Comparing mercantile colonial Britain with USA of today is like comparing slavery to low-income job, they may look and feel the same from outside but there is a world of difference.
“Past empires were even worse” is not much consolation if the US uses its economic might to drive your country to ruin and your countrymen to unemployment and starvation, trains and arms paramilitary soldiers to come rape and massacre your neighbors, bombs your village to rubble, props up the autocratic military dictatorship ruling your country, etc.
There are dozens of countries and millions of lives around the world which US military/foreign policy has left in ruins.
Which is not to say that the US is any worse than other global powers, or that a world where the US was completely isolationist would necessarily be better. But its hardly the force for divine progress and prosperity that we Americans often pretend it is to ourselves.
There are dozens of countries and millions of lives around the world which US military/foreign policy has left in ruins.
Which is not to say that the US is any worse than other global powers, or that a world where the US was completely isolationist would necessarily be better. But its hardly the force for divine progress and prosperity that we Americans often pretend it is to ourselves.