[spaceman_2020]

If we’re going to go into history and massacring your own people, then America isn’t entirely the example you want to emulate.

Remember the whole Native American massacre thing that America has convniently forgotten about.

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

I think there is a bit of a difference whether the massacre happened in the 1860 or 1960, and whether the last larger massacre of protestors happened in 1970 and is generally, officially and publicly recognized as a bad thing with memorials etc. [1], or whether it happened in 1989, involved tanks and hundreds to thousands of deaths, and people are persecuted for even mentioning it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

[spaceman_2020]

Well, when Mao was doing his great leaps, American citizens had to literally had to march in the streets for basic civil rights. Again, not exactly a clean record.

Glass houses and stones and all that.

Point is, in the living memory of most people on the earth, i.e. people below 30, the only wars waged against non-neighbors have been Americans invading Iraq and Afghanistan. So from the place most non-Americans stand, America is a belligerent and irresponsible power.

What someone did in 1960 is important and can't be glazed over, but as a 30 year old, it's hard to understand and even harder to contextualize. But Iraq and Afghanistan is fresh enough in everyone's memory, to the point that I remember the headlines about the fake WMDs and the numbers about civilian deaths.

[acdha]

Very true and I’d also add something about ongoing effects. For example, while it’s true that the United States isn’t massacring native Americans in open combat right now, a 30 year old is going to have seen at least news about tribal poverty rates, broken promises about things like water rights or development, and the national guard working at the behest of oil companies to remove protesters who don’t want pipelines running through tribal lands. (Repeat for the heavy-handed response to black people protesting against police brutality, etc.)

That’s not the same as Tiananmen square but it’s far more visceral lived experience for anyone under 45.

[FreshStart]

Can you for one moment be not west centric? Ignoring tschetschenia , georgia, Ukraine, first Afghan invasion, the uighurs, the Tibetan, mount karabach, kashmir, Syrian proxy wars, Serbs vs Bosniaks, Yemen and all those funny little conflicts the lesser empires engaged in the last 30 years. They did not always go medieval, but did so only because the US would deter the worst.

The US is not the center of the universe and lots of influence sphere pushing goes down in lots of backyards.