Oh, that's interesting! I knew it was about Obama's presidency, but didn't know how it was put together. And no I haven't, this is the first I'm hearing of it!
Oh, I dunno. The reason why I've been wanting to check it out is because I wanted a perspective on Obama's presidency and black isses/stuff/idk what to call it, that hasn't been filtered down through danish news, or tumblr, or the propaganda coming out of the US. So in that way it's probably anthropological? I'm pretty safely removed from it, so to speak.
But I'm also a product of my culture and upbringing and schooling, and have some less than friendly opinions of USA the state (and just saying, I have lost American friends over this as it seems many Americans are so absurdly proud of their country they take it as a personal insult when I point out shit), that mostly manifests as a deep, visceral *terror*. I mean, I'm actively afraid of the USA. (And you could not get me to visit even if you paid me.) I grew up in a country where the American narrative was of them as occupying brutes, and the worst insult (worse even than 'whore') was to call someone an American, specifically an American *soldier*, or a child of an American soldier. (These days Iceland is a lot more pro-America than it has been historically, so you don't see that attitude as much anymore. It was definitely still present in the nineties.) but also, in schools both in Iceland and Denmark we were taught first about the harm the US has done to other people - the Native American genocide, the nuclear bombs in Japan, the Vietnam war, the meddling in the Middle East for oil (and obv also how America occupied Iceland during WW2 and then stuck around and caused a rift in the society) and second about domestic history (like the slave trade and civil war, and the Great Depression). I'm very painfully aware that should the American government decide to invade somewhere, nobody would stop them. Since nobody ever has stopped them. And since the USA has the largest military institution in the world, nobody *could* stop them. And given our proximity to Russia (also not great - Russia has a small piece of land in the Baltic Sea, and there are constantly Russian submarines "accidentally" entering Danish & Swedish waters, Russian companies (controlled by the Russian government) trying to strike deals to build shit (like oil pipelines) on Scandinavian territories, etc.) and the current government's friendliness with Russia, if Russia decided to pull the same thing on us as it did with Crimea, then we can't rely on the US to step in and protect us. (And speaking of Crimea, the US didn't step in then either. Here it's widely understood that Crimea was a 'test run'. More shit is coming.) my point being, the current political climate doesn't just feel like the chapter in a history book that comes before "x invaded y and the war broke out", it feels like business as usual where USA is concerned. Only amped up bc trump. Will he cause WW3? I sure don't hope so, but since it's abundantly clear that the USA is speeding towards a corrupt fascist rule (more like, it already is - though it's still reversible at this point), my hope as a European is that the USA will end up more like North Korea, i.e. the bullshit stays within the American borders and doesn't affect the rest of us. (I'm sorry.) So I guess what I'm saying is, I have a very strong anti-America bias, but it's got little to do with American *domestic* politics, and everything to do with international politics and with the USA only having gotten away with war crimes and other dubious shit because this nation state is just the kind of bully you don't want to piss off, or you'll be next.
So - if I read 8 years in power, all that will be with me. I've been (slowly) reading Hillary Clinton's book What Happened, and this stuff is in the back of my mind when I read that too. I can't ignore it. I've been treating what happened as an unreliable piece of propaganda - basically I treat most anything that powerful Americans say as unrealiable propaganda (even stuff Obama has said/done) because even if these people are progressive (from American point of view) they are still products of their country and are probably more entangled with the system than the average American you'd meet in a check out line at the grocer's since they have to uphold it and/or work within it.
And finally, just to be clear - not that I think you don't understand this - what I just said is strictly about USA the nation state & the American government, and has nothing to do with the American people at large, or even individual Americans (other than individual people with power). I can hold two thoughts in my head at the same time, one being "the USA is terrible" and the other being "I like my American friends and don't hold them accountable for their government's wrongdoing".
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2019-01-01 10:37 pm (UTC)Oh, I dunno. The reason why I've been wanting to check it out is because I wanted a perspective on Obama's presidency and black isses/stuff/idk what to call it, that hasn't been filtered down through danish news, or tumblr, or the propaganda coming out of the US. So in that way it's probably anthropological? I'm pretty safely removed from it, so to speak.
But I'm also a product of my culture and upbringing and schooling, and have some less than friendly opinions of USA the state (and just saying, I have lost American friends over this as it seems many Americans are so absurdly proud of their country they take it as a personal insult when I point out shit), that mostly manifests as a deep, visceral *terror*. I mean, I'm actively afraid of the USA. (And you could not get me to visit even if you paid me.) I grew up in a country where the American narrative was of them as occupying brutes, and the worst insult (worse even than 'whore') was to call someone an American, specifically an American *soldier*, or a child of an American soldier. (These days Iceland is a lot more pro-America than it has been historically, so you don't see that attitude as much anymore. It was definitely still present in the nineties.) but also, in schools both in Iceland and Denmark we were taught first about the harm the US has done to other people - the Native American genocide, the nuclear bombs in Japan, the Vietnam war, the meddling in the Middle East for oil (and obv also how America occupied Iceland during WW2 and then stuck around and caused a rift in the society) and second about domestic history (like the slave trade and civil war, and the Great Depression). I'm very painfully aware that should the American government decide to invade somewhere, nobody would stop them. Since nobody ever has stopped them. And since the USA has the largest military institution in the world, nobody *could* stop them. And given our proximity to Russia (also not great - Russia has a small piece of land in the Baltic Sea, and there are constantly Russian submarines "accidentally" entering Danish & Swedish waters, Russian companies (controlled by the Russian government) trying to strike deals to build shit (like oil pipelines) on Scandinavian territories, etc.) and the current government's friendliness with Russia, if Russia decided to pull the same thing on us as it did with Crimea, then we can't rely on the US to step in and protect us. (And speaking of Crimea, the US didn't step in then either. Here it's widely understood that Crimea was a 'test run'. More shit is coming.) my point being, the current political climate doesn't just feel like the chapter in a history book that comes before "x invaded y and the war broke out", it feels like business as usual where USA is concerned. Only amped up bc trump. Will he cause WW3? I sure don't hope so, but since it's abundantly clear that the USA is speeding towards a corrupt fascist rule (more like, it already is - though it's still reversible at this point), my hope as a European is that the USA will end up more like North Korea, i.e. the bullshit stays within the American borders and doesn't affect the rest of us. (I'm sorry.)
So I guess what I'm saying is, I have a very strong anti-America bias, but it's got little to do with American *domestic* politics, and everything to do with international politics and with the USA only having gotten away with war crimes and other dubious shit because this nation state is just the kind of bully you don't want to piss off, or you'll be next.
So - if I read 8 years in power, all that will be with me. I've been (slowly) reading Hillary Clinton's book What Happened, and this stuff is in the back of my mind when I read that too. I can't ignore it. I've been treating what happened as an unreliable piece of propaganda - basically I treat most anything that powerful Americans say as unrealiable propaganda (even stuff Obama has said/done) because even if these people are progressive (from American point of view) they are still products of their country and are probably more entangled with the system than the average American you'd meet in a check out line at the grocer's since they have to uphold it and/or work within it.
And finally, just to be clear - not that I think you don't understand this - what I just said is strictly about USA the nation state & the American government, and has nothing to do with the American people at large, or even individual Americans (other than individual people with power). I can hold two thoughts in my head at the same time, one being "the USA is terrible" and the other being "I like my American friends and don't hold them accountable for their government's wrongdoing".