• ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    I have a co-worker who fought in Vietnam. I showed him the thing about the Pentagon straight up admitting that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was bullshit, but he refused to accept it. Still feels that we had to fight that war because if we had allowed the communists to win, it would have meant that communism would have taken over the world … even though we actually did lose that war.

    • WhiteOakBayou@lemmy.world
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      31 minutes ago

      The “domino theory” of communism never played out the way they said it would. Just a waste of blood and treasure.

      • FlyingCircus@lemmy.world
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        6 minutes ago

        Well it largely never played out because western capitalists spilled so much blood making sure it wouldn’t. If people had been free to decide for themselves, many more countries would have gone communist, as it has better outcomes for the majority of people than capitalism.

  • HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world
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    15 minutes ago

    The Epstein Files will be released in 2126 to ensure that all guilty parties cannot face justice.

    THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER

    • thefluffiest@feddit.nl
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      2 hours ago

      Nothing about this is new. The authoritarianism, the concentration camps, the dispossessions, the witch-hunt of immigrants and people with a darker skin, the fearmongering, the robber baron oligarchs. We’ve all been here before. And not just once.

      The truly astonishing cultural trait is that Americans keep on living in lalaland and pretend it isn’t happening, it never happened, and it COULD never happen cuz yada yada the Constitution and We The People and the second amendment.

      Americans are one shortsighted bunch willing to swallow any and all propaganda.

    • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
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      1 hour ago

      I think what made COINTELPRO stand out was how weird it was (experiments with LSD, etc.)

      ETA: Never mind, I think I’m getting that confused with MKUltra.

  • sunbrrnslapper@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    My favorite weird thing about American culture is that it is so aggressive. Aggressive food (PopTarts, Big Gulps, etc), aggressive games (football), aggressive national anthem (literally about war), and so on. We are an oddly aggressive people.

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      Pop tarts are aggressive…?

      Regarding the national anthem, you should look up a translation of the French national anthem. And it probably isn’t the most metal/aggressive national anthem out there, since it’s one of the very few I even know.

      • Seth Taylor@lemmy.world
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        13 minutes ago

        I got into a bar fight with a pop tart once. Super aggressive guy. He knocked a couple of my teeth out and gave me a nose bleed. By the end he had me pinned down, but I managed to break free and throw him into the nearest toaster. Savored that meal.

        EDIT: I might have dreamt this.

      • VicksVaporBBQrub@sh.itjust.worksM
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        16 minutes ago

        I once tasted a real proper tart. Served at the wake of a late boss at a golf club house. English tea times sometimes include simple jam tarts. Both envoke tranquil and enjoyability. All my experiences with the Pop Tart were under rush, duress, haste, a sugar-to-blood delivery system. One can tell easy when we (USA) aggravate the food. Like turning doughnuts into donuts. Or spell cheese with a ‘z’.

    • MadBigote@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      I believe all anthema are about war. Mexico’s about the need to fight agains a foreign enemy invasion…

      • TerHu@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        16 minutes ago

        The german one started out as a poem then song that was meant to unite states through their artists and academics. While the nazi abused it and skewed the meaning to be aggressive (germany above all other countries), it was initially about unity (Germany above whatever the princes of the individual states of the German Confederation want).

    • stickyprimer@lemmy.world
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      16 minutes ago

      Yeah Bubba and his gun ain’t doing shit to watchdog the government. In fact I’m quite certain that the government is the only thing keeping Bubba from killing ME with his gun and moving into my house because he feels like it.

    • Ignotum@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      “don’t tread on me” in the streets, “please step on me daddy trump” in the sheets

    • orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts
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      2 hours ago

      And the people yelling “come and take it” while waving “don’t tread on me” flags voted the tyrants in.

    • lyralycan@sh.itjust.works
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      7 hours ago

      There’s a DLC for Assassin’s Creed III called The Tyranny of King Washington, exploring an alternate reality with a corrupt president. Not so wild a theory now

        • BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          5 minutes ago

          Neo-liberalism has brought us here, it’s designed to slowly ratchet us toward another authoritarian state. Because you cannot dare mar the sanctity of the “Free Market” you have to sacrifice at its altar everything else.

    • Signtist@bookwyr.me
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      6 hours ago

      All they had to do was teach them that tyranny looks like a bunch of brown people having jobs.

  • Smaile@lemmy.ca
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    5 hours ago

    americans are all talk no balls, its why they spend so much on military, they feel insecure without the biggest guns possible and still lose wars. its pathetic.

  • Th4tGuyII@fedia.io
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    7 hours ago

    Theoretically that’s what the 2A guns are meant to be for…

    But doesn’t really work out that way when the adversary is your own Government, who has access to very arguably the best armed police force and military in the world, and is more than willing to turn those on you.

  • lyralycan@sh.itjust.works
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    7 hours ago

    I played the storyline for Qube recently (10th Anniversary edition), and there was a hook that was supposed to be sad, but instead hit me as horribly American, plus a dash of victim blaming.

    Spoiler

    "So, I want you to know, I’m only reading this because you wrote it to yourself.

    “It was three PM on a Sunday. You were upstairs at home. A teenage boy broke into your house. He thought you were away on vacation. You went downstairs with your gun. You shot him in your living room. Only he wasn’t trying to rob you. He was passing by and saw a fire in your kitchen. He broke in to try and put it out. He was young and stupid and probably should have thought of a better solution. But you assumed the worst. You assumed the very worst and you shot him. He was paralyzed from the neck down. He died seven years later, alone, at night, in Penrose-St. Francis Hospital…”

    • velma@sh.itjust.works
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      6 hours ago

      There are so many, but one of the biggest is Project MK Ultra. They literally dosed people with LSD (unknowingly to the patient) and various other terrifying methods to try to figure out different ways of interrogation through human experimentation.

      Project MKUltra began in 1953 and was halted in 1972.[3][4] MKUltra used numerous methods to manipulate its subjects’ mental states and brain functions, such as the covert administration of high doses of psychoactive drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals without the subjects’ consent. Additionally, other methods beyond chemical compounds were used, including electroshocks,[5] hypnosis,[6][7] sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, and other forms of torture.[8][9]

      Source

      • Oni_eyes@sh.itjust.works
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        3 hours ago

        And as best I understand it, didn’t even use proper scientific method to even make their study replicate to prove what they were doing worked to any extent.

        Which isn’t the worst part at all, but just shoves it waaaaaaaay further down the torture side and removes any scientific use at all.

        • velma@sh.itjust.works
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          3 hours ago

          They learned from the Nazis that way.

          I think about the guy who killed himself after the CIA, his employer, dosed him with LSD without him knowing pretty often.

            • velma@sh.itjust.works
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              3 hours ago

              Yep! Though Project MK Ultra was founded on Nazi experiments specifically:

              During the early 1940s, Nazi scientists working in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Dachau during World War II conducted interrogation experiments on human subjects. Substances such as barbiturates, morphine derivatives, and hallucinogens such as mescaline were employed in experiments conducted on Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Jewish, and other prisoners of war.[22] These experiments aimed to develop a truth serum which would, in the words of one laboratory assistant to Dachau scientist Kurt Plötner, “eliminate the will of the person examined.”[22] American historian Stephen Kinzer said that the CIA project was a continuation of these earlier Nazi experiments, as evidenced by MKUltra’s use of mescaline on unwitting subjects, replicating previous Nazi experiments conducted at Dachau.[23] Numerous Nazi scientists would be employed by the United States government after the war as part of Operation Paperclip, with some figures such as Kurt Blome becoming involved in MKUltra.[24]

              • Oni_eyes@sh.itjust.works
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                3 hours ago

                Oh I thought you were referring to the whole “not reproducible and not following basic scientific method” part

                • velma@sh.itjust.works
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                  2 hours ago

                  I am. Neither the CIA nor the Nazis followed the basic scientific method and the results are not reproducible. They were really just torturing people and using their goal of developing a “truth serum” as justification.

                  Japan had a similar unit that was torturing people under “scientific advancement”.