This Week in The Fall of the Empire News: We are Fucked.

[evildevil]

Political System Beyond Saving. Nation is Done Forever.

Why Do So Many Americans Fear Muslims? Decades of Denial About America’s Role in the World.

There’s been lots of attention-grabbing opposition to Trump’s “Muslim ban” executive order, from demonstrations to court orders. But polls make it clear public opinion is much more mixed. Standard

Comments

[amw]

That first article is painfully America-centric. It literally made me cringe reading it. Imo it's fear-mongering at the level of talk radio wingnuts to imply that all terrorism in the world is about striking back at America. You can dress it up in some kind of faux-lefty "down with American imperialism" costume, but it's still looking at the world through red-white-and-blue sunglasses

[moonshaz]

Agreed. Very well stated.

[sakuraberries]

I don't think it's that simple. I think it's 100% accurate American's actions around the world have engendered hatred towards it, particularly in the countries it's decimated (and continues to bomb). And its support for Israel definitely isn't winning it friends. The article is America-centric because America is the center of the world right now - its policies affect countries and people worldwide, and it is the primary cause of misery for countries like Yemen

[amw]

As I said below, thanks for the thoughtful response. I read it and appreciated it at the time - it's just been such a crazy week I never got around to following up while my mind was where it was :) To be continued, haha!

[golden_bastet]

Sorry, started writing this last night but had to put it down.

Nah, don't quite agree, because there are at least two ways to read that article.

I don't see the article as saying that all terrorism in the world is about "getting America." What I pick up is that the West's treatment of the Middle East plays a critical role in getting us to where we are today. If the British and French hadn't decided to carve up the remnants of the Ottoman Empire after WW I the way they did; if the CIA hadn't banded with the British to overthrow the legally elected Mossadegh in the 50s; if the US hadn't decided to buy off the Saudi Royal Family in the 1970s - at a number of key points in the last hundred years, after something of value (oil) had been discovered in the Middle East (note I'm *not* saying it's 100% about oil) the Western powers spent an inordinate amount of time preventing the people of the region from practicing self-determination in a number of directions. The US, as the largest, most powerful economy / military power after WW II,

[amw]

Urgh, it has been a crazy week, sorry I didn't get back to you on this, and now I kinda lost the thread of where I was going with it. Thanks for the thoughtful response.

One anecdote on Al Qaeda - I found out about 9/11 from an early morning phonecall from my mom ~6-7 hours after the towers fell because I was in Australia at the time, and one of my first questions was if it was bin Laden. He was definitely understood to be more than just a regional thug in 2001.