(Yeah yeah, preaching to the choir; admittedly this is for the idiot libs who keep posting here)
Our country's killed a million people almost every decade (with some decades seeing more than a million) after WW2, we pass laws to criminalize homelessness and in some cases to indirectly kill them like making it illegal to provide them shelter during winter, we have the largest prison population on earth not because the average American is a criminal but because this is a police state (or maybe you disagree and think the average guy is a criminal?), our cops kill an insane amount of people every year and are allowed to get away with it (even in many cases where we have video evidence), the government's conducted inhuman experiments on us, and we're literally part of the fabric of many nations' histories that are halfway round the world because we've intervened extremely heavily in their countries to the point of getting rid of their leaders and installing violent dictators. Access to healthcare in these countries is also leagues better than it was back home.
And people's reaction today is to actually think somehow CHINA'S worse than us; there's a reason why Argentinians celebrate 9/11 and even have a street named after it even though they don't even border us. It takes propaganda to turn people into frothing lunatics in regards to any of those three countries, but with America all it takes is surviving us or people learning from their parents or their grandparents why they lack so many family members and why the family they still have are horribly disfigured, and that accounts for many, many people around the world. The mines the Vietnam war left behind was killing about 100 people every year until around 2000, and then it was 50 people every year.
To quote Bush Sr. after our forces shot down an Iranian passenger plane, whom so many libs were quick to show deference to when he kicked it, "I'm not an apologize for America kind of guy". He also got applause for that.
America is easily worse than China, Russia and Saudi Arabia, UNLESS human life has no value, then we're better. Honestly the only thing less valuable than human life to America is a bullet.
Cope.
One time I was told that China was bad because they had a bunch of precious metals they won't share with the US. Not even making this up. An old, albeit dreadfully confused, boomer ass white lady at the local Democrats meeting rambled on about how China won't share their stuff. She basically said most other countries share with the US... Uh, that's because the US is an empire with a stranglehold on the global south, sweaty...
The reality is that we still exist in the nightmare pangs of a world where the failsons of the past 500 years of imperialism and genocide strut around acting like the moral leaders of the planet. You enter into a sort of mental paralysis despair spiral when you read about the atrocities committed by those who built this western "civilization" through the genocide of the New World, the subjugation of the entire planet and see the chauvinism and nonchalance of how this west conducts itself today.
There has never been such a degree of inhumanity as what followed when the west got its grubby little hands on gunpowder and the compass and to have them now hide the butcher's knife behind their back and act the saint today, gloatingly prancing about like peacocks about being the "first world," one built with the inherited loot of 5 centuries of imperialism, gives you a wrenching dissonance at the Kafkaesque parody of a world "order" we now inhabit.
The most farcical aspect of this is that we of the West are the most filial children this species has ever produced. The institutional propaganda purpose of western academia and all those prestigious University Presses in terms of the humanities is to print out endless slop degrading the historical past of designated enemy nations and lionizing our own. It's viewed as a great triumph to see designated enemy nations so self-conscious in casting down their forefathers as Khruschev did to Stalin and as feckless diaspora reactionaries fantasize about doing to Fidel and Mao.
Meanwhile, the 2020 BLM protests showed how the west would fight tooth and nail to defend every single inch of the historical pantheon of slave owning founding fathers and colonizers. A few like Robert E Lee were (grudgingly) cast down (sporadically) as a concession, but any wider challenge against the likes of Washington, Jefferson, the 19th century Oxbridge imperialism-abbetting dons and even a freak like Rhodes were slapped down. This is what all the pearl-clutching around the statues and the paintings and the named buildings were really about at its core.
This cognitive battle for historical memory is the bedrock of contemporary western chauvinism. The aim is to ensure that only the history of the west is worth being proud of. In the former socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the educational curriculum drills in the historical shame of the socialist half-century, ensuring that the people will always feel wretched about their socialist past while the west still gets to parade around Cold War war criminal Presidents, Prime Ministers and Chancellors as their heroes "with flaws." The end result is that the past of former socialist states today is a blank nihilistic void with nothing of dignity to draw upon except going back centuries to fawn over inbred royalty or those Nazi-collaborationist freaks who terrorized their forefathers for their choice of socialism or just outright Westanbetung.
In the former DDR, it's no surprise that the choice has become the far-right AfD. In this societal self-flagellation where the "Stasi" past is denounced, there's not even some "post-Nazism redemption story" to grasp, like the fiction which the BRD parades around, because the socialist past is consigned to oblivion, equated almost on par with Hitler-fascism. Consequently, the only source of historical self-worth for many then can only inevitably come from LARPing as generic white people and importing American far-right and neo-Nazism as mimicry, vicariously associating with "Europe" and "the West" for that sense of post-socialist Europe pride that comes from being patted on the shoulder as being "semi-white" and "semi-European," which has become the principal aspiration for those people.
The mental colonization that this represents is so pervasive that MLs are no exception to falling into this trap of helping to aggrandize western memory and denounce that of the designated enemies. In the nihilistic despair of the 90s and early 00s, Michael Parenti would praise Julius Caesar as a "hero for his time" for his cynical appropriation of Roman populism and yet condemned Deng Xiaoping in a fit of western Marxist paranoia. His example shows how easy it is for absolutely anyone to fall into this well worn groove and "cognitive comfort" that comes from accepting the western narrative of all things.
This is the cognitive dimension of why western hegemony is the primary contradiction of the contemporary world and must be recognized as such. Such a recognition accepts, and will never let go, of the historical fact of the west's 500 year past of savagery. It steadfastly refuses the west's song and dance at propagating historical nihilism (as Chinese comrades have fittingly coined) to the populace of its designated enemies while simultaneously patting itself on the back for being the failsons of war criminals and colonizing butchers. To awaken to this truth is a form of cognitive liberation, a moment of clarity that pulls the wool from one's eyes. Even within the fragmented landscape of contemporary western "Marxism," individuals in the suffocating midst of the imperial core can contribute to this principled stance.
On the million people thing, that's militarily. If we consider the death toll of the conditions brought by global capitalism, that number reaches so high that even though I know it's true, it feels ridiculous to say and impossible to contemplate.
I think Saudi Arabia might be worse tbh, they have an actual monarchy and didn't let women drive until like 5 years ago.
It is a puppet state but it sucks in its own right, they are moving towards better relations with China which is a good sign but there is a long way to go.
What I just said plus a lot more. U.S. for all its faults lets women drive and has no monarchy.
very westoid response. women can drive in SA and the country (as well as the peninsula) is liberalizing quickly. monarchy or not the saudi people feel like they have more democracy than the americans do because their material needs are met, so how is bourgeois democracy better or worse than a monarchy in our liberal-international system? now that the score is even tell me again what is worse about saudi compared to the most genocidal empire currently on this planet?
That's less a defense of Saudi Arabia and just pointing out it's better than America
by your own logic you're here defending america, not a good look sweaty
i just want you to realize that your outlook on saudi arabia is based on orientalism than any actual marxist criticism, and your standards are hypocritical and myopic
CW:SA
Saudi Arabia locks up and then executes political dissidents, sometimes even their families too. They assassinate people that portray them in a bad light. There is extensive slavery in the country, rivaled only by their other Wahhabi neighbors. Not only are they an absolute monarchy, the aristocracy (royal family) hoards all the wealth, there is no social mobility for those not closely related to a prince. They just let a bunch of pilgrims die from denying them access to indoor facilities. They are currently fighting a literal (littoral?) genocidal war, going on for the past TEN years.
They have been aligned with the West and committed to anti-communism and anti-secularism and against pan-Arabism from the beginning, they bolster the Israeli project, and have their deepest, most fundamental political relationship with the US.
We rightly criticize people saying "Russia would be worse" as a counterfactual with flimsy evidence, but for this case, there's enough to extrapolate. If Saudi Arabia is not as bad as the US, it's not for lack of trying, it's because they simply aren't powerful enough.
But try starting a "party for socialism and liberation" in Saudi Arabia and see how well it goes. Their "liberalization" is a charade.
rivaled only by their other Wahhabi neighbors
vibes based analysis. name one "wahhabi" neighbour
If Saudi Arabia is not as bad as the US, it's not for lack of trying
all that you mentioned the SA doing the US does as well and more successfully, i don't know why westerners want to do powerscaling with countries. and we're not picking who the next hegemon will be we're doing an assessment of what country is the undisputed king of capital that's responsible for nearly every ailment in the world if you've read the op.
People who are part of the solution usually get thrown in prison or assassinated around here.
You should see what our country does to people who are part of the solution like Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange (not an American though as far as I'm aware).
If they're dunking on socialists, I don't think you want to hear what their "solution" is.
I do, they aren't "dunking" on anyone. Trying to, sure, but it's ineffective and I want them to know that.
What's your solution then? We'd love to hear it. Or are you just a problem too?
There’s 3 kinds of people in this world: people who fight the system/try to change the system from the inside, those who find a way to make the system work for them, and those who just sit around and bitch about it on the Internet. You may not know which I am, but I’m pretty sure I know which you are.
