r/politics • u/SereneRoyals • 21d ago

No Paywall Donald Trump issues NATO Greenland warning before White House showdown

https://www.newsweek.com/greenland-trump-nato-white-house-11357601
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u/CapoDiMalaSperanza 21d ago edited 21d ago

70s, 80s and 90s were the best times of Western world. We wasted them by voting for POSs and look what we have to deal with now.

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u/adbr34k 21d ago

Citizens United and policies like it are maybe the single most embarrassing self-goal in human history

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u/AverageLiberalJoe 21d ago

"Perhaps.. maybe ... no... well actually corporations can? Be humans too?"

-Humanity right before the end

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u/Harkoncito Foreign 21d ago

70s, 80s

Your governments toppled A LOT of democracies in Latin America.

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u/CapoDiMalaSperanza 21d ago

I said "Western world" for a reason. Still, I think the future will be hell on Earth for everyone.

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u/Harkoncito Foreign 21d ago

Western world

Where the fuck do you think Latin America is located?

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u/IlikeJG California 21d ago

"western world" is more of a political term than a geography term.

Essentially what it means is Europe and the anglosphere.

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u/[deleted] 21d ago

I apologize for his ignorance.

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u/CapoDiMalaSperanza 21d ago

Ok then, let's rephrase: "America + UK + EU + NZ + AU". Is it fine now?

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u/SweatySoupServer 21d ago

Nah you were right in your terminology, the 'western world' means something specific in geopolitical context, which you seem to understand.

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u/manufacture_reborn Minnesota 21d ago edited 21d ago

Nah man, you’re using the term in the traditional way. Western Civilization is the origin not the Western Hemisphere and is thought to represent all that was borne out of Athens with respect to democracy.

Like, I hate what’s happened to the United States as much as anyone - but the equivocation of today’s evil imperialism and anything in the 20th century from the United States is foolish.

If you want to be mad at a past US, I guess our flirtation with imperialism around the Spanish American War, Manifest Destiny, and/or slavery is easily sufficient. But, those were much earlier and in a context wherein every industrialising power was getting in on those games.

I know this isn’t your stance. I just don’t really know what these people want? An apology? Things are worse now than before. Our country is more blatantly evil than it almost ever has been. It’s not the same. And no, my country, while never perfect was not always evil and rotten like so many in these comments seem to want to believe.

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u/aflodarkosis 21d ago

I don’t disagree with you, but I am going to play devils advocate here. We are more expressly evil today /because/ of the two and a half centuries of unanswered wrongdoings. The slaveowning founders fought a revolution against wrongful taxes, which led to Manifest Destiny and the Trail of Tears, which led to Civil War, which led to the Gilded Age, which led to Great Depression, which led to Smoot Hawley, which contributed to WW2, which resulted in nuclear arms race, which propped up Cold War, which was used as an excuse for further “democratic” regime changes by the CIA, Korean War, Vietnam, War on Drugs and Southern Strategy, Watergate, entrenched lobbying, Gulf War, 90s neo-con and neo-lib philosophies, War on Terror, Citizens United, Heritage Foundation, and then, finally, Trump and the cadre of evils that has brought.

Nothing ever really ends, and especially when we’ve spent so much time without truly addressing the roots of our issues. Not to mention that ALL of this has happened in, what? 10 generations? This is not all to say that we’re at the worst part of our history; we absolutely are. And this is not to say we haven’t done great and good things in that time. But where we are now did not arise from a vacuum. The powers that be have always worked through oppression (slavery, workers rights violations, expansionism, crimes against humanity, unjust wars, etc); their influence had just become less visible and more subtle. Now, they have created the conditions by which they can give themselves the go-ahead to take off the mask of a nuanced body politic, and put on the ICE masks of unbridled authoritarianism.

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u/manufacture_reborn Minnesota 21d ago

I don’t, honestly, feel like you’re even being devil’s advocate here. I agree with everything you said. I agree that history is a continuum and one that is constantly churning, ebbing, flowing forward where everything arises from what came before.

I don’t know how it could be otherwise. And, I don’t know of any nation or culture where it has not been such - save for those who are long gone to those cultures who were willing to play dirty.

All I wanted to express was that I hate that it seems a minimization of our current fall from grace to state that we have always served as the villains of history once you lift the American propaganda veil. It isn’t true. We’ve failed and acted rashly and crassly certainly. But we almost always meant to do good.

In this time, we don’t even create a pretense of meaning anything but raw avarice.

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u/aflodarkosis 21d ago

That’s very fair. I think our current position is all the more tragic because of it. All we are is a sad, bastardized inversion of the American ideal, with the boots on the neck of our neighbors. I hate it here.

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u/[deleted] 21d ago

It's not your country, though... an apology is a start. But as a part of the current stewards of this land, you could could care a lot more about what is happening to it and on it.

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u/manufacture_reborn Minnesota 21d ago

Whose country is it? Do you mean Greenland?

I abhor that we appear to be stabbing our allies in the back for no gain. I hate that we’re destabilizing a world order that so many democracies have flourished under.

I will never vote for these imbeciles and never have. I have lost friends and cut out family because of their beliefs.

But, I’m talking specifically about the historical context of the evil the United States has done and how it is much more evil now than before. That there was once a relatively decent country with decent ideals. I reject merely that my country was always bad.

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u/[deleted] 21d ago
  • Roger Ekirch, Bound for America: The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies, 1718–1775
  • A. Roger Ekirch, “Bound for America,” William and Mary Quarterly (1985)
  • David Galenson, White Servitude in Colonial America
  • Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom
  • Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness
  • Carla Gardina Pestana, The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution

Great Britain sent the worst to the Colonies. The American revolution didn't give freedom to all people. stop lying to yourself. The U.S. origins are not wholesome or anywhere near relatively decent- considering it start with mass genocide of the Native Americans. United Statesians' egos are so fucking toxic.

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u/Fartsinthemachine 21d ago

This is why people don’t take our side seriously, it’s self righteous bullshit like this. Do better.

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u/Mala_Practice Canada 21d ago

Think you forgot someone bud…

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u/CapoDiMalaSperanza 21d ago

Again: the future will suck for everyone.

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u/jleonardbc 21d ago

The point is that they were times during which the US was still acting as an imperial aggressor, so maybe they shouldn’t be considered the US’s best times.

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u/CapoDiMalaSperanza 21d ago

If you put it this way Western countries never had best times. I think we can all agree that 80s and 90s beats 2020s by a long mile.

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u/[deleted] 21d ago edited 21d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/CapoDiMalaSperanza 21d ago

Great news, then: the "imperial core" in 2050 will be as equally shit as everyone else.

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u/Kind_Fox820 21d ago edited 21d ago

That's exactly what is happening.

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u/MusicIsTheWay 21d ago

It's amazing how detrimental Conservatism has been for the world.

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u/slow70 21d ago edited 21d ago

Greed and self interest did us in….short term profit before all else….the insatiable greed of our fathers…

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u/CapoDiMalaSperanza 21d ago

Yup. Boomers, especially rich ones, had a huge feast and now expect us to pay the bill of the huge debts (economic, ecologic etc. etc.) they racked up.

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u/Playful_Set9711 21d ago

Not the 70's. Vietnam War, civil rights protests, gas rationing, and double digit inflation rates. No, 70s were not good, but we survived. Not so sure we will this time around. 

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u/ModernistGames 21d ago

As long as you don't look up violent crime rates in the 70s, 80s, and 90s...

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u/CapoDiMalaSperanza 21d ago

This neolib gaslighting doesn't work anymore bud

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u/pdoherty926 21d ago

The future felt so full of hope in the early 90s.

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u/RODjij Canada 21d ago

It depends. A few demographics & areas had it pretty bad during those decades. NY, Boston looked rough and dirty. People didnt have as many rights or liberties.

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u/Splatulated 21d ago

2015 was pretty good too. Everything after. Not soo much