• Kichae@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    Isn’t it, though? Isn’t this how the USA has treated most countries smaller than it? Less wealthy than it? Less white than it?

    Growing up outside of the US, this behaviour seems completely in line with how the country has always behaved on the international stage, just pointed at one of the “good” countries.

    Trump is the average Murica, Fuck Yeah type that we meet online all of the time, and have for the past 30+ years. He’s the Yankee tourist that comes into our towns and expects us to accept their foreign currency, weather their patronizing questions, and cater to their idiosyncratic demands.

    Trump doesn’t seem like a surprise to us. He seems like the natural outcome of a country that has tooted its own horn on the world stage for 80 years, that has glorified its military and its military might, that has waved the phrase “American Exceptionalism” at its own population without irony, and that long mythologized its history. Remember, fascism was popular in the US 90 years ago. The only problem y’all had with the Nazis was that they were German. I mean, if you use Ur-Fascism as a checklist, the USA checks off most of the boxes on a good year.

    You might not be cognizant of that, but many of us living outside your borders very much are.

    I don’t like what I see in the mirror most days, either. But I don’t get to deny the grey hairs and aging face. I sure as hell don’t go out in public shouting to the world “I’m not getting old; this greying, overweight man isn’t me!”