this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2026
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No Stupid Questions

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No such thing. Ask away!

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Full disclosure, I live in Africa and don't have a dog in this fight. I like proper discourse and it's alright if I and another person disagree on something, what is important is that we communicate and understand where the other is coming from. The ultimate goal is the satiation of needless and avoidable suffering for all minds.

I've only been on Lemmy for a few days but across any sub I've noticed any criticism of China or the CCP is met with immediate downvotes and anything remotely positive of the US or really any western country whatsoever meets a similar fate.

Anything pro-African is mostly neutral but in essence ignored, no upvotes, no downvotes, no comments.

Has anyone else noticed this? Am I completely off base here? And is there anything else here that seemingly gets downvoted automatically. It would be sad to see the fediverse and Lemmy be nothing more than just another echo chamber on the web.

Finally, I am posting this assuming it will also be downvoted to hell based on the title alone and that itself will be some monochrome of truth of the situation here.

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[–] richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one 14 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

the USA have stopped being the shining beacon of freedom and democracy they used to be seen as by many people in the west

Only blind people ever saw it like that. In Latin-America we've known for a long time that USian foreign policy consists mostly in destroying inconvenient countries with resources for profit.

[–] mech@feddit.org 11 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

Only blind people ever saw it like that.

Maybe it was wrong to generalize. I grew up in West Germany, so my perception is naturally biased.
The contrast between how the USA used to be seen in West Germany before the W. Bush presidency and now is very, very strong.

[–] EggInDisguise@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 15 hours ago

American here and I think your wording was spot on.

It WAS seen as a "shining beacon" by many around the world.

SEEN as. And as someone who was born here, I can assure you that many in the US absolutely know that is a facade at best.

The shell began cracking in other parts of the world decades ago (longer in places like Africa), but for most Europeans and the mostly un-terrorized-by-US-military countries, I think the turning point was "WMDs" in the early 00s. When every other "Major" country is either silent or outright saying "we have no Intel suggesting this" then you can't really claim to have moral superiority, and once you see a liar as a liar, it's all downhill from there.

"seen as" was absolutely the correct phrase, as it was only an illusion.

[–] birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

I'd say even Reagan already was a very weird president. Before the Watergate affair with Nixon, trust in American presidents was generally high in non-socialist Europe, though imho they went radically overboard with their anticommunism, conflating anarchism and all liberationist movements with what they saw as red fascism.

After Reagan, the surface may have seemed similar to how it was prior, but beneath in the cogs of the American system, something started breaking the labourers of which we see the effects even now. Reagan instigated a new level of arguments for abolishing the state anywhere, such as COINTELPRO, Operation Cyclone, indebting the American labourer while stagnating wages, and so on, and radicalising the discourse step for step.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago

Definitely Reagan.