fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2352 ]

[ SECRET POST #2352 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2352 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 091 secrets from Secret Submission Post #336.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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...things like this make it really obvious that this is a peacetime generation. I personally find sentiments like this mind-boggling, but whatevs.

it has nothing to do with this being a peacetime generation

no, i mean, everyone who came of age during Vietnam is really remarkable for their respect for the military, in comparison to this generation which is perfectly well represented by one random anonymous person making an image about Doctor Who

I'm surprised you identify this as a peacetime mentality. Most of our recent wars/conflicts/what-have-yous since Vietnam has resulted in a huge amount of anti-military (but recently not anti-soldier) mentality, at least in the US.

In fact, it's usually the big-wig military man who 'gets his' in a lot of shows. It's a common trope. The current 20-30 something generation is likely seeing this sentiment in television because its a reflection of their own common/general mentality.

...It's not? A peacetime generation.

how do you even know what generation the secret maker is from

We are definitely not a peacetime generation.

Peacetime generation? In what part of the world?

what is a peacetime generation tho

it has never happened

Whose peace?

So, does "peacetime" to you mean "not a World War?" Because we sure as shit ain't at peace.

Ummm, VIETNAM? And from personal experience living under the terrible shadow of the Cold War made me utterly utterly despise militaristic thinking from a very young age. And when Iraq was invaded there were ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND of us protesting on the streets of Melbourne.

I do think those who died from my country (Australia) to serve the British empire, the USian empire, and world war invasion on our shores, deserve respect. Where I walk every night has remnants of that invasion. But not the military in general, not the thinking that leads men (almost always, though hello Thatcher) of many countries to posture and rant and dominate and invade and start wars, and you know? My country was invaded in the 18thC and The invaders proceeded to wreak genocide, one of my ancestors was documented as being a hero for massacring families.

So hells yeah, I'll enjoy the individualistic Doctor poking fun at the military, from the Vietnam war era included, even if we can't reasonably expect a powerful benevolent alien to save us from aliens.

I'd have thought your comment was somewhat reasonable, but your use of "USian empire" completely ruins any trace of credibility you might have had.

USian is not a word and isn't even grammatically logical, and America has never been an empire, which is a geographically extensive group of states and peoples that are united and ruled by a monarch.

I agree with you that USian is kind of dumb, but I don't agree with you that America isn't an empire. I think, in a lot of ways, it is - and I definitely think that whether or not it fits with a narrow, dictionary definition is not at all a significant measure of whether America is an empire, and it's kind of pedantic to think it is. I think that definition is kind of flawed - not only is there no particular reason to think that empire should be limited to that definition, that definition does not even do particularly well in characterizing historically existing empires.

Does the United States exert political dominion over diverse colonial states? No. Of course not. But the United States does play a dominant role in politics around the world. The United States does prop up client states, and go to war against or otherwise attempt to influence states or regimes that propose its interests in diverse parts of the world. The United States does include as many countries as it can in its economic sphere, as its corporate interests do business throughout the world. It goes to poor states and attempts to induce them to maintain policies that are friendly to it through the power of development loans and international finance - it attempts to maintain the Washington Consensus. It does do all these things. You can argue about the motives of this sort of behavior (as you could have done with the British Empire in its early stages - remember the old saw that the British Empire was acquired "in a fit of absence of mind") but the fact is that the United States does go around to many countries in the world, especially poor countries and resource-rich companies, and do many things to attempt to include them in its political and economic sphere, to ensure that governments and policies they consider suitable are in place, and in general to exert economic and political dominion over them.

Definitions are only meaningful insofar as they're useful. The fact that America looks in some respects different from previous imperial states - the fact that it does not actually take possession of territory, or the fact that it is not ruled by a monarch - is far less important than the fact that it goes around doing the kinds of things that empires have always done, following the same logic that empire has always followed. Saying that because of those things it's not an empire makes as much sense as saying there was no British empire in India before 1857 because the British East India Company ruled India, not the British crown.

We are an empire. For better or worse. We behave as an empire; our foreign policy is imperial. Whatever a dictionary says. Our whole mindset and our assumptions about the world are imperial. We should probably face up to that fact, at some point, when we're going around the world assassinating people with drones, when we're overthrowing regimes as we please, when we're remaking economic policy in our own image and using the poor populations of foreign countries for cheap labor and cheap consumer goods at home, when we take upon ourselves the right to pass judgment on the government of any country we want.

AYRT

Oh go fuck yourself. "American" refers to two continents.

And yes, there are US soldiers in a base IN MY FUCKING TOWN, and we send soldiers to DIE for US interests, which is pretty fucking similar to what we did for Britain, and you're KIDDING YOURSELF if you don't think the US is posturing as the world power the UK once was. Completely DELUSIONAL. Take your head out of your parochial arse.

It's not two fucking continents, it's one. The Panama Canal is man-made.

Fucking christ, ignorant USians all up in here. Only you idiots think "North" and "South" America are two different things because you're racist shitbags. Read a book or look at a fucking map for once, why don't you.

NAYRT

Not they're really not. I don't know if this isn't cultural-language thing because we have word 'continent' that seems to mean engl. word 'continent' in the geological sense of the word ( as that the continent is somehow determined by the tectonic plates ) and the word "world-parts" which much more connected with culture, history and such. So we have continent Eurasia but "world-parts" Europe and Asia.

Which still doesn't matter because North and South America are two separate continents and "world-parts". For fuck sake, South America was connected to Antarctica and separated from North America for ages !!!

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2013-06-12 14:14 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2013-06-12 14:19 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2013-06-12 14:31 (UTC) - Expand

First of all, the person you just replied to is Australian, not American. So good job, asshat, calling them an "ignorant USian."

Second of all, they ARE two fucking continents. You gonna tell me that Africa isn't its own continent because it smashed into Europe and is now connected to it? What the fuck do you even think a continent is? A "giant island?"

A continent is a continuous landmass that corresponds to a particular tectonic plate. Plates move and collide, so yup, sometimes those landmasses link up. But they're still separate landmasses.

This is basic fucking geography. You might want to look into it before you go around calling other people ignorant (and "racist?" My gods, you're an idiot).

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2013-06-12 14:09 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2013-06-12 15:50 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2013-06-12 16:04 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2013-06-13 00:16 (UTC) - Expand

DA

I agree that the term USian is incredibly stupid, but the United States is kind of an empire. Not on the scale that Britain is/was, but I think it still qualifies. It's most apparent in the Pacific, where American Samoa, the American Virgin Islands, Guam, and others islands are all ultimately governed by the United States. The takeover of Hawaii is textbook imperialism -- and I'm saying this as an American.

These islands aren't anywhere near the United States, and their citizens initially had almost no shared cultural background with mainland America.

The only way this situation differs from your definition of an empire is that there is no monarch. Frankly, I think that distinction makes very little practical difference.

Edited 2013-06-12 16:37 (UTC)

which is a geographically extensive group of states and peoples that are united and ruled by a monarch

That's an overly precise (to the point of being wrong) definition of the word "empire." Let's go with Webster's New Collegiate instead, which defines empire as "a group of nations or states under a single sovereign power."

America has never been an empire

Current U.S.-controlled territories: Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and Puerto Rico

An incomplete list of previous U.S.-controlled territories:
Philippines (1898-1946)
Hawaii (1898-1959)
Federated States of Micronesia (1947-1986)
Marshall Islands (1947-1986)
Palau (1947-1994)
Ryukyu Islands, including Okinawa (1952-1972)

The U.S.A.'s acquisition of the Philippines in the Treaty of Paris--and its success at holding the territory in spite of the failed revolution that was the Philippine-American War--is particularly notable because it marks the point at which the U.S.A. came to be regarded as an empire by its own citizens and by the other imperial powers.

Really, though, the U.S.A. has been a de facto empire almost since its inception. American expansion westward across the continent was at its heart imperial expansion, annexing land previously under the control of American Indians. When these territories were incorporated into the U.S.A. as states, the white colonists were granted full and equal citizenship; the American Indians who lived there and whose land it had originally been were not.

While I agree with the other anon who replied to you, I'd just like to point out: Vietnam and the Cold War are over a generation ago [and yeah. USian? Not a word.]

"USian? Not a word"

p sure they're aware. they're using it as a term.

"USian"?! how dumb are you

For you to say this with a straight face, it seems like you'd have to be old enough to remember WWII. Since that would make you a pretty extreme outlier age-wise in FS, the only other logical option is that you lived somewhere with a more localized war pretty much in your backyard.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'm curious to know where you live or are from. Assuming you aren't in your late 70s (or a troll.)

not previous anon, but I live with a war in my backyard, and have to agree that this sentiment is kind of mind boggling. it really does smack of somebody who has the luxury of living somewhere where they don't have to be *aware* of war nearby.
the thought of the military being incompetent frankly terrifies me.

It's not precisely a peactime generation. But it is a generation which has never experienced a draft, and is therefore largely isolated from the reality of the wars we're engaged in because relatively few of their friends and loved ones are directly affected.

Many recruits today are young, unattached, disadvantaged people, some of whom are being drawn from nontraditional pools such as prisons, and this exacerbates both the problem I just mentioned and the negative perception civilians have of the military (which attitude, I'm told, is unfortunately somewhat mutual. The military may be the only family some of these guys have ever known, so when they're released to civilian life after sometimes multiple tours of duty in hostile territory, they have trouble re-integrating into a society that never welcomed them in the first place. Some are immediately snapped up by law enforcement, which results in situations like police officers opening fire without warning on unarmed civilians while in pursuit of a suspect.)

tl;dr: Yeah, it's a generational thing. No, it's not entirely unwarranted.

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