[possibleworlds]

> If the past year has taught us anything, it’s that the US can’t really be seen as the “good guys” in such a simple way.

More like the past 200 years. America have never been the "good guys", and it is only Americans who seem to think they ever were.

[nixon_why69]

An American and a Soviet Russian were on a plane chatting. The American says "I'm very impressed with the quality of Soviet propaganda". The Soviet says thanks, but it's nothing compared to American propaganda.

The American says "But we don't have propaganda", the Soviet says "Exactly".

[xarope]

And been written about since the 80s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

[cuuupid]

If a majority of the Americans believed America was not generally the "good guys" it would be a sign of a failed democracy.

Similarly normal for the population of any country that has net negative externalities from America to view them as the "bad guys".

The current and growing anti-US sentiment is an expected result of an increasing gap between the US and the rest of the first world on economy and defense. The existence of a superpower is precluded on being viewed negatively by the rest of the world

[pezezin]

> If a majority of the Americans believed America was not generally the "good guys" it would be a sign of a failed democracy.

No, it would be a sign of critical thinking and self reflection.

[remarkEon]

I've thought about it a lot, and done some self reflection, and concluded that America is, in fact, the "good guys".

[somenameforme]

Imagine democracy playing out in literally any measurable field. Think about society getting to vote on who should be on a basketball team, but without any real knowledge of the candidates' abilities beyond what they said and advertised about themselves. And then we put the winners of the vote on a team. They'd get face-stomped by a D-tier NBA team pretty much always.

Democracy isn't about maximizing outcomes, because maximizing outcomes entails the possibility of minimizing outcomes. Marcus Aurelius was perhaps one of the best rulers in all of history. His son, Commodus - raised by him from birth, was certainly one of the worst rulers in all of history. Minority rule systems oscillate between extremes of the best of times and the worst of times. Democracy is always just kind of meh, never particularly great, never particularly awful.

But it creates a stable system because while it's meh in the present, you can always envision that things will be totally different in 4 years. Of course they won't be, but there's this weird bug in our psychology that we can't help but remain optimistic, even though in reality candidate after candidate it always feels like 'well it can't get any worse than this at least' and then the next guy is like 'hold my beer.'

[awesome_dude]

To be fair, almost every society portrays itself as the defender of whatever is right/good.

And, to be equally as fair, the only genuinely good guys are the ones that are too small to enforce their will upon others directly - small countries without arms who are forced to find other ways to engage with others in order to achieve whatever goals they have (resource acquisition)

The Americans have been extremely adept at dominating the discourse via non-government pathways (Hollywood)

[remarkEon]

If only Americans think we're the good guys, then why does everyone want to live here?

[tim-projects]

I see this comment a lot. People don't want to live there. They want the dollars to send back to their home countries and families.

[remarkEon]

This make Americans suckers, if anything.

[dragonwriter]

Well, first, that's two overgeneralizations.

But, second, often precisely because they think we’re the bad guys.

If you see the world as dominated by an evil, overwhelmingly powerful empire that uses violence in a way that shows no concern for the continuation or quality of human life outside of the metropole then, even if it is bigoted, repressive, and unjust within the metropole, you still want to be in the metropole rather rhan peripheries.

[pezezin]

Not everybody wants to live there; heck, I know plenty of Americans that after living abroad in Europe and Japan don't want to go back.

And before you say that the US gets a bazillion immigrants per year, Europe gets many more.

[remarkEon]

Well, if that was true then why does everyone get really mad when we try to restrict who gets to come to the United States?

I think, as a formative experience, most Americans should go through the "wow Europe is great (if you go to the right spots)" if only to understand the history and where America came from, and also the "awakening" that happens when one visits Japan. Their trains really do run on time!

[pezezin]

Don't ask me, I don't know of anybody who wants to move to the US.

What people get mad about is

1) The hypocrisy of a country created by immigrants, people obsessed with their "heritage" and calling themselves $country-American even when they have zero relation to said $country, now hating immigrants so much.

2) The brutality of the TSA and ICE against anybody they don't like. Do I really need to expand this point?

3) The arrogance of assuming that we all want to move there. Sorry to burst your bubble, but you are not the centre of the world.

[remarkEon]

>but you are not the centre of the world.

11 CVNs and 6 flags says differently.

[somenameforme]

I think that should be fairly obvious - money + ease of traveling to. America is, relative to the world, perceived as quite wealthy. South America is full of places that are quite poor. Put the two side by side and many guys coming here speaking not a lick of English, and with no skills to boot, probably envision themselves coming home rich.

It's even relatively easy to put yourselves in their shoes. Columbia's GDP/capita is about $8k. In the US it's about $80k. Imagine how you'd feel if Canada had a GDP/capita of $800k. To many people it'd seem like a great idea to move there completely regardless of everything else about the country. People warning you that you'll end up mowing yards and painting houses while making barely enough to put a roof over your head. Bah! Nonsense! How can that be true on $800k/year!? Canada, here I come!

You can see this play out the same in places like Saudi Arabia. Not many place have the taste for their policies, religion, or much of anything else - yet they have a massive immigrant population, far higher than the US (as a percent) precisely because they pay stupidly high wages, often tax free, and have a low cost of living. You can easily become a dollar millionaire teaching English there if money is what you're after simply because you can easily save thousands of dollars a month. And if you get bored you can go watch somebody get crucified for witchcraft on a weekend now and again.