zlacker

In my experience as a non-American, a lot of younger Americans have adopted a sort of dark, distorted view of history that casts the US as a villainous entity. For these people, any suggestion that other states, particularly non-Western ones, are even more villainous is met with scepticism.

Maybe they understand the differences between a representative democracy and an authoritarian regime in theory but believe there's no real difference in practice. It's a deeply unfortunate type of cynicism.

>>cgh+(OP)
Every generation goes through this; it's not just this one. It's naive idealism sparked by learned helplessness, fueled by a lack of maturity/experience and amplified by foreign influence.

It used to be every generation of Americans had its subset of youth who become infatuated with Communism, for example. They generally grow out of it and come to appreciate their global standing once they graduate college and accumulate some wealth.

Europeans are accustomed to being more mobile and studying abroad seems to be almost expected. America is a very insular culture by comparison; depending on academic program a lot of schools don't have meaningful study abroad programs ("let's go spend a week attending some lectures in London then go home") and support for things like working holiday visas is pathetic. We don't have anything like Erasmus. The only people I ever seem to meet who have traveled more than a few hundred miles from home have only done so on deployment with the military.

In aggregate we know virtually nothing about the rest of the world, so it's easy for disillusioned kids to be convinced that their minor dissatisfactions are on the level of human rights violations and that North Korea or ISIS-held Syria are favorable by comparison.

>>cgh+(OP)
> a lot of younger Americans have adopted a sort of dark, distorted view of history that casts the US as a villainous entity

Or they have adopted a realistic view of history. The US has done loads of shitty things.

They have never had stalin like purges or a hitler like dictator.

An educated person, old or young, might look at Iran and be less likely to think "horrible regime hell bent on the destruction of Israel and the west" and more likely to think "huh, we probably shouldn't have fucked with their government decades ago".

Also that whole thing about voting being worth less for huge chunks of the country. Oh, and getting constantly screwed over by previous generations.

Being cynical doesn't make you naive.

>>lurr+Vb
The US plays a unique role in the world and has not played it perfectly, that's very true. But it is nowhere close to being the primary villain of the 20th century. I would indeed say you are naive to think so.

Every generation everywhere feels they've been "screwed over" by their parents, or their parents' parents. You lack perspective.

>>jstarf+E9
Yes, very true. I suppose the internet just amplifies something that's been around for decades. To add to your examples, it amazes me that people favourably compare Russia's fixed elections with the failings of the Electoral College.

>>cgh+ml
Sorry, are you saying "it's the cost of doing business"?

>>jstarf+E9
I wonder if this was also true of the 'Great' Britain back in the day.

Note that there are bad people and bad emperors and everything in between, having vastly different abilities to affect people. They are hardly equivalent, though bad they all are.