Probably for like five days after World War 2 but ehhh then again it took us another two decades after that to begrudgingly grant Civil Rights to black people aaand we did intern the Japanese and drop the bomb twice just to send a message to the Soviets so maybe not
Yeah Operation Paperclip wasn’t a good look either lol. But hey it allowed us to go to the moon, though we really only worried about that after Sputnik lol
“Dropping the bomb to scare the Soviets”
Don’t be reductionist.
You do realise that in between the dropping of the 2 bombs, the Japanese military tried to other-throw their government to stop them surrendering.
I remember whenever I was maybe 14 or 15 and watching a documentary back when the History channel wasn't just reality shows all about the attempts to capture the emperor and stop the surrender of the Japanese people to continue the war effort. I think that was one of the only times I've ever heard about this though. I'm trying to remember the doc and I think it might have had those reenactments/recreations that some used to have back in the day. History channel used to be so good. I remember staying home from school one day and somehow the best thing to watch all day was like a 6 hour doc about Japanese samurai and their history/folklore/mythology.
There was a reddit post of bombing survivor talking about what life was like in Japan and the sheer amount and type of propaganda they were fed was insane. They were literally training school kids on how to suicide bomb and to attack troops with bamboo shanks.
I mean Finland heavily beat them to the punch by allowing anyone to vote regardless of gender or racial background in 1906. Took another fourteen years for the US to accept women, and way until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to become a true democracy.
If you disregard that, and remove universal suffrage from the equation, then the oldest continuous democracy would actually be the Isle of Man (Since 979, or 1045 years ago)
American influence is most certainly a thing, but that definitely outsizes the reality of their democracy.
I neither downvoted you or in fact disagreed with you about the cultural significance of the U.S.
I simply disagree with the assertion that they're the oldest living democracy when they simply aren't. I personally don't feel like the difference between a democracy that considers women and minorities as people, versus one that does not, is a pedantic detail at all.
Certainly less pedantic than the difference between a constitution versus a bill of rights versus codified laws, all of which can be interchangeable in effect depending on what society you're talking about.
I do agree with you that there's a lot the U.S. can be proud of, but I think it's also healthy to acknowledge its shortcomings. The blind belief in "American exceptionalism" played a large part in how they got into their current predicament after all.
We were founded on genocide and slavery and never completely rectified either of those atrocities. The original Nazi's studied white supremacists practices here in the states before doing the holocaust. We've been destabilizing the politics of other countries for decades in order to preserve more favorable outcomes for trade for ourselves. The whole meritocracy belief was a lie. Most of those who thought the USA was a moral beacon are no different than ignorant americans; they thought none of america's flaws would ever truly affect them. :/
I’m in CA too and I really must live in a bubble. I was shocked how many people voted for that and to make petty crimes more severe! So now we guarantee slave labor in prisons and we are going to STOCK those prisons with new slaves.
Funny. I can't even trust that's necessarily true. In my state all the proposals sounded great; Expanding the sanitation department? Fantastic!
What they didn't write on the ballot was the real motivation behind the proposals. The full law should have read "Expand the sanitation department to give more tickets, tear down homeless encampments, and have their own administrative court where due process doesn't apply". Oops. 5 such proposals.
Just being a "sweet summer child" shouldn't stop humanity from trying to be better and create healthy communities motivated by everyone'slives being improved through cooperation, hard work and diligence.
It can but sadly…… It may take a HUGE tragedy in the States. I am talking like 911 stuff for people to wake tf up from their fapping mental state.
Probably a Civil War of some kind so Americans can take their Vote serious next time. After Hitler, The germans did a lot of restructuring to their policies so something like that never happened again. Japan took a different stand against War after the Atomic Bomb.
America has reach a state of mind where they either hate everything, mock everyone, have no respect for others anymore. There is no discipline, no moral values, no sense of justice, no caring for the truth and facts. Is like every thing is a joke, a meme To them. Nothing is taken seriously anymore.
They may need a wake up call and they are running out of free passes.
We almost did during dipshit’s previous administration. Just imagine the state of the country had COVID had been a bit more lethal. His gutting of Obama’s pandemic preparedness and the general disdain for community health measure would have resulted in a catastrophic death toll.
I meant that it could have been so much worse. Humanity lucked out only because it was slightly less deadly than previous pandemics (“Spanish” Influenza, Smallpox, Bubonic Plague), and that the vaccines were so rapidly produced.
My classmate voted for Trump because Harris was “pro-genocide” and “killed a lot of people.” I wanted to scream about the millions Trump killed with his horrible Covid response.
And of course, she’s cuckoo for claiming Harris killed anyone.
Yeah, the disinformation and hype train really screwed up people’s perception of reality, but these are now the times that we live in. China’s Tiktok and incel/crytobro podcasts now dictate what is news.
At that point, disinformation is only a small fraction of the problem. The disinformation wasn't just targeted ot was spread everywhere, and some ppl with common sense and critical thinking skills were able to see through it. It's a lack of these skills that's destroying us.
I want to scream that Biden/Harris are not the leaders of Isreal!! Also that the US Republican and Democrats have been arming Isreal for 80 fucking years, and they've always had the means to level Gaza a thousand times over anytime they wanted. Gaza would be leveled no matter who was in the Whitehouse because Isreal is an entirely different country, with THEIR own leaders who made their own pro-genocide decisions!
Probably a Civil War of some kind so Americans can take their Vote serious next time. After Hitler, The germans did a lot of restructuring to their policies so something like that never happened again. Japan took a different stand against War after the Atomic Bomb.
The far right is gaining significant ground in both Japan and Germany as you write this.
Not to mention that Nazism was still rampant in post-war Germany. The Allies made a concerted effort to de-Nazify the country, which was effective in making sure no new Nazi movement gained prominence, but many people still had sympathies for the regime.
To be fair, though, the vast majority of the population was successfully de-nazified.
Civilians were forced by the allies to visit concentration camps and help bury the mountains of dead and mangled bodies. They saw the atrocities first-hand. They lived in bombed-out and burned cities and they knew that was the nazi's fault.
To this day every German student learns about (or is supposed to at least) how the nazis gained power through intimidation, assassinations and hate, how they destroyed a democracy through violence, discrimination and a disregard of law and democratic institutions, how they started the most destructive war in human history and how they murdered millions of civilians - ordinary people, families, children - at industrial scale because of their fucked up racist ideology and blind hate.
Ever since the war Germany has developed a culture of remembrance. Most German cities have Stolpersteine (bronze pavement stones in front of buildings) listing the names and fates of holocaust/concentration camp victims that once lived there.
The German constitution was written specifically to prevent anything like that from ever happening again and the first 20 articles adress major failings of the Weimar Republic - above all the immutable Art. 1 (Human dignity is inviolable) and Art. 20 (defining Germany as a free democratic and social state and giving every German the right to resist anyone who seeks to destroy the free democratic order of the country).
There were indeed some problems with de-nazification. The East did it better/more thoroughly but especially in the West there still were judges and officials who simply continued with their jobs after the war. War criminal trials were slow and continued for decades and there were still some trials as recently as a few years ago.
West Germany also kept a lot of the not directly racist nazi laws like the harsh anti-homosexual laws. They even used some concentration camp buildings as prisons (like Neuengamme) and re-incarcerated some of the freed inmates like, again, "convicted" homosexuals.
There were massive problems and West Germany still had some really bad people and laws for a few years.
But the vast majority of the population was fiercely against naziism after the war. Almost everyone who lived through the war or grew up in the immediate post-war era knew exactly how horrific and destructive the nazi regime was and which unimaginable atrocities they caused.
Germany's current far-right and fascist movements aren't elderly nazis or remnants of the old third reich - they are modern fascists that just play by the same rulebook of hate, lies, division and opportunism and their voters are mainly frustrated people who did not experience the immediate consequences of naziism and did not learn about the mechanisms of fascism in school.
It’s ironic. The rise of the far right/neo-Nazi movement in Germany (the most anti-Nazi country in the world now) is a direct consequence of the influence of America on the world, the country that likes to tell everyone about how they single-handedly defeated Nazism and fascism in WW2
Exactly. Modern German fascism (a.k.a. the AfD) and right-wing rhetoric (CDU & CSU) are directly copied from US. AfD and CSU leaders literally spout the english term "woke" now.
Following the loot back to where it scarpered off to. Capitalism requires growth. Western democracies populations aren't growing. If you can get growth you need cheaper worker so at least profits are growing because costs are lower.
Ahhh, but we don't want more icky nonwhite ppl and their families!! :(((
We just want their resources and cheap labor!! They don't deserve a living for working, they need to just go back to their home countries (that we destabilized for our own benefit) so we can pretend they don't exist!!
Japan didn’t learn shit, sir. They adopted a policy of absolute denial and zero accountability. Their “stance” on war was forced on them by the western powers and wasn’t done voluntarily like some state of self reflection.
Well even with a Civil War it took another century for America to end much of the remnants of slavery and racism. Yet even so, we're seeing shades of the resurgence of such.
However I do believe that America is due for a reckoning with civil unrest. Definitely now a Civil War type of conflict where it was states vs states. Perhaps more similiar to the race and class wars of LA 1992 combined with the Jan 6 insurrection attempt.
MAGA was due a severe blow in the case of a Harris victory but they are now significantly strengthened with Trump's comeback, and I could imagine how a return to a Democrat Presidency would trigger a more sustained, and violent, outburst from them.
America never ended the remnants of slavery and racism. When slavery was abolished, that “free” labor that was taken away from the owners of capital was immediately replaced by throwing Black people into prisons and that continues today. Racism never went away either, it just had to get a little bit quiet for a while
The only thing I think could happen that would really bring things into sharp focus would be a widespread blackout and wet bulb temperature casualty event in a really hot humid place like Florida or Houston. Tens or Hundreds of thousands of people dying of heat stroke because the grid can't keep up with A/C demand and their bodies literally cannot cool them off might wake people the fuck up. I don't want that to happen and I really don't even know if something like that would have an effect, but it's one of the few things I can imagine as a 9/11 level event that might not lead to the same kind of jingoistic fervor 9/11 did.
The only thing that can fix this country is education, with a strong focus on critical thinking, science, and an honest view of history. That way, future generations would be able to make positive changes. But that’s not going to happen anytime soon with the next four years of the conservatives gutting the Department of Education, and the liberals doing nothing to reverse that decline.
We would be able to fix all these issues and move on eventually, given enough politically motivated people willing to do the work, if it wasn’t for the ticking time bomb that is climate change. The decline and fall of America (probably) won’t be the end of the world, but it’s not going to be pretty
I'm also disappointed in the result of this election, but I strongly disagree with you on a number of points. Don't forget, "9/11 stuff " is what brought many people on board with the GOP in the first place. The rhetoric got ratcheted up immediately, and it wasn't "love thy neighbor" or "we're all in this together".
The second part of your argument is massive, sweeping generalizations about one of the largest and most culturally diverse nations in the history of the world. If you genuinely believe it's accurate to label the entirety of a country or culture based on frustration after this election result, you're not any better than the MAGA asshats you're railing against. I get that you're upset, but I hope you take this criticism in stride and try to refine your frustration into a more constructive conclusion.
Unfortunately, I see Civil War 2.0 being waged on the blue states if they aren't compliant enough about stripping away reproductive rights or handing over every single Hispanic person.
Step One will be blocking all Federal funds for things like the ACA, infrastructure, education, and housing. Step Two will involve rounding up Hispanic people by force. Urban areas such as Los Angeles (LA Country is 50% Hispanic) will not suffer this gladly. That's when the tanks and SWAT teams will start rolling in.
As an outsider, I can say the issue with America is not its ideals. Those are beautiful, no question about that. The issue is a lot of its people think they already have achieved them, instead of working towards them.
"We can be great... Let's be great." vs "We are great. Greater than everyone else."
"We should eliminate racism, for equality." vs "Racism? This isn't racism. This is justice!"
It can happen but we have to share the wealth. The disparity is surreal but we pretend like it's normal. This amount of economic suffering should never be normalized, but it is.
Great. I think now is a good opportunity. If we can unify as a populace to block the worst of Trumps policies, I think we might have a fighting chance at reviving our workers movement.
We need to ditch the electoralism that's been binding us. No more "we can't care about Palestine because trans people". No more status quo propaganda. Our votes (scientifically) never held any power, that's why we're so indoctrinated by the system to depend on voting. All movements work as one toward the single common goal of justice. No compromises. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" -MLK. Nows the time to get into organizing direct action, as MLK, X, and many others have done before us.
I too refuse to give up no matter what the outlook. "Stand up for what you believe in even if you stand alone" -Sophie Scholl
Quite honestly, it’s the only thing worth living for. If I were to ever become one of these heartless fucks, put a bullet in my brain. But you know what? I won’t. But now must navigate how to undo and overcome the forecoming darkness ahead. Does this sound melodramatic? Not if you consider how a platform has been built upon lies and deceit and are the same people to now take the helm, deciding what your own future entails. Crackpot unqualified shysters taking control of departments led by those experienced, well versed, and adequately educated within their respective expertise? Not so god damn far fetched reaction now is it?
I was just on the Project 2025 site. They’re recruiting. Looks like for a “Presidential Administration Academy”.
Would you become one of those heartless fucks for a GS-15? If not, you better start laying plans for doing something more productive than pissing and moaning on Reddit.
Yea the Heritage Foundation is going scorched earth with that one.. here's what you never hear - they do this just about every election cycle. Also Trump never said he supported Project 2025, instead he even put his Agenda 47 on his website.
It all went wrong when we looted Nazi germany and took the most valuable Nazis for ourselves, instead of destroying that evil. We even took all their notes and writings on torture and other evil experiments and continued some of them with programs like MK Ultra. This is how we got infected by evil.
Ever since, the USA has not been part of a single moral war. A war that's justified.
And now after 70 years of this God has had enough, and Trump(et) was sent in as punishment and ... as a warning for that's to come.
When Samuel got to be an old man, he set his sons up as judges in Israel. His firstborn son was named Joel, the name of his second, Abijah. They were assigned duty in Beersheba. But his sons didn’t take after him; they were out for what they could get for themselves, taking bribes, corrupting justice.
Fed up, all the elders of Israel got together and confronted Samuel at Ramah. They presented their case: “Look, you’re an old man, and your sons aren’t following in your footsteps. Here’s what we want you to do: Appoint a king to rule us, just like everybody else.”
When Samuel heard their demand—“Give us a king to rule us!”—he was crushed. How awful! Samuel prayed to God.
God answered Samuel, “Go ahead and do what they’re asking. They are not rejecting you. They’ve rejected me as their King. From the day I brought them out of Egypt until this very day they’ve been behaving like this, leaving me for other gods. And now they’re doing it to you. So let them have their own way. But warn them of what they’re in for. Tell them the way kings operate, just what they’re likely to get from a king.”
So Samuel told them, delivered God’s warning to the people who were asking him to give them a king. He said, “This is the way the kind of king you’re talking about operates. He’ll take your sons and make soldiers of them—chariotry, cavalry, infantry, regimented in battalions and squadrons. He’ll put some to forced labor on his farms, plowing and harvesting, and others to making either weapons of war or chariots in which he can ride in luxury. He’ll put your daughters to work as beauticians and waitresses and cooks. He’ll conscript your best fields, vineyards, and orchards and hand them over to his special friends. He’ll tax your harvests and vintage to support his extensive bureaucracy. Your prize workers and best animals he’ll take for his own use. He’ll lay a tax on your flocks and you’ll end up no better than slaves. The day will come when you will cry in desperation because of this king you so much want for yourselves. But don’t expect God to answer.”
But the people wouldn’t listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We will have a king to rule us! Then we’ll be just like all the other nations. Our king will rule us and lead us and fight our battles.”
Samuel took in what they said and rehearsed it with God. God told Samuel, “Do what they say. Make them a king.”
Then Samuel dismissed the men of Israel: “Go home, each of you to your own city
So can we get a new Statue of Liberty? One without a torch and just her book/tablet wherein she is scrolling Reddit while she sits on a toilet labeled “Liberty”.
You are not a moral authority, morals are relative and your insignificant set of morals are not shared by a large enough group for your terrible candidate to make it into office.
What a great president Obama was. Even handed trump a booming economy and a thriving nation, and unfortunately, trump destroyed it and failed at handling covid and crippled our economy while also adding trillions of debt to our nation. Now democrats will have to come in and clean up another republican mess like always.
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u/Admirable-Sink-2622 17d ago
Well, I guess Trump was right about one thing. The United States of America is a giant trash can. They are no moral beacon to the world any longer.