She was right you know. About all of it. Nailed it exactly during the campaign:
I see people responding to this by saying “But the US has been doing the same thing to Latin America and the middle East for years!”
Yeah. That’s true. I’ve taken part in some protests about it. But what’s your point?
If you want to say that the US should open up about its past sins and give the countries it has manipulated some transparency and maybe even some reparations, sure. We’d probably have to scale our military back to pay for it and start acting like we are part of the world community instead of its lords and masters, but that’s the cost of being a big bully all those years. Our status as an empire during the cold war.
But that isn’t the sense I get from people saying that. I get the feeling they are just saying; “Taste of your own medicine!” They just want Americans to suffer. They seem not to want us to defend ourselves against direct attack. Which is weird, since it’s mostly Americans* I even hear saying that.
The problem with that approach is that American influence matters. The world does have real problems in which we can lead. And we have a chance to move the foundations of that leadership to higher moral ground. But while we do that we still have our own nation to run.
If it was wrong for the US to meddle in Nicaragua, it is wrong for Russia to meddle in the US. And while we try to amend for the wrongs we have committed, we should defend ourselves. We have the FBI, we have the CIA and NSA; they can help fend off the illegal foreign influence of Russia screwing with our elections. We should let them do their jobs. This is so obvious it kind of hurts to have to say it.
NOTES:
- *Maybe. It does play into Russian talking points, whoever is saying it.
- Some Trump supporters think Russian tampering in the ’16 election was a good thing.
- If you think Hillary would have been worse…
- Discuss this post on Twitter and Facebook
georgewiman 