Why are Presidents of the USA treated as villains?

I never said it was.

Our politicians are just as corrupt and crooked as all politicians around the world.

However, the topic is "Why are the Presidents of the USA treated as villains?" and US Foreign Policy is a big factor so far as the outside world is concerned.

I know that the average US Citizen is basically OK, just like any citizen anywhere in the world - no country is a Country Of Hats - and I know full well that the US people have very little choice about who their President actually is (both contenders would toe the same line) but there are many others who have an unjustified (as I said in my previous post) hatred of US people due to the face they most frequently see in the media spewing jingoistic crap.

edited 7th Mar '14 12:12:46 PM by Wolf1066

People hate the United States for behaving like any other country would if they had the power and resources that the United States has.

So...people hate the U.S. for being more successful than them. Sounds like most poor-wealthy relationships, to be honest.

edited 7th Mar '14 12:18:18 PM by TobiasDrake

Correction: People hate the USA because the US President does exactly what their own politicians would do if their own countries had that level of military might.

It's not actually up to the average person in the street to choose that course of action.

edited 7th Mar '14 12:22:14 PM by Wolf1066

I'd like to think that the U.S. has been fairly restrained in its use of military might given its relative power, compared to what some other countries' leaders might do.

No, but it is up to the average person the street to contribute to the act of choosing that person who will make those decisions on behalf of us all. American citizens talk about the acts of government as if we have no role in the system whatsoever; as if the President were an almighty King, born into riches and with his royal power reinforced by right of birth, and we are just his peasants who serve him. I think people like that idea because it takes away responsibility from us. If Congress is being assholes, we like to think it's because the politicians - who we like to think rose to power of their own accord and were chosen completely without any possible input from us - are evil power-hungry bastards oppressing the common folk.

But the truth is, it's all on us. You can't fix the President. You can't fix the Congressmen or the Senators. You can't fix the rules. You have to fix the people, who continue to elect the President, the Congressmen, and the Senators who will continue to reinforce those rules. If the nation decides it wants to go to war with Hungary, we might scream and bitch and moan that war with Hungary is bad, but come election day, if the majority of us vote for a President who's riding a "War in Hungary is awesome!" platform? Then that war is on us.

There is no King of the United States of America. In a democratic society, we are all the king, and nothing is ever going to change until we - all of us - understand the responsibility that entails, and stop doing as little work as possible when election time rolls around, hoping for the best and whining when it doesn't happen, and the people we put into office do exactly what we all know they're going to do.

EDIT: Third party voting is a great example. Why don't we vote for a third party? Because it's a waste of a vote. Why is it a waste? Because no one votes for a third party. Nobody votes for a third party because nobody votes for a third party. It's a self-reinforcing idea that third party voting is a waste.

Third parties can't win because we won't vote for them, and we won't vote for them because they can't win because we won't vote for them. Whose fault is it, then, that the system remains bipartisan and only a Democrat or a Republican can possibly win? The government? The system? Or us?

edited 7th Mar '14 12:33:45 PM by TobiasDrake

I maintain we're better than our predecessor.

We've never destroyed a legitimate government so we could peddle proto-heroin to their populace.

Well, I wouldn't say that.

We weren't too nice in the Cold War.

Sure we helped overthrow a legitimate government so they would grow us cheap Bananas but thats not quite as bad as the heroin.

There's way darker motives and aspects behind "Banana republics" than just "bananas".

As for the question of the thread, I say every major superpower of its age, regardless of how benign it is, ends up doing some incredibly ruthless things either to get in that position or to stay there, and those ruthless things stay in the people's minds more than the good things, specifically because these powers Always try to downplay their evil actions, which means the opposite happens (and people become even more willing to criticize it).

Granted sometimes the bad does outweight the good.

Point is The Chains of Commanding are only truly felt and seen by those who wear them, everyone else might see its bearer as a ruthless tyrant due its actions alone. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. But people will see it.

In short, every major civilization is built upon the corpses of innocents, the question is how many were used for the construction, and how many live atop it, which is a tricky thing to judge.

Banana's and checking the influence of the Soviet Union.

Did I miss something?

Well the English were always just checking the influence of France and Spain historically

And later, Germany.

It's all about the Balance of Power in Europe — a principle that's been running our foreign policy for over 500 years.

Who's power was getting checked in the Opium wars? Aside from China's?

Easier said then done. That applies to a whole lot more than politics.

edited 7th Mar '14 5:51:27 PM by shiro_okami

Tobias, are you trying to say that the majority of US Citizens want to control the rest of the world either directly or indirectly, help themselves to whatever resources other nations have got and that they agree that "The (self-styled) World Police" should "rescue" the citizens of oil-rich Iraq but let the citizens of East Timor suffer and die under an oppressive regime for the crime of not being important enough for the US government to rescue?

Frankly, I don't buy that.

The President of the USA does not represent the average people of the USA, he represents the privileged minority that profits from the wars and acquisitions.

Not to start quoting Manufacturing Consent again, but it's hard to measure this sort of thing. The wealthy have a huge amount of clout, not just through advertising and newspapers, but through subtler methods like gerrymeandering.

Second, the reason a third party doesn't get off the ground in the U.S. is because the Dems and GOP unite to stop them. There seems to be an unspoken unity between the two major parties. They share the same backers and interest in maintaining the status quo — one is simply more representative of the needy, at least at the polls. The Republicans' sharp turn the right can be partly attributed to people like the Kochs forcing it in that direction for 30 years.

None of these interests represent 'us'. The media does not represent 'us'. The President is not a mystical amalgamation of 'us', at least I hope not (looking at you, Dubya). At best he is a chosen representative of concentrated banking interests.

I'm not saying we want to. I'm saying we are responsible for it. A significant portion of our populace did, in fact, support the war. Another significant portion has failed to care enough about it to actually let it affect how they voted, as evident by Bush's re-election after his term was up. The President of the USA represents whatever the hell the person we elect chooses to represent. If we choose to elect someone who represents a privileged minority, then that happens, but it's still on us because we put him into office.

Every four years, we decide who is going to be king for the next four years. Every two years, we decide who will make our laws. If the king is a bastard and the laws are shitty, then maybe we shouldn't be electing bastards and people who will make shitty laws. It really is that simple. The burden of governance in a democracy falls upon its people.

Americans have a serious problem with our government system, and that problem isn't malice, but rather, apathy. We don't care enough. Many of us just vote for whichever names are on our party ballot. "I am a Republican, so I will vote Republican on every issue." Many others just vote for whoever looks best on TV. Few actually do the goddamn research. That's not the fault of the wealthy. That's not the fault of the government. That's not Big Business invalidating our votes. That's our own damn fault for not getting involved in our own damn election process and then whining when someone we don't like gets elected in a process we paid maybe three hours' worth of attention to during the entire campaign.

edited 8th Mar '14 9:33:52 AM by TobiasDrake

Guys the reason third parties never have any successes is because of the "all or nothing" way seats are awarded to the house and senate. The smaller parties just don't have enough support to win any seats so their former supporters just join one of the bigger parties to gain some kind of representation. The reason the Green or Independent (and seriously fuck that party's choice of name) parties never win shit is because the system that was set up ten years before the first political party was a gleam in John Adams eye turned out to favor a 2 party system mathematically.

Hard to care when you get roughshodded every way,...but I'm afraid to some extent we do indirectly and without malice want to roughshod everywhere else.

Because everyone wants to cheapest shirt, the next cheapest cup of coffee, the cheapest gas, and so on and so on which are made overseas where labor is cheaper. And we (the masses)will do anything to keep our comfortable status quo (and expand) and make it look we are doing it for nothing. (This is why Ronald Reagan ever caught traction,and why 1980 spelled the end of common sense politics.)

Unless we are put into a panic,then we'll believe anything even if it goes against staying comfortable. (Hence how the Austerity hawks managed to fool the masses into wanting to give up good services despite being alseep during Reagan's overspending or the Cold War bullshit)

Until then,we will continue to be duped and hurt by being duped enough to remain apathetic,because it's too much trouble to care.

All you can do is vote for better of two lessers.

So many damn depressed hippies in this thread.

It's true, though. We want cheaper, more reliable access to resources that are primarily available in other countries. At the same time, we want to be humanitarian and not trample over innocent people. In a conflict between the two, the former tends to win as long as we never have to see, hear, or care that the innocent people we're trampling on exist. Once we become aware of them, we'll make a big, vocal fuss about how awful it is and we need to stop doing that, and we believe that, but only to the extent that it doesn't inconvenience our access to those resources. We'll tacitly accept lower gas prices over the lives of foreigners, because we all want to believe ourselves to be The Good Guy, but we don't want to have to sacrifice anything to do it.

edited 8th Mar '14 11:46:44 AM by TobiasDrake

I don't think Tobias is saying the world is full of cunts who would do the same in our position, or that we deserve the leadership we got. He's using reverse psychology to try and motivate us to demand better. At least that's my impression.

If, by "depressed hippies", you're referring to those of us who don't believe change can be achieved through designated political channels, than.. (raises hand awkwardly)

'also raises hand' I've never liked the idea of working in a system to change things as systems are not designed to change themselves

edited 8th Mar '14 1:05:46 PM by KingNick1995

Yeah I'm not feeling like you can change things here

Mwahahahaha...just as planned. Arise, comrades.

edited 8th Mar '14 1:51:35 PM by Achaemenid