this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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Every single democracy in Europe is younger than America's by an order of magnitude. Most have gone through 2 or 3 forms of government since it was founded. You have the luxury of not "being the villains" because your governments haven't been around long enough to have nasty shit stick to them. They were all emphatically on board with doing vile stuff to stop the communist boogeyman, they just let America's guns to do it.
The American exceptionalism narrative was born out of WWII, because they really were the "best" industrialized country by virtue of not being a smoking crater. Every state that has reached or is on the path to being a modern nation has blood on their hands, America just hasn't had the chance to symbolically wash them.