r/IAmA - I'm Matthew Yglesias, author of One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger, and a co-founder of Vox.com -- Ask Me Anything
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71 votes and 286 comments so far on Reddit

Someone bust his chops, everyone else up vote it. This fucker wants 1 billion Americans, what a psycho.

Don't like it? [down] vote!

Edit: Also don't cross contaminate accts by linking to your own post or w/e, or be mindful if you do.

  • GrouchoMarxist [comrade/them,use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    "US policy in Latin America has been very bad.

    But it's important to specify what counterfactual we're talking about. If instead of bad policy we had good policy, that would've been a lot better. But if instead of bad policy the United States literally did not exist and the whole world was dominated by Soviet-backed regimes, that would've been a lot worse.

    So all told, throughout the 20th century the United States was a counterbalancing force against more malign great powers and I think the same is true vis-a-vis China in the 21st Century. And that's true even though US foreign policy has often been terrible."

    I asked a shitty question, couldn't think of something good... But I'm seriously nauseated that he's pushing this shit. We should pour lava buckets in his Minecraft house

    • star_wraith [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Domino theory is such BS. Most communist movements in the cold war period were literally just organic movements in the country; people wanting something better for themselves. What do you know, when a foreign colonial power owns most of the means of production in your country while your people starve, communism looks pretty good. While some may have accepted material help from the USSR (usually after the US/CIA had intervened), they definitely didn't want Soviet influence over their heads.

      Edit: also, according to Matt's shitty theory literally anything is justified because "communism is worse". Kill a few million folks in Vietnam? Well, communism would have killed MORE and no I will not show my work. Demonizing socialist countries and making up body counts serves the capitalist empire because it rationalizes the bad shit they do.

      • acealeam [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        if you imagine all the cons of my proposal are pros, its suddenly a really good thing

    • cum_drinker69 [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Fucking hell, that's the stupidest thing I've ever read, especially if you're using Latin America as your example of why America is the lesser of two evils. "If the Soviets were there they would have raped twice as many nuns and disemboweled twice as many children!"

      Just a naive little boy in a fat bald clown's body, hasn't questioned a single piece of propaganda he's been fed but thinks he's "open-minded" because he comes up with these absolutely laughable ideas. At the same time, he's the perfect public intellectual for this country at this period in history.