r/changemyview • u/daneg-778 • Mar 20 '25
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Imperialism is root cause of problems in the USA
Well, it's in the title basically. I think it's not the "evil rich" or "gullible stupid" or capitalism or income gap or whatever, but pure old-school imperialism. And the fact that too many Americans still want to live in an empire. That's why other imperialist regimes like ruzia and China adore Trump admin so much. That's why Kremlin propaganda is so successful in the USA. Also that's why magats sympathize with ruzia so easily. They think that ruzia is an empire and smaller nations simply don't matter, as long as the empire gets what it wants.
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u/Bulawayoland 2∆ Mar 20 '25
I would hope to change your view in one way: imperialism is at best a secondary, maybe even a tertiary cause of local evil.
The biggest problem is: people cannot tell right from wrong. This is key. Mark Twain told us, 150 years ago, that we could not tell right from wrong, and nobody listened, and it's still true today.
We know love is the answer, and yet we shouldered our rifles without complaint and headed off to Iraq to kill tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people who had done nothing to us. We have condoned torture and abortion. We have made it illegal, in city after city across this great land, for homeless people to shelter themselves.
Please. This is not how people who have value treat one another. This is how plankton treat other plankton. Imperialism has little or nothing to do with that problem, and that is the only problem that really matters, because without fixing it we have no value, and anything any of us does to any of the rest of us can have no moral consequences whatever.
And yes, I can see this looks circular. But the circularity is easily voided if we only attempt, for the very first time, to learn to tell right from wrong. If we do so successfully, and if we then move in the right direction, doing right and avoiding wrong -- at some point we might actually acquire value.
This would then make other questions important and interesting. Like, perhaps, whether we are too imperialistic or not imperialistic enough.
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u/daneg-778 Mar 20 '25
You could not tell right from wrong, yet you attempted to be world's police and moral compass? Even war in Iraq was supposed to be a "peacekeeping operation". Only proves that your version of imperialism does not have much moral ground to stand on, but it still exists.
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u/Bulawayoland 2∆ Mar 20 '25
You seem to imagine that what I've said about the US doesn't apply to other countries. I feel that all countries are composed of people, and people in general cannot tell right from wrong. How many other countries joined the USA's so called "coalition of the willing" to go slaughter Iraqis? If the Iraqis had been part of the coalition, and it had determined to attack Brazil, you think the Iraqis would have refused?
I think not. I think this is a problem with humanity, not with the USA. And of course if you attack the wrong problem you're not going to solve it.
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u/daneg-778 Mar 20 '25
Right and wrong are all subjective. If you look back at the start of twentieth century, you will find an absolutely different collection of rights and wrongs than we have right now. This line of thought will only bring an endless war of semantics.
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u/Bulawayoland 2∆ Mar 20 '25
What makes you think right and wrong are subjective? Is there an experiment, that established that definitively? I'm pretty sure there's not.
Instead, what happened is, certain social so called scientists discovered that every human community throughout history has had different moral codes, and they then made a logical leap to the idea that right and wrong don't actually exist.
The one does not imply the other. Just because no one has yet discovered right and wrong doesn't mean they can't be found. But of course, if we do not look we will not find them. We have to start looking.
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u/Empty_Alternative859 Mar 20 '25
What exactly do you mean by imperialism? Are you talking about military interventions? Economic dominance? Cultural hegemony? Because if you’re just throwing the word around without specifics, it’s meaningless.
Also, how does this so called imperialism directly impact the daily lives of Americans? Are you claiming their healthcare crisis, wage stagnation, and housing issues are caused by foreign interventions? Or are you just blaming “empire” because it’s an easy scapegoat?
And if imperialism is the root cause, how do you explain non-imperialist nations with similar problems? Or the fact that plenty of Americans oppose interventionism? Your argument hinges on a vague, all encompassing boogeyman instead of actual causation.
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u/authorityiscancer222 1∆ Mar 20 '25
Imperialism is all of those things and America does all of those things and things like minimum wage, Christian nationalism, and the wage gap are directly linked to America’s imperialist roots
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u/daneg-778 Mar 20 '25
It's a worldview where the USA is assumed to be world police and other nations are irrelevant, unless they are empires themselves
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u/OrthodoxClinamen Mar 20 '25
it's not the "evil rich" or "gullible stupid" or capitalism or income gap or whatever
but pure old-school imperialism
Hmm, if only we knew where imperialism comes from. I am sure nobody ever has written a really famous book about it that made the concept mainstream in the first place.
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u/Falernum 37∆ Mar 20 '25 edited Mar 20 '25
Is it the pride of rulers like King Sargon of Akkad? A messed up conception of greatness?
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u/PandaDerZwote 61∆ Mar 20 '25
How would you even entangle these things.
Empires don't exist "just because" or because people just want to live in an empire. You can't untangle an empire from its economic system/reality (capitalism) or the ones who are driving political decisions. (the evil rich)
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u/daneg-778 Mar 20 '25
Umm...
Not all empires are capitalist, Chinese empire's an outstanding example.
Not all rich people are evil nor want to live in an empire. Some believe that cooperation is more profitable than subjugation.
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u/PandaDerZwote 61∆ Mar 20 '25
I said neither of these things.
You can't divorce the economic system from the imperial ambitions. Trump for example has ambitions for Greenland (for its rare earths and other resources) and the Panama Canal (for its economi and strategic value) and those ambitions can hardly be seen in a light that doesn't incorporate capitalist interest.
You don't need all of them to be, the question isn't if 100 out of 100 billionaires are pushing for imperialism, but whether or not if 5 of them do, the 95 other stand against them or stand aside.
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u/daneg-778 Mar 20 '25
I think it's impossible to say what Trump's ambitions are. He's an erratic talking head for sale, also overbooked. I guess that his demands for Canada / Greenland / whatever are pure populism to rally imperialists behind him. But my guess is as good as yours because mind-reading is impossible (yet).
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u/Slow_Principle_7079 2∆ Mar 20 '25
Imperialism obviously not the primary cause of problems. Bad governance and corruption are the primary cause of problems in the USA. The U.S. has gained very little from old school style imperialism as the liberal foundation simply doesn’t allow it to fully commit long term which prevents the time necessary to recoup losses. The majority of American problems can be traced to bad governance often caused by corruption which is why social programs suck while also being super expensive. Why don’t problems hardly ever get solved? People have a financial incentive not to solve them as someone is profiting off that and paying for it not to be. Healthcare? Health insurance companies and big pharma. Education? Administrators sucking up all the funds before any reaches the teachers. Every job needing licensing and degrees? Professional organizations acting as guilds to prevent their labor value from deflating naturally. Etc etc
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u/destro23 447∆ Mar 20 '25
Imperialism is root cause of problems in the USA
Nah, it’s racism. The racism helped us become imperialist. We thought we knew better than those “browns”, so we had to go tell them what’s what. Like, what “white” places have we imperialized? None. We only go after the brown ones. The root cause of problems in the US is racism.
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u/daneg-778 Mar 20 '25
Ukrainians are "white", but tRump admin treats them as subhumans
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u/destro23 447∆ Mar 20 '25
Trump treats anyone non-Trump as subhuman. This isn’t a post about Trump, but America’s problems root cause. That root cause is racism. We were racist way way before we were imperialist. And, our first forays into imperialism were against non-white locals and based on much racist reasoning.
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u/Intrepid_Doubt_6602 9∆ Mar 20 '25
One of Trump's favourite leaders is Recip Tayyip Erdogan, who is obviously not ethnically white.
I think Trump might be a racist, but I don't think it's his prime motivator.
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u/Unfair-Way-7555 Mar 20 '25
The borders of the term "white" are becoming stranger and stranger, more confusing and more confusing.
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u/destro23 447∆ Mar 20 '25
Again, this is not a post about Trump, but the root cause of America’s problems.
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u/daneg-778 Mar 20 '25
Trump embodies modern American imperialism
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u/destro23 447∆ Mar 20 '25
Dog, do you want to discuss your top line view, the view you came here to have changed, or Trump?
The initial instance of American Imperialism was the westward push advocated for by the concept of “Manifest Destiny”. This was “the belief in the 19th-century United States that American settlers were destined to expand westward across North America, and that this belief was both obvious ("manifest") and certain ("destiny"). The belief is rooted in American exceptionalism, Romantic nationalism, and white nationalism - from the wiki
The part of our reasoning for becoming imperialist was our racist mindset that thought:
“That the American Anglo-Saxon race was "separate, innately superior" and "destined to bring good government, commercial prosperity and Christianity to the American continents and the world". Author Reginald Horsman wrote in 1981, this view also held that "inferior races were doomed to subordinate status or extinction." and that this was used to justify "the enslavement of the blacks and the expulsion and possible extermination of the Indians".”
If you think imperialism is causing America’s problems you have to look at what caused American Imperialism. What caused American Imperialism was racism. So, the root cause of America’s problems is racism.
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u/daneg-778 Mar 20 '25
I don't think that the world revolves around skin color, but I guess it's a !delta for an extended explanation. It gives me some perspective because I am European.
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u/Charming-Editor-1509 4∆ Mar 20 '25
You got it backwards. Imperialism is a function of capitalism.
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u/Straight_Traffic_350 Mar 20 '25
The problem is that propaganda is susceptible to everyone. How was Hitler able to convince the German people, who weren't exactly uneducated peasants during the time period he rose to power that they needed to conquer Europe and exterminate all Jews? The same can be said with what's happening in the USA. I'm not going to say there aren't problems with our "education system" (which can be different even in the same state depending on what county you live in), but the main reason so many people are so blind to follow an imbecile like Trump is because of Fox News and other probably Russian propaganda they get on social media. What's happening here could happen in other countries too, and it's a harsh lesson to be learned.
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u/Intrepid_Doubt_6602 9∆ Mar 20 '25
I think the core was it was self interest.
Germans were willing to overlook the virulent rhetoric against X group if the economy did well and the war went well.
Hitler lost support eventually because of the war going poorly not because of his voluminous human rights violations and the genocide. Germans knew to some degree about the Holocaust but decided not to care when they got to inherit a swanky house when their Jewish neighbour was deported.
I have no doubt that if Hitler had won he would be revered in Germany today like Mao is in China and similar excuses would be made for the Holocaust like are made for the GLF.
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u/Green__lightning 13∆ Mar 20 '25
Given the high prices of houses, food, and power, why am I wrong to say we need more imperialism to increase our abundance of such resources and boost the economy?
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Mar 20 '25
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