Feel free to point out mistakes, coverups, and confusion.  Help us track down anyone who did bad things on purpose.  It's even fine to try to shame those who thought they were doing the right thing but completely failed.

But it is useless and counterproductive to think this way: "USA, you have an extremely large debt to the world."  When the US makes blatant mistakes, or even if not a mistake but was involved in destroying part of a country, often there is a lot done to rebuild.  But you can't expect that reliably or too far.

At every point, nearly everyone could make a long list of those who have "an extremely large debt to the world": Germany & Japan, British Empire, Medieval Europe, Genghis Khan, Romans, Greeks, various Middle East hordes, etc.  Every country that has had a civil war likely has at least two groups that hold a grudge at least a little: the US does, even long after everyone involved is long dead.

The problem is that the people you are upset with are retired, senile, dead, etc.  The current population won't take kindly to being accused too much for the present day opinions of decisions a generation or two ago.  Or, in the US, even the last administration.  You'll have to learn to be happy with positive progress or live with the consequences.  This is what the US has to do with others all the time.  If payment for slights and costs from the US perspective were extracted at US market rates, quite a portion of the world would be indentured in some way.

In spite of what might be seen as mistakes, ignorant meddling, etc., by most measures and by enough people, the US has been a positive force.  So there is a perception of plenty of offset overall.  Sure you can argue that, and for some it hasn't been true.  But there are some broad scale effects that are true positive factors.  Any group that has a healthy culture and engages in peaceful commerce does really, really well: Japan, China, Europe, India, Singapore, South Korea, etc.  It is likely that you can pretty much rank the economic and cultural success of countries by how friendly they are with the US and US allies.

Those that want to keep trying to get revenge or combat whatever modernism force they don't like generally get squashed like a bug.  No amount of bug bites is going to stop the US: That's only going to make the hive madder and occasionally more reckless.  And eventually more effective and asymmetrical at quashing.  If you truly think anything will affect US dominance, you are not very well aware of reality.  You can argue whatever details you like, but it really boils down to this: The most effective culture wins.  The US (and, largely, other modern Western democracies) is an engine for rapidly improving culture while preventing runaway disasters.  If any culture worked better than the US (as some did in the past compared to the immature US), the US would effectively adopt their innovations or create better innovations to equal or supersede them.

Because the US pretty much shares everything with everyone, all friendly societies win too.  Stay outside of that group because you think you have a better approach, but you don't really, and you just fall behind.  You might point to China as a holdout which is doing fine.  But really, they are already very well on their way to converging.  They're taking their own path, unevenly absorbing modernism, playing at military strength etc.  But that's all show, style, and face. iPhones and Androids alone will keep everyone friendly.  This is just my opinion from partial information: Russia is having a little bump, and may regress, but the path will be irresistible for them too.  Their oligarchy phase (like the US robber baron and organized crime phases combined in the modern era) shows pretty much where they were on the evolutionary track in that era.  The gap between Russia and the West is tiny compared to the West and ISIS/ISIL.

That desire to strike back scratches an itch for a few grudge holders while making a much larger group unhappy or dead, and then breeding more grudge holders.

Are you sure you want your life's purpose to be the propagation of that stupidity?

sdw

On 8/31/16 6:54 PM, Zenaan Harkness wrote: