Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/09/01/non-americans-of-reddit-wha.html
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US politics used to be fun. Now I am just relieved that the current president is so bad at being bad. It could have been much worse.
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LURSA: You see very clearly, Captain.
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The blue states would be a lot better off in the present day if the red states had succeeded in seceding.
Sure, but Andrew Johnson did what he could to accommodate the South, and after him, the red states were let back in, and once they regained political power, it was too late.
I have to agree. It’s a wack thought experiment, but it seems inevitable there would be a Civil War Two. The Confederacy, by its very nature, would be oligarchic, autocratic and arrogant. Slaves would defect to the North by the thousands, causing border incidents. There would be a struggle for the remaining territory in the West. An adventurist Confederacy could possibly wage wars of aggression vs Mexico. If it survived, it would surely retain slavery into the 20th century, a South Africa in North America. It would have to industrialize. No Spanish-American war? Does Germany win World War One because the US doesnt have the manpower/industrial base to help with the Allies war effort (or because the CSA sides with Germany)? Or simply because the net effect of a draining cold war with the CSA keeps the US politically neutral and out of world politics altogether? It is astounding to contemplate what happens if the Confederacy survives, malignant and festering: a modern Confederate States of America with nuclear weapons (and slaves).
Sure, but this all happened before the Civil War. After, the USA and the CSA would then bicker over just who had the preeminence that the original US arrogated to itself with the Monroe Doctrine. There would possibly be all sorts of proxy wars in Latin America as each side battled for dominance/influence.
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The whole of the US would be better off today if, after the horrendous bloodshed of the Civil War, the secessionist leaders hadn’t been welcomed back into the federal government and allowed to reinstate slavery in all but name.
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Day 1 of founding of the country the US has operated with propaganda, fake it till you make it if you will. If you say that you’re the freest, bestest country enough people will totally believe it, and while i recognize that i moved here and my quality of life is relatively great that doesn’t negate the fact that the US’ perception of itself is delusional and also minimizes the accomplishments that other nations have achieved. It lags behind in education, health, technological advances, social services, transportation, internet, etc.
Instead of a rising tide lifting all boats the US wants to succeed at the detriment of the rest of the world. Ask Latin America or the Middle East. These are also not new developments so don’t blame Trump. Yes right now the country is imploding but there has been a lot of work to be done to achieve actual progress, it’s just more visible what the shortcomings are.
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Even a small change in history would ripple out with a myriad of unknowable effects.
An event as large as the U.S. dividing into two parts, one part of which slavery was still an underpinning of their economy, would change the current state of the world so drastically, that it would most likely be unrecognizable.
It is hard for me to imagine that either half of the former U.S. would be better off.
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Hundreds of thousands of Americans dead, a Constitution in tatters, newly politicized courts that will be in place for a generation, kids still in cages and the very real, very imminent possibility of a full-scale civil war seems plenty bad to me.
The idea that grossly incompetent evil is inherently less destructive than run-of-the-mill evil has been long since disproven by this administration.
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“Fuck the slaves” isn’t really a good look for progressives.
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Term limits on Senators and a citizenship test (the same immigrants have to take) to run for office would solve most of America’s problems. I’m not being sarcastic.
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Modern approach would be to reach across the aisle and find a compromise: Equal rights for all races … anyone can be enslaved.
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I want to add the citizenship test for ANY office, city council on up. And to make lobbying a felony. Simple solutions.
But we’re decades from undoing the harm of the last few years, without a doubt.
Second amendment should be rewritten to not allow equivalent weaponry of a Gatling Gun in your home. There needs to be a huge government push for nutrition and education.
The ideas on how to improve America and its lack of mental and physical health overwhelm you when you start considering it. We’re probably a few generations off from course-correction. This will be known as our Dumbest Era. Good TV, though.
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What an epic Roast
From Spain. I’m absolutely terrified, seeing the US fall into a fully fledge fascist state is both horrible. Not only because of the whole “murdering your own people a la 30s Germany”, but because yahoo politicians and wannabe dictators from all around the globe are taking notes or implementing the same strategies.
I used to work with a journalist that one day told me full of dread that once people started believe that every news media piece was fake then facts would no longer matter and only fear, frustration and anger would reign. She was right.
The States did not succumb to a foreign army, nor to a natural disaster: it succumbed to the own monsters that it’s exceptionalist world-view breed.
PD: Also terrified because the US is a basic piece in stopping global warming, something that threatens directly every country on Earth, and not only is not doing fuck shit, but it’s actively encouraging it.
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Though the article is really about the views of people outside the US. While I agree that poor leadership from the US President is causing disasters for people in the US, from the outside we have avoided the worst possible outcomes.Trump just doesn’t have the concentration span needed to turn Iran into a war zone, for example.
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I’d quite like my country to stop copying your country.
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Québécois here.
In 2006, I gave my father his 70th birthday present: seeing the Detroit Pistons play in their home town. He was excited like a little kid.
At the same time, I was writing a scientific article on the Collapse of complex civilizations, after reading Jane Jacobs Dark Age Ahead and seeing how the economy was not going well in North America.
Being in Detroit, in the downtown area, I was completely flabbergasted, saddened as well as angered and non-plussed at the total devastation I saw. When I came back and participated in local politics in Montreal, I immediately tried to warn people that North American cities were going to waste away if the status quo was maintained. A right wing think tank called Institut Economique de Montréal had monopolized the discourse and called me a Cassandra, and the conservatives who were infiltrating the forums and blogs by the way of disillusioned libertarians stepped up their game of online intimidation.
Fast-forward 14 years in the future and all the discussions I had and the predictions coming true and now I feel powerless… I also understand better how the Finns felt when they saw the SU collapse. I already did, I worked and studied in FInland for 3 years, but this situation gives me even more perspective. I can only hope that No.45 is no Boris Yeltsin and that there will be clashes and riots but not more.
There is not much I can do but educate my fellow citizens as rationally as possible.
My fellow North Americans, enlightened and progressive citizens south of the border, please do not become the Sowhat Union or the Disunited States. As imperfect and inadequate as you may feel, we need you.
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It’s a mixed bag for me. I love so much of American culture - you guys invented Battlestar Galactica and Buffy - but the dark half? It’s getting uglier and uglier every year, and seems to be growing. It should be easily countered but there’s just so much cynicism and apathy, huge swathes of the population don’t seem remotely concerned about the decay. It’s sad. But for me it’s also scary. I’ve settled in Taiwan, and we live under constant threat of invasion from China (the one stance where the far right is actually on point). We really depend on the US being able and willing to come to our aid if that day comes, but despite strengthening ties recently I’m starting to doubt if that help will materialise. That could spell the end of a peaceful, welcoming, democratic, LGBT-friendly country of 23 million people.
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Cassandra was cursed to utter true prophecies and not to be believed. Calling someone a Cassandra as an insult is some ignorant self-owning.
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Did they not understand that calling you a “Cassandra” implied that your prophesies were correct and they’d be foolish to dismiss them?
ETA what @GulliverFoyle said
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