America is Great!

[Bells]

9Gag! Kotaku! 4Chan! Youtube! Facebook! Apple! Microsoft! Minecraft!

...wait, i'm not doing this right, am i?

[Locke cole]

Ecuador is cool.

[Kim]

Originally Posted by Aerozord

Geez guys Robin is just trying to create a thread around positive points to counter all the negativity. Is this community so full of bile and hatred that you have to post negativity and sarcasm on a thread thats just saying "hey say something nice about this place".

He's the one that decided to respond to a joke by defaulting to his typical anti-China racism.

[Aerozord]

Originally Posted by POS Industries

Yeah guys, it's okay that we're a terrifying superpower responsible for countless deaths and rampant destruction around the world because medieval times happened!

which describes any superpower at that given point in history. I mean, wow what a shock a nation uses its military, political, and economic influence for its own benefit. If I didn't know any better I'd think nations exist to look out for their own interests. No no, you are right clearly those boarders and insistence on sovereignty have nothing to do with war. I'm sure if England or Germany had the superior military and were in economic depression they'd just leave resource rich nations alone.

[Kim]

Originally Posted by Aerozord

which describes any superpower at that given point in history. I mean, wow what a shock a nation uses its military, political, and economic influence for its own benefit. If I didn't know any better I'd think nations exist to look out for their own interests. No no, you are right clearly those boarders and insistence on sovereignty have nothing to do with war. I'm sure if England or Germany had the superior military and were in economic depression they'd just leave resource rich nations alone.

Which is why nationalism and patriotism are evil.

Also lol at trying to trivialize murder, oppression, and general awful fuckery with, "Other countries did it, too!"

[Flarecobra]

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by Kim

He's the one that decided to respond to a joke by defaulting to his typical anti-China racism.

The sad things is there are a lot of incredibly legitimate issues to criticize China's government over, but Robin can't seem to find one.
(I believe there are a lot of incredibly legitimate reasons to criticize every institution of power everywhere, I have nothing against China specifically.)

[RobinStarwing]

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

The sad things is there are a lot of incredibly legitimate issues to criticize China's government over, but Robin can't seem to find one.
(I believe there are a lot of incredibly legitimate reasons to criticize every institution of power everywhere, I have nothing against China specifically.)

I thought you were serious Liz.

Also, my main issues with the Government of Mainland China are these and not in any order.

1. Limiting on Freedom> No surprise here.

2. Tibet> They invaded it in the 1950's and since than have said it's always been a part of China that they held rights too.

3. Imperialism> If we want to talk Imperialistic tendencies...what about all that area in the South China Sea and the ocean around Southeast Asia that China is trying to lay claim too (even waters that are recognized internationally as owned by other nations?). Also, how about their cyberwarfare programs? You want me to honestly believe that their Great Firewall has that many holes in it or that the populace is that good with computers? The US ain't innocent on this either but at least we are upfront about it by having it made mention we got a military unit dedicated to Cyberwarfare on all levels.

[Satan's Onion]

that reminds me!

SuperPACs! 24-hour news channels! Hundred-ounce sodas!

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by Aerozord

which describes any superpower at that given point in history. I mean, wow what a shock a nation uses its military, political, and economic influence for its own benefit. If I didn't know any better I'd think nations exist to look out for their own interests. No no, you are right clearly those boarders and insistence on sovereignty have nothing to do with war. I'm sure if England or Germany had the superior military and were in economic depression they'd just leave resource rich nations alone.

England and Germany do have superior power on the IR scene compared with most nations, and the mere fact that they're not the United States right now doesn't mean they aren't fully capable of doing shitty things with the power they're currently wielding.

See: Germany choking Greece, the European Union shitting over Turkey for daring to be Muslim, the French and the UK orchestrating the Libyan intervention as they'd predominantly benefit from Libyan oil, the French intervening now in Mali because fuck Islamists we HATE Islamists kill 'em all

That being said, the chief ringleader of this string of unacceptable capitalist Old World Order bullshit is the U.S.A., so it isn't remotely relevant to point out that "everyone else would do it too." First, that's incredibly culturally insensitive because it presumes that peoples of foreign societies all really, deep down inside have some classical western European Westphalian notion of nation-states, or would have said notion if it wasn't forced down their fucking throats by Colonial Europe curbstomping the crap out of the world.

Peoples from other cultures have remarkably different views about power, property, contracts, rule of law, economics, you fuckin' name it. Now that doesn't mean I personally believe the world would be a better place if we wholeheartedly adopted, say, a conservative Islamist interpretation of women's rights, and that's not to say that western culture is of 'lesser' inherent value simply because it's dominant, but a presumption that any world dominated by a superpower would be plagued with the same bullshit that America plagues the world with is ludicrous.

Case in Bleepin' Point: The Mongols. Yeah, you heard me right. Did you know that the Golden Horde was ruled for generations by the daughters of Genghis Khan because Genghis preferred them as heirs over his lousy-ass sons? The Mongols were in many respects the horde of marauders Christians, Muslims and the Chinese have collectively portrayed them, but they also were shockingly progressive in regards to the roles of women, female inheritance, property, social mobility and religious tolerance. Their attitudes and opinions were so remarkably different than any western nation-state that any attempt to compare or contrast the Mongolian Empire with modern America from an IR perspective is bunk. If the Mongolian Empire had continued to exist it's possible it'd be utopian or hellish, but it'd be so conceptually different that a Westphalian sovereign conceptualization of the Mongols as a 'superpower nation-state' would be effectively impossible.

If the Mongols had actually succeeded in retaining their empire it'd be incredibly presumptuous to assume they'd follow a western European development, just as it'd be similarly presumptuous to assume that a Native American America (which is something that very nearly happened, had plagues not decimated the Native American population both prior to and during European colonialism) would ultimately adhere to European norms. Flip a dice in dozens of moments in history and we'd live in a remarkably different sociopolitical universe.

So, fuck the notion that Westphalian nation-states are by any means natural byproducts of the existence of governments or anything like that. It's too simplistic, it's inaccurate, and it's just something Americans and Western Europeans tell themselves so they feel good about their nations hoarding the power because they can at least go to bed with smiles on their faces assuming that it's okay because everyone else would've done the same if only they had the luck or the ingenuity and "it's just human nature."
The vast majority of human history we were hunter-gatherer tribal clans with a vastly different perspective of the world and our role in it and there's no strict guideline that says human social mores had to evolve the way they did.