Quote:
Originally Posted by CelestialChild
As a fellow US citizen I certainly agree with the first point. But I think it's natural and completely reasonable for the US to come under scrutiny anyway because we are supposedly the most powerful nation on the planet. Just because things have been done repeatedly before doesn't mean people should simply accept them and continue on with it. I believe strong nations deserve all the more scrutiny simply because of the threat they can pose. But this does not mean that scrutiny should be unbalanced, which I feel is often the case anyway, and so here I agree again that that saying the United States is uniquely evil is unfair and inconsiderate [and by this I do not mean lacking manners, but simply that people are not considering all angles], and by examining history, historically ignorant.
The United States comes under critical fire as much as it does in great part because it simply has so much power. Countries can do the same all over the world, but the measure of power possessed, not necessarily a comparison of the actual crimes committed, has a tendency to impact perceptions of how "bad" a nation is in many cases. That is to say, a nation is partly classified as bad because it has power, not because of the way in which it is actually using that power in comparison with other countries. So Sudan is country full of war and atrocities, but one hears less use of the term "Evil" as applied to either side by outside forces than there is on the United States and it's movements in Iraq. [At least this is how I've experienced it.]
It's kind of like the difference in mentality of when a man slaps a woman verses when a woman slaps a man. Even if they use the exact same amount of force each, or even if a woman punches a man when he only slaps, the man is generally considered more evil [and committing sexual abuse] because he is stronger to begin with, even if he doesn't exercise all his strength, or even uses less relative to the woman. It a way it can be called a punishment for having power, regardless of how it is exercised in comparison.
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I think I like you! Lol
Well, I totally agree with you. I hadn't thought of that, but you're absolutely right.
I think I should correct myself, though: I hadn't meant to say that because we're not doing anything "special" that it's excusable. My only point was that people are talking like the US is the only country to have done these things/is the only country that has fuckups in it, and it simply isn't true. I'm sure that most of us here realize this on some level, but everything keeps getting stated in this way.