1. Vietnam
2. Poverty
3. The Civil War post-Reconstruction
4. Drugs
5. Iraq War
6. Coronavirus
7. Korea
8. Afghanistan
9. Terror
10. Moral superiority in the eyes of other nations
11. Trade/Economic dominance
12. Post-Cold War psyops
13. The space race
14. Election 2016
15. Red Cloud’s War
16. Not getting hit by a bus
17. The War of 1812 (technically more like a draw, but the Brits did burn down the White House so imma count it)
10 uhhh.. not sure you ever really had that one… lot of goodwill from the rest of the world for say about 20 years after ww2… but that whole moral superiority and leaders of the free world is mostly shit you decided for yourselves without asking the rest of us
I don’t think America was ever as popular with the world as Americans think it was, but post-war we did some relatively righteous things and at that point all we had to do was be less bad than the Soviet Union, which we generally were able to do, especially in Europe. But to your point, we only did whatever was required to beat communism, and once that was gone, the naked self-interest has only multiplied. The pissing away of any respect anyone has for America has been a multi-decade project.
pretty much… tho..to be honest…whilst we definitely dont like the states as much as they think we do.. we’re mostly okay with letting yous play leader of the free world and shit…
coz uhh… well.. naked self interest mostly… pot kettle black..
course with the current leadership of the states our naked self interest is starting to diverge from yours…
probably not a good thing
The whole “world’s policeman” thing really pissed me off. Calling ourselves the greatest country in the world thing needs to go too. When we solve healthcare, poverty/homelessness & actually fund education we can take another look at that shit.
“like Jack Parlance in the movie Shane”
great minds & all that…
Actually the people most likely to say “greatest country in the world” are also the ones most likely to rank it by guns per capita, so…
Yes…because when you (USA) “solve” healthcare, you’ll (USA’ll?) certainly take the credit for it…even though it is something that no other country considers a problem, let alone one that needs to be solved.
eh… its like the special needs kid at work
gotta praise his achievements and gently nudge him towards doing stuff like everyone else
or he starts flipping tables
(tho..tbh…the special needs kid at me work is actually a sweetheart…just gotta avoid over stimulation)
> Calling ourselves the greatest country in the world thing needs to go too.
yes. that and the American exceptionalism BS is biting us in the ass now. people think they’re invisible and they are not listening to stay home, do social distancing, or wear masks
What about the War on Christmas?
There are no winners there.
I don’t think we really lost the Korean War, and we haven’t lost economic dominance yet. That’s more of a work in progress.
I’d argue the fact that we’re still technically at war — with a nuclear-capable North — is loss enough. (It also set the stage for the endless “major military conflict but not real war” era of American decline.)
The economic dominance thing is true, but we’re definitely on the other side of that mountain. Turns out offshoring all of your manufacturing capabilities makes it hard to rev up to meet, in an example I just came up with very randomly, a crisis that requires making masks or something!
Of all the things we’ve lost – we miss our mind the most.
Was thinking about this book recently – any history nerds or anyone who hates people in power would probably like it. Called the March of Folly – it’s basically about civilization’s big dumb fuck ups. https://www.amazon.com/March-Folly-Troy-Vietnam/dp/0345308239 “Barbara W. Tuchman defines folly as the pursuit by government of policies contrary to their own interests, despite the availability of feasible alternatives.”
Agreed! Excellent book.
Great, horrifying book.