this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
126 points (88.9% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35706 readers
2182 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one 9 points 9 months ago (2 children)

And the reductive stupid answer is just yelling colonialism.

Most of those reasons, that are very real, are explicitly derived of colonialism.

For instance:

  • 2 (resources) is the cause that the US promotes puppet right-wing governments or directly destroys countries to pillage them.
  • 3 (education) is systematically destroyed in many countries because they want to make public education disappear so it's for profit. Again, following the US model and most likely benefiting US companies (for instance "educational" campaigns to teach proprietary products created by US companies, e.g. Microsoft)
  • 4 (stability) is directly threatened by the US foreign policy of destroying every country that is ideologically or economically inconvenient for the unimpeded proliferation of unbridled, savage capitalism.
  • 6: in many developing countries public health has been destroyed to follow for-profit schemes based in the US model, to benefit either US companies or US-backed right-wing politicians.
  • 11: Crime is worst in countries reduces to poverty, in many cases by US-backed lending policies sending countries into misery.

All this, of course, is supported by years of colonial teachings after which the people in the "developing" countries despise themselves and look up to the powerful countries as inherently superior, even morally.

[–] XiELEd@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Not just the US. Cambridge Analytica is trying to manipulate our politics through scummy means such as misinformation campaigns. And our country is being fucked by the effects of Climate Change while western countries are celebrating because "it's more sunny and warm now! :D", and "finally more viable real estate!"

[–] rivermonster@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Many of the issues CAN be and are linked to colonialism, reread what I wrote.

Yes, your points are pertinent and support problems that colonialism is relevant to, I did not claim otherwise.

However, you're clearly focused on negatives and crimes (in many cases rightfully so) the US has caused. But the question wasn't exclusive to the US and is not exclusive to the US.

For the OPs question, trying to exclusively link everything to or overstate the colonial influence is an example of what I was saying as well.

It's comforting to pretend that we just say one word "colonialism" and think that now we're experts on the subject. But there's so much more than colonialism, which again is a big factor (the first I listed), and overemphasis of it while disregarding the other real issues and nuances is counterproductive to learning.

[–] richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one -2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Many of these issues can be also be related to the fact that the citizens of powerful countries are entitled assholes who vote their countries to continue the exploitation of other countries.

Your membership in one of those citizen groups is, of course, completely conjectural, but I have a strong opinion about it.

[–] rivermonster@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

It's fine that you want to vent. Go ahead and raise that fist to the sky and give it hell, kiddo!

If misdirecting that at me makes you feel better, do it. Rock on, and I'm glad I could help. I hope you feel better!