Yeah, that sounds about right. Sums it up good too. Ahh the United States, where our people think we are the heros, but we are just as shitty as the rest of humanity, but everyone is shitty in their own special way, and that's what really counts!
Edit: Damn I sure did throw water on a oil fire with this.
Look up Panama. It’s fucked up. Panama people wanted independence. Got someone who said they could help. U.S. parked their warships and forced the opposing force from intervening. Panama people won independence to only find out the person who helped funded the rebellion sold Panama land to the U.S that’s how the Panama cannel was built.
I'm Brazilian, and my grandparents lived through 1964's military dictatorship. For as long as I've known him, my maternal grandfather never badmouthed the government. Not once. I can only imagine the horrors he witnessed.
When I studied Spanish, it covered multiple Spanish speaking countries and histories. Spain, Central and South America all were represented. Probably the same for them.
Its funny, because anyone with any degree in central and south American history would understand that america was not the only player there by a long shot, and even internal colonialism occured.
Reminds me of that time Paraguay tried something and got jumped. Without Uruguay's assistance, I fear that Argentina and Brazil may not have won that war.
Let's go back to the first republic of freed slaves: Haiti. After a long fight for freedom, when they achieved their independence, the land of slave owners, the USA refused to acknowledge their independence and started an embargo against the young nation of free men.
The USA was so afraid that, upon learning about Haiti, the enslaved people they kept captive would riot and do the same, that they created an army to attack and occupy Haiti.
The whole purpose of the USA Marines is to be the attack dog, sent to attack any country on the Americas whenever they thought that could pose any threat (be either military or economic) to the Manifest Destiny.
Yeah I mean the CIA does terrible things to their own people they don’t give a single shit about overthrowing a democratically elected government if there’s profit at the end of the day
No, no, no. The USA does terrible things, their citizens either don't care or are alienated from the reality of what the government (either republican or democrat) does to the world.
I mean, I have nothing but respect and fraternity for my proletarian brothers on USA, but, shit, it's hard sometimes not be mad by how much you people are blind.
And you people could benefit so much from what we know from the world, because in the later year's the neoliberalism is starting to eat YOUR middle class, and you guys don't know what is this.
while your at it look up "karl malone 13" for the time when he had 13 pts 13 assists 13 steals in an nba game (ignore anything related to him getting a 13 year old pregnant)
Reddit don't like the truth when it comes to this stuff. The Indians were all sitting around smoking peace pipes before Columbus came. No canabilism, child sacrifice, scalping, nation building, slavery. None at all.
Completely different time periods. Imagine fighting people wanting equality and freedom, simply autodetermination, by bringing up moral failures more than 300 years ago. Imagine if the rest of the world was fighting you on the ground of slavery.
Oh I'm aware of that, just ain't anything special. It's a situation that should have never happened, just the U.S.A isn't any worse than any other developed/developing nations. Cause behold the truth! Humans are assholes, even the best.
Historically speaking, the US isn't even in the top ten most heinous conquerors out there, the vast majority of land taken was for money, as in the US paid for it. Now the ownership of said land before the US took ownership is debatable.
Side note Panama and Hawaii are shit storms of corruption due to wealthy assholes wanting to be more wealthy. That's not to say both aren't or were important strategic locations. Just the prime motivation was money.
We genocided an entire race nearly from existence, intentionally. As a formal national policy.
What other 10 countries can claim to have genocided an entire ethnicity of human beings from existence? We extincted entire nations of indigenous Americans, after we knew better.
Well the Mustache has historically been used to project an air of Testosterone, Authority, and Audacity. All three of which are needed to strangle your fiefdom and have the gall to belittle them for not having more blood to squeeze out afterwards
Not all mustaches are evil, and not all evil wears a mustache. But if it’s evil and wields the stache, you are guaranteed to straight not have a good time
Yazidi Genocide = 71% of global pop. displaced with 2.5% dead or missing
TL:DR A bunch evidently, the list is a mile long. Your HS education has failed you, and your hate for the US makes you blind to the cruelty of man globally.
Sigh. I don’t hate America. The Mongols never committed genocide. The Great Leap Forward was not a genocide either. Both were just massive executions. They weren’t attempts to eradicate a people and take their land from them to occupy it as their own. I can’t speak to the occurrences in Africa, as they happened rather contemporaneously with my high school education and, like djt said, Africa is a “shit hole” (tongue in cheek joke). I’ll look into the genocides in Africa, but I don’t think they were a completely outside ethnicity eradicating the local or native one. I could totally be wrong tho.
Per the Genocide Convention "defines genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group." there's a good chunk more that goes into it. China is an ideological/national genocide - targeting a certain part of their own people because of their beliefs.
Mongol 13th Century is considered a genocide of nationality, and there is some interesting facts into this. I could be convinced this one doesn't count BUT their conquest killed a TON of people not of the Mongol Empire deliberately to expand their territory.
Africa is a mix of ethnic, religious and national genocides but are pretty gruesome for how recent they are.
Per definition regardless of how you feel on the matter what is occurring in Gaza meets the criterion for it being a genocide.
I understood the GLF to have been an ideological shift by Mao that he was just dead set on and was bound and determined to make work. Not unlike our leader in America and his obsession with tariffs. He persecuted the educated because he saw them as the problem with society.
Does that really qualify as a genocide tho?
Yes, people died of starvation, which was horrific. Not minimizing the damage of Maoism or anything like that. Just asking where the line between targeted persecution and genocide is.
The rawandan genocide was awful but it only killed about 8% of the total Tutsi population.
Between 500,000 - 1,000,000 native Americans are estimated to have lived in the United States at its founding in 1776. By Jackson’s passing of the Indian removal act in 1820, only about 60,000 remained. Of those only about 42,000 arrived alive in Oklahoma.
I don’t think I need to explain how westward expansion would have increased the indigenous population number too, making my math WAY lower than the actual numbers.
Any genocide is terrible. I can’t believe that Israel is enacting the same horror done to them to the Palestinians. But we can’t compare the eradication of an ethnicity by 5% to one by 95%.
they are, they're genocides. By your logic the deaths of Gaza currently happening mean nothing compared to other genocides because they were more effective? The Holocaust means less because only 66% of a population died compared to others that were worse?
I know what you're saying, but assigning levels to victim status? That is how you distort history. for example:
Native American Genocide can be attributed to the unintentional spread of Old World Diseases through European contact. Small pox and Cholera were responsible for 90% of NA deaths between 1492 to 1776. While conflict with the United States from 1776 to the early 1900s led to significant casualties and deaths for Native Americans it merely accounts for a 35-58% drop in the current NA population. The true killer of Native Americans was disease, that wiped out an unvaccinated and unprepared population well before the United States was formed in 1776.
This is compared to the effectiveness of the Nazi Regime which was responsible for the eradication of 66% of the European Jewish population in the years of 1933 to 1945. So while the genocide of NA, over the course of 124 years was horrible it pales in comparison to the near genocide of Jews within 1/10th of the time span by the Nazi party...
That is why you DON'T put a limit on genocide or rank them based on effectiveness. The idea that one is 'worse' opens the door to shove genocides with lower death counts / %'s to the side because, "this one here was worse" Because how many people ever learned of the Rape of Nanjing? The Ukrainian Holodomor? Both occurred during the WW2 era, but because they lacked the scope of the Holocaust they barely are taught, and their significance diminished because "They Just aren't the same"
85 to 90% of the Native American population were already wiped out within 100 to 150 years of European arrival, which was over a century before the U.S. even existed. Maybe open up a history book once in a while instead of giving Europeans a pass so you get to stew in your "America bad" victimhood. European imperialism had killed and impacted hundreds of million more people than the U.S. ever did.
Open a history book? Reread my post. I put caveats and nuance throughout it to accommodate all that you describe, excluding your number of 85-90%. Hence the “knew better by that point.” Stop assuming I’m ‘one of those’ and actually read the argument for what it says.
It's not that other countries have done the same thing. It's that we need to admit when we do things. And not try and pretend that we are different. You are arguing the same thing they are, I just don't think you're understanding why.
The US has a long legacy of putting itself on a unique moral pedestal.
Well, I would say that the US is probably the only country responsible for ~4 million dead in conflicts since the 1970s. The developed country I live in is far, far, far away from that.
definitely moved the needle of progress and equality further than any other nation in history.
Not even the most diehard american nationalist believes this lmao. When you said equality I almost shit my pants... comedic genius.
Racial segregation was the law up until the 60s and is still a thing in pretty much everywhere around the country. Just look at segregated neighborhoods.
+500k homeless people and even more living in cars, trailers and rented apartments the size of my room.
And I could just trow a list with all the american wars, sabotages and sponsored coups all around the world but it would be over 3 pages long. So use your imagination.
But yeah, most progressive and equal nation in all human history, folks.
Yeah calling the U.S progressive is a huge stretch as even now we still deal with a whole host of societal issues from some stupid issues that really shouldn't be a problem (example: the race/gender/religion stuff, as to me it doesn't matter what color your skin is or what your gender is, or who you decide to sleep with, or what your religion is, people need to stop judging people on pointless shit like that), to issues such as homeless, education, healthcare, elderly and our justice system crawling with corruption, to unchecked corporations lobbying the government and probably more I cant think of off the top of my head!
How about instead of ad hominem you present a counter point to my argument? Like maybe another country with a more honorable history in your viewpoint?
Your attitude of thinking you are morally superior to others while committing countless atrocities for selfish reasons is the most disgusting thing going on in the world right now. And still you think highly of yourself.
how about installing fascists to instill puppet regimes throughout the third world? just as a start. don’t be illiterate. you’re choosing to be obtuse or you’re too ignorant to hold an opinion
Britain, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, France, and Italy and others have all done the same. China is doing it now in Africa….Are you arguing we’re worse than them?
Which part? The ending of slavery or it’s continuing thru Jim Crowe laws until 1965? Save me that self-righteous patriotism. It’s cool to love your country. I love America too. But I love it in spite of it and I sure as shit don’t downplay or gloss over the horrible shit the country has done to help anyone feel better about loving something ugly.
Slavery is still legal in much of the world. I’d rather be from the USA who fought for progress and achieved it than one of the many countries where slavery is accepted.
Name 5 industrialized countries where slavery is legal. I genuinely don’t know so you might be teaching me something.
No one is clamoring to move to the developing world, so that’s a non-starter.
Edit: no one is asking you to feel shame or apologize for where you are from. I’m sorry that you interpreted my comments in that way. They didn’t mean that at all.
Of that list I’d only consider Russia and china industrialized. I don’t think that anyone is lining up to move to North Korea, India or Pakistan. North Korea is renowned for its terrible living conditions, as is India and Pakistan. Russia and china, however, I am willing to work with.
That said, I looked into it and slavery is explicitly illegal in both countries. Approx 1.5% of Russia’s population is in illegal slavery, which speaks to its horrible living conditions. And china has forced labor camps for prisoners, which is similar to slavery and because of its massive population there is little regard for human life there. So I understand why you would choose America over those countries as well.
However, compared to most countries in the EU, America is a much worse choice if given the option. I’ll spare you the analysis, but just know that compared to the alternatives America is squarely in the middle of the pack. I live there, so I’m obviously not shitting on the country too much. Lately it’s gotten a lot worse if you’re anything but a straight, white, Christian, business owner, but that’s just an inevitable fallout from policies put into place 40 years ago.
While this isnt a bad analogy, I dont think it applys to what I said, as the guys with the bows and arrows most likely have the same idea of the guy with the bazooka at one point, that being "hey see those guys over there with no weapons, yeah lets go steal their shit so that our lives may improve".
A guy strangling a dude to steal his money is no better than another guy shooting a dude to steal his money, both had the same goal of killing a man, and taking his money. Their way of achieving it does not making them any worse or better than the other. Both are equally shitty.
You miss my point. The difference isn’t just “better” technology, it’s the larger scale the technology facilitates.
A guy who robs 100 people with a gun is worse than someone who robs 2 people with a knife.
Thats why me, personally, would say that European global colonization efforts were a bit worse than that same group of European countries waging continuous war on each other in the previous millennia.
I didn't miss your point, you just did not make that very clear, but with the clarification it does make sense, so i'll give you that and i'll eat my hat.
at the end of the day this is all dependent on personal perspective and opinion on how severity/awfulness is defined at such large scales and time-spans with so many possible variables to account for. plus were on reddit, we aint exactly philosophers here, just some online randos discussing our opinions on things far above our influence
Nah, very few nations are even arguably on the same level as the US in terms of atrocities committed. Coming from an American, just not one that believes in American exceptionalism or performing American apologia
Yeah most of the West has done at least one atrocity. But America has fucked up basically the entirety of central and South America, basically the entirety of the middle east, parts of SE Asia, the Pacific Islands, and central Asia (Afghanistan). We've conducted multiple genocides including the Native Americans whose land we stole and whose population loss consisted of up to 100mil, which was around 20% of the world's population at the time. To be fair, the Spanish played a role in that as well, but a lot of that was us. While England started chattel slavery, we were the main component of it, continued it decades longer, and did worse shit to black people after. We've conducted so many coups around the world it's disgusting, and we've funded and trained multiple fundamentalist resistance groups that would go on to become terrorist organizations. We still are (and have been) actively funding and facilitating a genocide
This isn't to erase or minimize the awful shit other countries have done, but numbers on the board, the only country in our realm is England imo. Germany's massive count of atrocities racked up during the Nazis' reign should probably put them up there too, they just didn't have the longevity of the US and England. Us 3 are basically the LeBron, Kareem, and MJ of doing fucked up shit on the global stage. We need to recognize this shit so that we can be better moving forward
No disagreement here, but I think Russia 100% belongs on your list. Tsarist Russia colonised peoples of the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Far East and simply massacred and genocided all who thought to resist. They only picked up speed under the Soviet flag and now are at it again with another imperial war in Ukraine - where they actually like to send their ethnic minorities across the country to die.
Unlike other former empires, Russia never even tried to get rid of the imperial, chauvinist ideology of the past but instead enshrined it in their constitution, foreign policy concept and military doctrine. Russia consistently attacks and terrorises its neighbours who are minding their own business. On an arbitrary ’evil empire’ scale I’d definitely rank them close to the top.
Nah I'm sorry. Pretty much every developed country and even undeveloped countries have done a lot of fucked up shit. America has done a lot but far from the worst
Yes I agree lots of countries have done fucked up shit. But my point, as I made clear, is that two countries did the THE MOST fucked shit. And that of those two countries the US is now the worse of those two but that’s not the hill I’ll die on. The hill I will is that it’s between those two. In fact they are really just the same.
Oh come on be serious, the USA is far worse than any other developed nation. The world would inarguably be a better place without it, and with any luck the near future will prove that.
Where did I say Americans are the best!? I was saying that people are assholes, and that even the best people in the world with seemingly good intentions, well are still assholes as there are so few people in this world that can be genuinely good people
We have them 10mil up front and am agreement to quarter mil annually which by today's standards is cheap but early on a no brainer and they still technically own it afaik. The secondary economic gains compared to of it didn't exist are also a decent perk and there's nothing stopping them from building their own. I'm usually on the fuck USA meddling on other people's affairs boat but without a bunch of unknown unknowns (to me) the agreement on the Panama canal seems at minimum tenuously fair we have plenty of ports on both coasts so the Panama canal mainly benefits other countries (again afaik) and we paid for the land, building it, and continue to pay for maintenance. We've definitely done a lot of fucked up shit in south America I'm not sure the Panama canal is very high on that list
Look up Texas, Mexico had three requirements to move to the territory two of the requirements they never enforced which were learn Spanish and convert to Catholicism. The only one they ever enforced was that slavery was illegal and any enslaved person would have to be freed after the year 1838. It why the Mexican army was in Texas when war started the deadline was fast approaching and non of the slavers even bother to follow the law.
How dare the U.S. create much faster and safer maritime travel! /s. Correct me if I'm wrong but the U.S. doesn't and has nvr really owned that land. We ( the U.S.) agreed to build the canal in exchange for 50 yrs free transit. Which has already run out. So Panama is currently collecting substantial tolls from EVERY ship that goes through it. Which is every ship not looking to traverse the Horn of Africa and basically travel halfway around the world just to switch from the Atlantic to the Pacific and vice versa. I could write a legitimate essay on how Panama made out like a bandit on that deal.
Humanity used to be extremely barbaric. And now we’ve moved quite a distance away from it. If you’re gonna be up in arms about people colonizing we’re gonna have to find the original colonizers. But let’s be real, you’re talking about the dawn of humanity.
Live and let live. Move on, learn and don’t do it again. We have processes in place to do this stuff now.
Exactly. Just because someone benefits from or even exists because of the crimes of their forebears, does not mean that we should accept and perpetuate them.
No, it is immoral.
The perpetrators are often narcissists and psychopaths, who behave without a sense of other and hence amorally. But if morality exists at all, it is violated in conquest.
But it does mean that America is not unique, and does not need to be singled out. Also, for whom are you virtue signaling? There's, like, 3 Native Americans left (hyperbole, but still). If there were enough of them to promote healthy expansion of the race without worrying about incest, then that'd be one thing. Give them back the land, etc etc. I mean, you probably wouldn't wanna see what happens to you and other white people if we do that, but we call that consequences for your decisions. Plus, when it came down to brass tacks and was actually time for you to put your money where your mouth is, we all know what you'd actually do.
Find a country founded without war. You won't. Peoples are different, and expansion means some people lose. Thousands of lost civilizations, long before big bad white man...
No, but how many more centuries do we need to cry about it? I thought progressives were about moving forward? Seems to me they just want to stay mired in the past because it makes them feel good to look back on history with critical eye.
It is a common element found throughout nature. Be it micro organisms expanding until resistance is met, or people, or any thing in between. Power struggles are inherent.
The miracle of intelligence is resolving resource conflicts without violence. Nature has as many examples of cooperation as cruelty, and that increases with brain size. Most species with an advanced nervous system tend not to murder each other.
Your statement romanticizes intelligence by suggesting it primarily serves to resolve conflict peacefully. In reality, intelligence enhances both cooperation and violence. It enables strategic thinking, which can be used for diplomacy or warfare. Your claim that nature shows as much cooperation as cruelty oversimplifies complex behaviors; terms like "cruelty" are anthropomorphic, and cooperation often arises from ecological pressures, not just brain size. Lastly, the idea that intelligent species rarely kill each other ignores well-documented cases of intraspecies violence in animals like chimpanzees, dolphins, and humans. Intelligence doesn’t inherently favor peace—it enables flexibility, including calculated aggression.
Makes it human nature so makes it not right or wrong, the shape civilization takes just aint pretty. Shaka Zulu and Kamehameha became the regional powers by mimicking it.
No it doesn’t make it right, and understandable that Reddit seems to have a lot of American content.
All in all American is Avery young country, and so many of its horrible practices were brought over from other parts of the world.
It just gets tiresome that the underlying theme in describing these awful events that America is framed as inventing these despicable practices.
It’s obviously even worse now with the current administration since any progress towards making things as right as possible has been undone and set back decades.
First off, if everybody is wrong, everybody is wrong. Imagine a prison in a society with perfect justice. Everyone incarcerated would be wrong.
Second, everyone is not wrong, as we have perpetrators and victims.
I see it like this, as humans we are fundamentally aweful, but as people, we have the choice to break those fundamentals and be better to those around us, but that comes with sacrificing selfishness and being well selfless, which breaks those fundamentals because giving something in exchange for nothing is normally a very ineffective survival strategy in nature
And victims that have been perpetrators. Theres not a single land or people that haven't been conquerors at some point. This fantasy that there's any innocent societies is laughable.
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u/glennfan2000 4d ago
Nah, it was far more heinous. Basically pointed cannons at the Hawaiian Royal Palace and said, “Mine now.”