OBJECTION!

remains to be determined if that’s by a democracy or not.

Lmao. Yes, I’m sure the Trump administration is attacking two oil-rich countries and bombing schoolchildren for the sake of “promoting democracy.”

Yes, probably the tail end of Afghanistan, as well.

The tail end? Why? We were occupying a country in a war of aggression for over two decades, continuously under both Republican and Democrat administrations, with nothing to show for it but hundreds of thousands of corpses.

Hawaii is just literally nothing like it was then

That is what generally happens when you engage in colonialism successfully, yes.

and neither is America.

How?? What do you actually have to back up this idea? Because you’ve utterly failed in attempting to find some tiny sliver of time to cherry picking where the US wasn’t doing the exact same kind of shit. All you have is whataboutism.

I stg, I feel like I’m talking to a battered housewife. The US is punching you in the jaw and I’m showing you a long list of the other people he’s abused and you’re over here like, “He’s just going through some things right now. He’s still a good man, deep down.” I don’t even know what to tell you.

It’s the 21st century right now… Like, that’s generous

When I hear “this century” I assume you mean “the past 100 years.” I didn’t realize you meant the past 26 years, which is even more arbitrarily restrictive. There are still plenty of examples from that period, just as there would be if you arbitrarily limited the scope to a similar span of time anywhere in US history, because it’s a consistent pattern of behavior.

Even the early 'oughts are questionably relevant, since nobody would start a war over 9/11 now.

Lmao, what?? What is this talking point supposed to be? We’re literally still in the Middle East fighting “radical Islam.” Not to mention that so-called “emergency measures” like the Patriot Act are still in place and will be for the foreseeable future.

You could talk about the knock-on effects of whatever war, as well, but then you’re right back to the Peloponnesian war mattering.

No? My point is that the US is and has always been a destabilizing, anti-democratic, colonizing power. It’s relavent to include historical examples that prove that it’s a consistent pattern of behavior. If I just pointed out recent wars, then you’d probably try to pretend that it’s just some recent trend, if I just pointed out less recent wars you’d say it’d changed since then. It’s nonsense to arbitrarily limit which examples are allowed just because you don’t like the facts.

No doubt you’re ignoring recent examples like the Iran War because it’s “just Trump,” just as you’ve tried to exclude the Bush years which means really when we talk about “this century” we’re talking about, what, the 12 years under Obama and Biden? Out of the entirity of US history! Even within the already arbitrary restriction of the past 26 years, you want to limit it further to less than half of that! That’s so obviously cherry-picking. Not that the pattern of behavior was any different under either of them.

Meanwhile this talking point of “list every war by a non-democracy” is a complete non-sequitor, a “whataboutism” that has nothing to do with anything.

Also, many of the examples I mentioned from before the year 2000 are still very much relevant to the modern world in general, because they still affect who’s in power today. The US doesn’t have to coup a country again if they can just keep supporting the person or government they already installed. Most countries don’t get the opportunity to transition their whole form of government within a time frame of 26 years. Even if the US had changed its behavior, which absolutely hasn’t happened.

I’m probably just going to cut it off here, since you want to rage jerk

If you make up bullshit excuses to defend imperialism, expect to be called on it.

and my point has been made.

Lmao, what point would that be? That the US is less imperialistic than fucking ancient Rome? You haven’t made any point whatsoever, just attempted, very badly, to invent excuses for imperialism and authoritarianism.

If it has to be relevant, shorten that list to just this century.

Seems like a pretty arbitrary cut-off. The US has been brazenly aggressive, colonial, and uninterested in protecting democracies for the whole time it’s been around, it was never different from this and it never changed from its colonizer history.

It’ll be a lot less impressive then

It won’t, actually. The vast majority of those are from this century. Is this your first time hearing about stuff like Operation Condor or something? You know, the whole project of subverting and assassinating left-wing politicians across all of South America and replacing them with far-right dictators?

And still shorter than the list for non-democracies.

Why would it need to be limited to non-democracies? The claim was not just that the US promotes democracy, but also stability. If the US destabilizes a region by overthrowing or assassinating the only person who was keeping things together, that’s a valid example too.

Again, in the vast majority of cases we are talking about democracies, because the thing about democracies is that when the people are in control, they tend to not like letting the country be colonized and exploited, and the thing about the US is that it wants to colonize and exploit every country it possibly can.

With dictators, on the other hand, that’s like one guy who you just have to bribe, and he’ll keep the oil or whatever flowing because he’s getting rich off it while the people suffer, and he knows they only reason they’re not chopping his head off is because of the foreign power backing him up. It’s no wonder the US loves destroying democracies and establishing dictatorships, because dictators understand that the spice must flow.

You know what, I have an idea. Since you have so many issues with my list, how about you make your own? List off all the countries the US has overthrown that 1) were not democratic, and 2) became democratic afterwards. That’ll be the shortest list of all.

How exactly are the Pelopensian Wars at all relevant to anything?

What Carney said about the myth of the international rules-based order is correct. There’s always been winners and losers in that and what’s happening now is that the US is trying to kick Canada and other countries out of the winners’ circle.

The idealism of only dealing with “the good guys” has never been remotely realistic or feasible. But obviously trade is necessary for the global economy to function, so compromises will always have to be made. It’s just that this idealistic illusion was maintained by sweeping US anti-democratic and destabilizing actions under the rug and pretending, as the article does, that they didn’t even exist.

China does not, and likely never will get the same treatment, and frankly it’s probably better to trade with a country with issues you’re aware of and capable of acknowledging than one that you can pretend has no issues to feel better about trading and allying with them.

undermine the world’s stabilizing democracy bloc.

stabilizing democracy bloc

“stabilizing”

“democracy”

I’m pretty sure that… inhales

Mexico, Samoa, Hawaii, the Philippeans, Columbia, Hondurus, Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Greece, Costa Rica, Albania, Syria, Egypt, Guatemala, Iran, Indonesia, Iraq, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Congo, Guyana, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Angola, East Timor, Argentina, Afghanistan, Granada, Panama, Yugoslavia, Venezuela, Palestine, and Libya

…might have a few words to say about that.

20 years ago, the Patriot Act was already in place and privacy was essentially dead (and other countries were not exempt from US spying), people just didn’t know the full extent until the Snowden leaks. But it was clear enough then, if you weren’t gripped by the hysteria, that the “emergency measures” were there to stay, and get worse.

The other person was being sarcastic.

“If you were a doorknob, I’d start drinking heavily… so that way we can get turnt together.”

They didn’t used to have billionaires, when Mao was in power. Strangely, a lot of Westerners seem to hate what China is now, but also hate what China was before, which seems very strange to me. “The reforms were bad and China should be more Maoist” that is a coherent position, “The reforms were good but should have gone further and become even more capitalist” that is also a coherent position. But “China is bad now because they allow billionaires but they were also bad when they didn’t allow billionaires” isn’t really coherent, it just seems like knee-jerk opposition to whatever they do or don’t do. Anyone who wants to offer critiques should be able to answer the simple question of whether the reforms were good or bad, whether they moved in the right or wrong direction.

On the off-chance that you actually want a serious answer to the question, let’s start with some history. Before the revolution, China’s average life expectancy was in the 30’s, it experienced frequent famines, had no access to medicine, and had had similarly awful conditions for literally thousands of years with no improvement for the average person. The revolution brought about huge improvements in life expectancy and the basic necessities of life (with the failure of the Great Leap Forward being an exception to this general trend).

However, while central planning works for providing basic necessities because the demand for those necessities is very predictable, it is not the most efficient regarding consumer goods. This was one of the failures that caused the collapse of the USSR, the desire for consumer good and the inability to compete domestically. Furthermore, despite the increases in life expectancy, virtually everyone in China still lived in extreme poverty. The reforms in the 80s were intended to address this, and they were wildly successful at it:

In the words of Deng, it doesn’t matter if the cat is white or black, so long as it catches mice. It doesn’t really matter if a policy is ideologically “pure,” so long as it provides clear material benefits for the common people.

Where I’m standing, the whole point of having any sort of political beliefs at all is to figure out which policies will improve people’s lives. And lifting 800 million people out of extreme poverty over the span of 40 years, can you name a more successful policy, ever, in all of history?