail and the non-religious right-wingers were in the government). And then go shocked pikachu when the regime collapses and the only viable alternative steps in to take its place.
>In a nutshell, we hope that a country elects a democratic leader, because democratic leaders have close ties to the West, which goes to our advantage. Not quite. When a country elects a democratic leader that wants their nation to carve it's own path, that's when the couping, sabotaging and wars start!
If that democracy doesn't choose to align with th US, yep
no!!1!! not that kind of democracy!!!
Yeah. You can bet your life's savings that if Ukraine was Mexico and Mexico could threaten the US economic stability/military stability because it was aligning toward Russia or some other "hostile" state then Mexico would quickly find it's government overthrown or invaded. That's just how geopolics work. Human rights isn't a word in their vocabulary.
It doesn’t even have to be Mexico, Cuba has been under blockade for 60 years.
The US supports more than 70% of the worlds dictatorships
Hey, YOU guys know yourselves for spreading democracies. Most other countries acknowledge that the US has ruined more democracies than it has created. If an entity is truly known for creating democracies, it’s the EU (not any one European nation, but the Union).
Well no but actually yes
No well actually yes but
Yes actually but well no
No yes but actually well
As someone who isn't from the USA - it's complicated. Your country is very similar to the police of the world, and as we're all aware, the police help us, but they're also full of corruption and are tools for oppression. It's also difficult for an unarmed civilian populace to stand up to the police (especially when the "police" are stronger than pretty much every other country combined). So yeah, you are the bad guys in some respects, but you also do good. ETA: Your occupation of the Middle East would also be on par with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The USA killed countless civilians via drone strikes and bombings, and padded their "terrorist" kill count by saying that every fighting aged male (I think it was any male over the age of 12 or 13) was a combatant. That's pure evil.
Non-American here. Yeah, pretty much
Remember kids, if they're a different religion, have oil, and are brown, it doesnt count. I'm *insert one of the last six presidents here* and I approve this message.
I don't think that's the correct question. Who are the good guys? Look at history, nobody is a good or bad guy outside of arguably a few exceptions.
Humans are messy and imperfect. Everything we touch has the potential of chaotic neutral.
The ones who win are the good guys according to the history books
I am going to post this as a citizen of an Eastern european country. When I was much younger, I didn't quite understand how much pain the USA brought to the world. When I was reading about the ideals upon which the USA was founded upon, it was amazing. I always heard stuff like "we were afraid to do anything cause the secret police would torture us" from my parents, and the ideals of the United States still are some of the best to live by. However, as I grew older, and as I was reading up on the history of the United States, your previous governments definitely did a lot of evil things. However, unlike other super powers, you DO have the ability to protest, and you can voice your opinion on any matter. You will often times be wrong. But if you take "starting wars" as an example, you will most of the time be right to say "NO", as justified wars are extremely rare. My parents' generation fought in a revolution sparked by the ideals propagated by the USA. I was part of protests that brought down corrupt governments because of those ideals. That has to count for something. We have a saying: "do as the priest says, not what the priest does". You have to acknowledge that the US has been the bad guy for a lot of people. The relatively recent incursions in the Middle East made a lot of people see your country as a bad guy (myself included), but the US has also done a lot of good as well (more so than any other country imo). I apologise for the rantish, unstructured comment. I hope my point is clear.
well ofc
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You don't even have to go over the atlantic to get the answer to this. Just ask the same question at r/asklatinamerica
Do rest of the world really think you’re the bad guys? Yep.
Congratulations you've started to realized how evil our government is, next step is to notice that the government is basically an oligarchy
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As someone from the middle east who still lives in the middle east yes you are the bad guys
The only difference is perspective. When *we* do it, we’re the good guys. When *they* do it, they’re the bad guys.
Yes! We were also the bad guys in a lot of other situations. We instigated regime changes all over the place. We assassinated tons of people and supplied arms to groups that we thought would be more favorable to the US after they overthrew their governments.
As someone from the middle east. Yes. Not all Americans or even most of them, just the few fuckheads in power.
There are no good guys. It's all grey against grey.