Lemmy has a strong tendency to criticize the US, and a lot of the critiques of certain issue with the US are valid. However, I started getting really tired of opening comment sections in innocuous and non-political posts only to see that someone somehow found a way to criticize the US in it. At first, I started thinking that maybe some Lemmy users are really unhappy and find criticizing a something stronger helped them feel better as if standing up to injustice was a passion of theirs. But, we don’t see them do that with other targets, just the US. The more I notice and think about it, I’m starting be suspicious that some of those users and comments aren’t authentic, but made to create divisiveness in the West and reject the US entirely. In other words, they may be Russian, Chinese, et al. agents working to feed a stream of propaganda in order to further cause chaos and lack of unity in the West as we have seen them do before.
Anyone else think about this?
This is what I’m thinking the game plan is:
- Criticize something obviously unjust that the US has done. Ignore that all other major powers have also committed atrocities.
- Link and liken it to other US matters & behaviors
- Paint the US entirely as evil so that nothing the US can do is just
- Attack anyone that supports anything out of the US (we are between here and #3 above)
- Create a black-and-white model of geopolitics: US vs everyone else. EU and Russia on the same team lol
- West fragments as US and EU relationship dwindle from pseudo-populist movements (e.g. MAGA)
- Pick specific countries in the EU to start alienating and repeat the cycle
- ???
- Profit in special economic zones
as an american, i whole-heartedly support anti-american sentiment. we fucking deserve all of it. we voted in a clown shitshow of a government and of course the world should laugh
And this isn’t even the first clown shitshow of a government we’ve voted in this century
of course. and dont forget the whole fucking over the globe by forcing our version of democracy everywhere. or that our biggest industry is generating human killing devices we spread across the planet under the guise of ‘defense’… or that our country was founded by genociding almost an entire continent of humans.
i find it beyond funny that we support israel because ‘they were there first’, but if you mention that maybe the american indians should rise up and take their country back you get very different responses. america is the land hypocrites.
I don’t think we’re the only land of hypocrisy out there (like, listen to Russia talk about how they’re the real protectors of human rights, or China say other countries are threatening their national security, or Mexico complain about cartel violence while letting their police do whatever they want, or Israel do so much shit I don’t know where to start), but, yeah, a lot of us are brainwashed as hell, and our government is completely full of shit whenever it’s scolding anyone else about human rights, international law, the climate, etc.
i find it beyond funny that we support israel because ‘they were there first’, but if you mention that maybe the american indians should rise up and take their country back you get very different responses.
Yep, and also the fact that there’s such a vocal anti-migrant movement here after almost all of our ancestors in immigrated here is completely absurd
The first one wasn’t voted in. The first one was decided by the Supreme Court.
Yeah, actually that’s a really important point, plus between the insane amounts of essentially anonymous propaganda that’s been unleashed on us through Citizens United and all the state government voter suppression laws that were allowed by Shelby County we’ve really only been a quasi-democratic society at best for most of this. Americans aren’t uniquely terrible people compared to the citizens of any other country, we’ve just got some incredibly shitty rich people who ran the table on political power.
e; forgot to rest of my thought
As an outsider (not american and don’t live in the US) I just want to add that I’m not “anti-american”. The problem is that you guys built a “bully” reputation while at the same time we see the hardships the regular american have to go through without healthcare, education and labour laws, and nobody really cares.
Nearly half the electorate didn’t vote for the reactionaries. I’d also add that this regression isn’t an exclusively American phenomenon, we’re just unfortunately at the vanguard.
it wasnte even half… 88 milllion eligible voters didnt vote at all. not voting is making a decision. people that do not vote at all are complicit
Hard disagree, Republicans wouldn’t do so much voter suppression bullshit if it didn’t have any effect. People who don’t vote are almost always being oppressed in a variety of different ways.
I waited in line for five hours to vote, and I don’t even live in a place that does voter suppression bs. I can understand why some people threw up their hands and went home. Then you’ve got the people who did vote but had their vote invalidated by bureaucratic nonsense. The deck is stacked against the people
they suppress the vote because if all eligible voters voted, they would never win another election. i stand by the fact that if you did not vote at all, you are complicit in letting democracy die at the hands of conservative extremists.
came to write something like this. feel the exact same. we don’t need to post the election results to am I the asshole because we are not the assholes.
I’m less worried about the anti-American tendencies than about the pro-Russian and pro-Chinese ones.
There are cases where they legitimately offer something better so they are viewed favorable. Especially China for some regional investments.
These are in my opinion good reasons and you have to ask yourself what the West can do better to change it.
We could always emulate China and start rounding up our minorities into camps and arresting any citizens who speak out. Would that be better?
Read a history book.
Because how could anyone support the country with a higher living standard than America changed in the time frame of one generation, right?
North Korea really is amazing isn’t it?
!If you don’t get it, North Korea allegedly is a wonderful place to live with very high living standards but obviously isn’t. Closed communication countries like China, North Korea, and increasingly Russia’s claims about “how good things are” must be taken with an absolute grain of salt. Unfortunately, this list could even come to include the United States soon given Trump’s desire to silence critics.!<
A grain of salt? More like a truckload.
Your wasteful sarcasm aside, what China has done for its people economically and for standard of living is unbelievable. Continue your whataboutism though
That may be true as long as you are on party line.
Bro thinks 1.1 billion people work for the government.
He’s not wrong on that point though.
Open dissent will be quashed and make you, at best, a social pariah very quickly.
The guts and persistence of groups/individuals like the '89 Mothers is astonishing and worthy of a lot of respect.
I mean, if by those metrics alone you mean to tell that it’s a great country, 1940’s Germany must really appeal to you. After all they did an economic miracle no one thought possible and the standard of living of their citizens increased dramatically. Who cares that they murdered millions of people, those were not REAL citizens, right?..
The PRC has big problems, that it is Guantanmo-ing or arresting and using as prison slaves at least three ethnic minorities for thought crimes is an atrocity.
But the huge increase of living standards for all Chinese citizens, including those of persecuted minorities when they’re not being locked up for ideological reasons is almost unbelievable.
Over a billion people have gone from not having plumbing to having indoor toilets, heating/cooling systems and access to modern health care in the space of 50 years.
Over a billion people have gone from not having plumbing to having indoor toilets, heating/cooling systems and access to modern health care in the space of 50 years.
I’ll reply to this with a quote from C. K. Lewis:
Of course slavery is the worst thing that ever happened. Every time it has happened – black people in America, Jews in Egypt, every time a whole race of people has been enslaved, it’s a horrible thing.
But maybe every incredible human achievement in history was done with slaves. Every single thing where you go, ‘How did they build those pyramids?’ They just threw human death and suffering at them until they were finished…There is no end to what you can do when you don’t give a f*ck about particular people
Hence why I compared it to he economic miracle of Nazi Germany.
The ethnic repression outside of Tibet is relatively new.
Most of it was sudden access to international capital as a new market with Deng’s reforms and becoming the manufacturing hub of the world (with all the pollution and poor work conditions that came with it)… Unless your argument is that all people living in authoritarian regimes are functionally slaves in which case that’s hyperbole that I think does a disservice to slavery be it chattle or the more traditional kinds (and note that the pyramids weren’t built by slaves unlike the Great Wall).
Edit: I’d also dispute the economic miracle of Nazi Germany. They built up an economy based on sacrifice and war prep, but it ran out of steam in a handful of years and was close to collapse before the war even began. Even allowing for a collapse of the Chinese economy sometime soon, that’s orders of magnitude more successful with objectively less murder and ethnic cleansing (per capita) than the Nazis went for.
Stop the lib whataboutism. The only response you can have when you hear China did something good right?
I’m not opposed to there being good stuff in China, but the economic miracle of China was built on top of slave labor and repression. It’s easy to get an economic miracle if you’re willing to sacrifice part of your population, which is why I have the Germany example since that’s exactly what was done there.
Overall China is getting better, and in a couple of generations they might be a relatively nice place to live, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that people there today are as free as people living in a democratic nation.
How is China is any way closed communication? Don’t answer.
Don’t answer.
Because the CCP will come arrest you if you do?
Because they’re just dealing brain dead slop
The great firewall exists. They have to use euphemisms to get around the censors.
Yes that doesn’t equal closed. Tiktok is censored but a lot of recent US movements have spread via the app
If you can’t criticize authority I don’t find that to be an open Internet. TikTok doesn’t exist in China. Try to say Trans rights are human rights on Douyin and see what happens.
Try to say trans rights are human rights to any American official. Stop with the whataboutism, red scare, racism. Just say you’re stuck in the Cold War. Any liberal when you say anything about China positive acts like a child.
Don’t answer.
Exactly, you’re getting it.
American here. When you elect a man—twice—whose character and policies have led to a fractured nation, a failing education system, crumbling infrastructure, and a healthcare system that leaves millions behind, it’s no surprise that the world views us with disdain. When your citizens are struggling to afford basic necessities like rent and groceries while a handful of individuals hoard wealth that rivals entire nations, we’ve earned every ounce of criticism.
Buckle up, because the descent into this nightmare is far from over. The worst is yet to come, and it’s going to be a long, suffocating fall.
Don’t forget one of our largest cities is currently on fire because of our own man made climate change that we are (I believe) the number one cause of, but those same leaders are telling us to shrug and say “who knows why”
I find it a little frustrating that you think any of this started with, because of, or will end with cheeto.
This:
a fractured nation, a failing education system, crumbling infrastructure, and a healthcare system that leaves millions behind
has always been the case, and it is a feature, not a bug. Always has been.
And it will never change as long as you continue to focus on the things the system tells you to focus on (like team red vs team blue, or the clown at the front of the stage) rather than on the system itself (a state mechanism built on slavery and genocide from day dot, and designed and enforced by and for the rich and powerful, who are the ones actually pulling the strings) and abolishing that.
And before OP gets their underwear in a twist - all states are oppressive and should be abolished, but a country founded on and with the biggest hard on for capitalism on the planet, and who has the power to, and has been since its founding, loudly and aggressively dragging the rest of the world on a race to the bottom (if not directly with war mongering and political interfering, then with profiteering off of their enemies war mongering and politically interfering), deserves all the criticism it gets, and the fact that it’s easier for you to create a straw person to dismiss the perfectly valid and long overdue criticism, than it is to hear them and sit with the mild discomfort it causes you to hear the truth and confront reality, is a you problem, not a lemmy problem.
How insanely American to think America being criticized a lot must mean propaganda.
Lemmy.world may have the least of this since they neolib gobblers
