• M137@lemmy.todayEnglish
        292·
        10 days ago

        Yeah, the whole thing started with invading a newly found continent and slaughtering the native people. There was never a point where it was good in any way.

          • Tiresia@slrpnk.netEnglish
            197·
            9 days ago

            Being the only country to use nuclear weapons?

            Needing the fascists to bomb a naval base in an island colony to reluctantly join the fight against them, rather than just war profiteering?

              • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
                7·
                9 days ago

                Folks love to read a history book on WW2 and tell themselves the only fascists that ever existed were the Germans, the Italian, (and occasionally the Japanese).

                And then we say “they lost! we won! Problem solved!”

                Maybe with some hand waving about how Russia was full of Tankies and it’s a good thing we won the Cold War, too.

                There’s never any real analysis of why we joined the side we did or why we broke with them before the smoke had even cleared.

                • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  31·
                  9 days ago

                  the book i like on ww2 history is about submarines. no geopolitics at all, just submarines and what it’s like to be on a submarine (because my wife’s grandfather was on one of the submarines they were talking about in the book? i read it two decades ago before i started dating my wife. her little brother recommended it to me in high school before i met her. and shit high school was not two decades ago.). aaand i think i forgot the name. it might be Iron Coffins.

              • Techno-rat@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
                53·
                9 days ago

                Bro thats like asking if we’d be better off if the world was flat, too large a question with too many variables, completely impossible to actually give a proper answer

              • Pommes_für_dein_Balg@feddit.orgEnglish
                21·
                9 days ago

                China might have become a Japanese colony, and all of Germany would have become part of the Soviet block.
                The war may have lasted a year longer.
                And the US wouldn’t have become the leading superpower in the world.
                The Nazis definitely wouldn’t have won, though. They were on the back foot before the US military entered the war in Europe.
                (I’m assuming the US would have still supplied the Soviets with weapons, cause there’s no reason to assume they would let a good opportunity for profit go to waste)

                On a side note, the US declared war only on Japan. They didn’t enter the war to stop the Nazis for moral reasons, only as a reaction to being attacked themselves. So there wasn’t really an option to sit it out.

                • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  2·
                  9 days ago

                  China might have become a Japanese colony, and all of Germany would have become part of the Soviet block.

                  The US was instrumental in backstopping Moscow and Beijing during the late 30s, which is what dragged us into the conflict at Pearl Harbor. Japan was trying to cut our supply lines to it’s enemies.

                  Go back to 1932 and hypothesize that the Dems had flubbed it. Or that some neoliberal hack had taken over after Hoover and dragged out the Depression another four years.

                  Then imagine fascism fully taking hold in the US like it had in Europe. I don’t think the Soviets benefit from that. I also don’t think China becomes a Japanese colony (for the same reason Japan was run out of Vietnam without any real Western aid). But you also probably don’t get Nixon opening the US economy to China in the 60s.

                  It raises a ton of question marks across the board. What happens to the Middle East, Latin America, and the Pacific Rim? What happens to India and the African states as they industrialize? What does Europe look like under a post-Hitler government? Etc etc.

                  The Nazis definitely wouldn’t have won, though.

                  Absent the US, I don’t see how you get 1950s Europe in any conventional sense

              • Tiresia@slrpnk.netEnglish
                22·
                9 days ago

                They did sit it out as much as they could - the Japanese attacked them and then the Germans declared war on them, the US was only involved out of self-defense.

                We would probably have been better off if the US had declared war on Germany in September of 1939, rather than Germany declaring war on the US 2¼ years later out of solidarity with Japan.

                • explodicle@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                  31·
                  9 days ago

                  Since we can speculate how much better it would have been if they’d joined sooner, can we also speculate if it would be worse - at all - if they’d never joined?

                • Bloomcole@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  2·
                  8 days ago

                  only involved out of self-defense.

                  The oil embargo on Japan was a virtual declaration of war.
                  As always the US wants war to defeat their economic rivals.
                  In Europe they waited royally late until the decisive battle of Stalingrad in 1943.
                  The reason they ‘liberated’ western-Europe was to take a part for themselves and stop the Soviets from going all the way to the Atlantic.
                  Making Europe vassals to this day.
                  There was no self-defense only opportunistic self-interest.

            • NewSocialWhoDis@lemmy.zipEnglish
              62·
              9 days ago

              Have I lost the thread? We’re just openly admitting now that we’d blame the US regardless of which decision they made?

              • Tiresia@slrpnk.netEnglish
                31·
                9 days ago

                This is literally my only comment in this thread. Are “we” an amalgam to you?

                And even if “we” are to be considered an amalgam, can you find a set of comments such that “we” criticize every possible choice the US could have made with regard to a specific decision?

            • motruck@lemmy.zipEnglish
              41·
              9 days ago

              The USW has plenty of sins but to Axt like the US has done nothing good for the whole fucking world since 1945 is frankly absurd. You could argue it is a net negative and at least you’d have something to argue about but saying they’ve done nothing for the world is just stupid. The world has relied on the US for decades for massive funding of many many projects around the world. Was it self serving also? Absolutely but it still helped a lot and no one else was fucking doing it.

              Now Diddy Trump goes in and gets rid of all the “extra” US spending so he can plunder even ire and who the fuck has stood up to fill the US gaps? Oh yeah. No one.

              So yeah duck the US and their meddling but at least it had some collateral good. Where the hell are the other countries that just pointed at the US and patted themselves on the back for helping maintain world peace. Germany? England? France? Hello. Spend money on the world please. It needs it.

            • motruck@lemmy.zipEnglish
              32·
              9 days ago

              Literally you are the same problem you despise on the right side. This type of person is destroying the world. And get. You think you are helping. Ironic.

              All this blind single issue rage.

              Hey, the world is more complicated than 0 or 1. Fucking read more and process before you blurt out the first thing your little meat engine had pop into it.

          • theolodis@feddit.orgEnglish
            73·
            10 days ago

            they took all the credit from the soviet union, just joining the war when it was really already lost for germany, because russia was pushing through the east.

    • WhoIzDisIz@lemmy.todayEnglish
      601·
      10 days ago

      Nah, most of my fellow countrymen (jailers?) aren’t anywhere near introspective enough to get that far.

    • Juice@midwest.socialEnglish
      111·
      9 days ago

      Outright lie! How dare you accuse Americans of this! Americans don’t have anywhere near this level of self awareness

    • csolisr@hub.azkware.net
      69·
      10 days ago

      For a moment I thought it was Xian as in region of Xi’an, Shaanxi, China, and I was even more confused

    • WhoIzDisIz@lemmy.todayEnglish
      351·
      10 days ago

      By “Xians”, I’m hoping you mean Xitter users & not Gen X because I’m a part of that group.

      • luciferofastora@feddit.orgEnglish
        28·
        10 days ago

        They apparently meant Christians, using the Greek Χ (Chi), the starting letter of Χριστιανός (Christianos) as an abbreviation. I’ve seen it a few times, but I’m not personally a fan of it due to the obscurity outside of the niche that understands it.

        • Limonene@lemmy.worldEnglish
          85·
          10 days ago

          Maybe… but they wrote “X” (latin “Ex”), not “χ” (Greek “Chi”). I’m still thinking “Twitter users” is the most plausible meaning of “Xians” here.

          • IzzyScissor@lemmy.worldEnglish
            13·
            10 days ago

            Xians = Christians in the same way that Xmas = Christmas. Sure, the Greek would be more accurate, but it’s a whole lot easier to use the button that’s already on the keyboard.

          • luciferofastora@feddit.orgEnglish
            9·
            10 days ago

            Using the Latin lookalike instead of the actual letter is fairly common when you’re using a Latin keyboard. I happen to have Greek installed on mine, but I don’t expect most people would. Besides, an uppercase Χ is visually indistinguishable from X in many fonts.

          • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.worldEnglish
            4·
            9 days ago

            i’ve seen xtians more than xians. and i’m a godsdamned church musician who works primarily in christian churches

    • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
      30·
      10 days ago

      All the confusion should let people know, don’t use this if you want to actually communicate information. Just type Christians. It’s not much longer, and everyone understands it. This is only too look cool, not for conveying information.

    • IAMgROOT@lemmy.wtfEnglish
      7·
      10 days ago

      american protestants on their way to completely alter the way that all Christians are perceived whilst commiting the occasiinal or daily heresy

      • WhoIzDisIz@lemmy.todayEnglish
        10·
        10 days ago

        Not so sure they were ever perceived all that well outside of their own. They just talked themselves up a fuck-ton, and for a long time were the main ones writing, publishing, & distributing history books while doing so. They love to self-promote — it’s the hallmark of people with deep insecurities.

  • MousePotatoDoesStuff@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    8 days ago

    For a while now, I’ve been thinking of a game idea with a future US dystopian setting… and even there the detainees would have beds, brushes, and other basic necessities.

  • Impractical_Island@lemmy.worldEnglish
    35·
    10 days ago

    Well, at least one of those is CIA, so yes, America did supply soap n toothpaste…just likely on a budget that never gets reviewed by elected officials

    • Phil_in_here@lemmy.caEnglish
      49·
      10 days ago

      977 days is more than 7 months, so Somali pirates’ humanity has been tested more vigorously than the Taliban’s.

      Both exceeded America’s humanity immediately.

    • WhoIzDisIz@lemmy.todayEnglish
      9·
      10 days ago

      Your comment is — that is, if you mean “which one is more vague?” You might actually get a more useful answer than this one if you were just a smidge more specific.