JCC "Power to the People!" - The Global Social Unrest Thread

You mean back before we were a superpower and let that all go to our head? Maybe we really should secede and break up the U.S. then. And since we're clearly not the only ones with this problem, we should probably encourage Tibetan and Chechen independence as well.

 

You can't blame exceptionalism on being a superpower. It might've amplified the discomfort at the notion that exceptionalism was a lie, but it didn't forge it.

If anything, the sentiment Jello speaks of comes across as a bit of insecurity. When you have none of the cultural weight of achievment Europe has, you just compensate by saying the simplicity of the American approach is not an accident, but scoot in closer for this little secret - it's what God planned all along. I know, right?!

Then the myths, one spilled from the lips of Americans, just kept coming. "Hard work made this country great!" Yes, the hard work of slaves, which were one of many abundant natural resources you could exploit.

"Capitalism is morally superior to socialism" - it is, but you're not capitalist.

"We have defended freedom from tyrrany!" - no, you have generally fought to expand a global economic hegemony that keeps Americans rich and gives no thoughts whatsoever of the consequences of doing this. Hence the genuine surprise when they retaliate with bombs or burning the flag.

And so here we are today. Because of American ideology, corporate practice, or corporate philosphy, capitalism is in crisis and an ineffectual weapon against the cancerous populism of Trump, Sanders, Corbyn, le Pen, Wilders et al. It no longer is seen as being able to lift people out of poverty, despite the fact it does - because in America, the home of the "bootstrap" nonsense, this is not true.

I'm sorry but the only conclusion I can draw is that you were never fit to lead. You made things worse, not better, in doing so. And by taking Fukuyama's dictum on the end of history to heart, you just doubled down the worst excesses without restraint or conscience.

 

Yeah except their former colonies are the ones that work. I mean, I get your nationalist heart is wounded by the notion you're the discount store of world empires, but it's true. Everything that's going wrong in our countries right now has roots, in whole or in part, in America's idiotic actions. It would be decent if you owned that.

 

OK and had at Suez you not betrayed the British and they had somehow, it's best not to think too deeply on the details, retained world empire status - then we could be able to discuss their wreaking havoc on the modern world by simply being themselves?

 

Yep. With all that language, culture, education, commonwealth (you missed out), democracy (again, you missed out on that), law and order and infrastructure.

 

See, I look at the fact that they're struggling with the idea of taking aid from Mexico, and think back to floods here in 2011 for which all taxpayers paid a levy to help fund the reconstruction effort. And then I lament that their quite reasonable outrage is being exported along with their election strategies.