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by cuuupid 104 days ago
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
2 comments
pezezin 104 days ago
> 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.

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remarkEon 104 days ago
I've thought about it a lot, and done some self reflection, and concluded that America is, in fact, the "good guys".
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somenameforme 104 days ago
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.'

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