Comment Re:Now do you understand (Score 5, Insightful) 508
Being a big bully is one thing. It's one thing if we're a big bully on things like human rights. What's more distressing to me is that we're basically allowing the media companies to push the US into being a big bully for things that even our own citizens think is ridiculous.
Before the media companies there were other commercial interests that pushed the US government to do their bidding. Go back to 1893 and you'll find that sugar interests were responsible for Hawaii being taken over by the US. And that is just one example.
Yep. Not to mention all of the banana republics in South America, who had their approximately-democratic governments violently toppled by the CIA acting on behalf of American produce companies.
America has never been The Good Guy, it has just been a typical state out to get ahead at any cost... any cost, that is, short of allowing its citizens to discover that it is not The Good Guy.
That's why the diplomatic cable leaks are such a Big Deal, and the reason why Bradley Manning will get no popular sympathy. His revelations cause American citizens to feel cognitive dissonance ("We aren't the Good Guy? Really?")... and people deeply hate those who cause them cognitive dissonance.
I'm an American citizen and I feel ashamed about the degree to which my country has fallen to regulatory capture.