Civil War Man wrote:
IIRC, Germany's existence as a coherent nation-state really started with Wilhelm I in 1871. Before it was a bunch of independent regions that split up after the fall of the Holy Roman Empire. So Germany could be considered almost 100 years younger than America.
I, very carefully, referred to them as "states". The "German State" has, one way or another, lasted a very long time with varying degrees of unitary control.
Tsarist Russia lasted longer than the US currently has, and certainly had its share of warts. Communist Russia? About 1917-1990, so it doesn't even come close to America's longevity.
Again, I very carefully said "these states" not "these
countries". Or do you serious think that the USSR was a completely different state rather than a chnage of government in Russia's long and oh-so bloody history?
China? Communist China didn't exist until 1948. Dynastic China could only fall under the same category as Tsarist Russia if you counted all dynasties as a single unit, which was not the case, since dynastic change usually involved a very violent upheaval.
Repeat what I said upstairs, except replace happy with glad and Russia with China.
I think only the Shogunates (such as the Edo period) are the only times in Japan that could be said to have lasted as long as the US currently has. And the Edo shogunate hasn't lasted a whole lot longer (about 260 years).
Repeat what I said above, expcept replace "glad with " "super-dooper" and "China" with "Japan".
Meanwhile, since the late 1780s, the United States has used the exact same system for political rule, a system that wasn't even seriously disrupted during an armed insurrection (since elections were still held in the middle of the war).
We have used the same system, a Republic with strong democratic leanings, but that hasn't stopped us from making extensive changes to the way it's applied, ranging from voting rights, to how Senators are chosen, to the rights/responsibilities of the Federal government over the local/state ones.
18-till-I-die wrote:
Ok fuck smallpox, the fact is that, yes, the United State's founders did indeed participate in active genocide.
It no more excuses the massive Indian "Wars" (read: Holocuast) that were also carried out willingly and openly by the US government for decades. More so, the US government from the time of Washington onward up till the time of Lincoln was actively involved in the opression and enslavement of an entire ethnic group.
Please. The American Indian genocide was the by product of European and American expansion, not an end goal of itself. Even assuming that most of the American Indian population in North America wasn't already
fucking dead before the first English settlers landed in North America, the Natives waged several successful campaigns against the whites throughout the colonial era and even up the Tecumseh during the war of 1812. Had the Indians opted to unite instead of attacking each other, they would have won(or at least have a much better deal then they have now). Instead, the USA and Europeans fell back on the classic(because it works) "divide and conquer".
Incidently, no one is denying that the USA has done some godawful thigns in it's history, including slavery on a mass scale, but the denial is that what the USA has done in the past(and currently) somehow surpasses what other great powers have done. Or even little powers, ask a Belgian how they treated the natives in the Congo.
The number of people who suffered and/or died during Slavery in America is unknown. But simply looking at the vast numbers involved, it would foolish to think that the deaths, rapes, torture, mutilation, beatings, mistreatment and displacement was anything but widespread. It would be in the hundreds of thousands at least.
Racism in America was ignored if not actively promoted by the government (Willson was an open advocate of the Klan's propaganda) for many, many decades up till quite recently. There are people alive today, some only in their fifties, who can recall open segregation, racism, opression, beatings, mutilations, and outright murder
This is all true. But, the institution of slavery in the USA is still beat by numbers of deaths directly caused and slave population population in the rest of the Western Hemisphere. Once more, in that Instance the uSA has not
surpassed that many people, when it comes to the institution of African slavery.
Lets not get into insane, asinine actions this country went through with during the Cold War including but not excluded to starting wars, distabilizing whole regions, assassination attempts, outright murder, supporting of despots abroad, terrorizing American citizens at home, and more.
Indeed, but how this surpasses some of our illustrious counterparts(incidently, British and French over adventures declined with their military power. Coincidence? Nope) I don't know.
Recently Iraq the US has kicked up a hornet's nest, completely destroyed the fragile peace in the region, and killed more than 600,000 people while wounding IIRC around 1 million+ in the process. Those numbers are still climbing and will be increasing well into our old age. The events in Iraq will be long lasting and result in many thousands if not hundreds of thousands of more deaths. More than likely the country will never rebuild and will descend into a perpetual quagmire of civil war, like Africa but more heavily armed.
The sin of this administration is not the Iraq war, but the gross mishandling of it. Just like LBJ's sin was not the Vietnam War, but his handling of it. (This is all subjective, of course. But it's what I think.)
And teh excuse that "America is BIG it cant help causing more damage than Third World Country # 6" is bullshit. So what if we're bigger and more powerful that doesnt excuse your actions.
No, but it does explain
why the USA mimics it's historical counterparts in damage it causes. It's something of a historical trend, dating back even to "enlightened" governments like the Roman Republic and Athens.
"Slavery was a byproduct of the European and American expansion, not an end goal". "Repressions were not the end goal in themselves, the end goal was defense of the country". This is illogical to the extreme.
