[ SECRET POST #2352 ]

[case]

⌈ 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.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

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 !!!

[(Anonymous)]

Nobody actually uses the "tectonic plate" definition of continents. See my response to the moron below. If they did, half of Iceland would be in North America-Half-of-Iceland-Siberia, and... no one thinks that way. Continents are separated by bodies of water. The "tectonic plate" cop out is an excuse to further the notion that white 'North' Americans are separate and better from the rest of us.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh. So you're the special kind of crazy. Um. I'm sorry that science is oppressing you?

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, right, I'm sorry, USian-Canadian-Siberian-Icelander, you totally use the continent-as-tectonic-plate layout just like that and not just when it suits your racist ideals at all. I guess I should just move to the continent of Saudia Arabia-Qatar-Yemen if I don't like it.

[(Anonymous)]

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).

[(Anonymous)]

Says the moron who can't use HTML tags.

Australia? That's funny, I thought they had a decent public school system. I guess not.

Tectonic plates, eh? That sure is a convenient definition, also, complete horseshit. Geologists define it that way, but commonly, no, they're defined as "landmasses separated by a body of water", of which the Americas weren't until racist imperialists from the USA forcibly did so.

Under the geological definition, India would be considered a separate "continent" than Asia. But it isn't. Siberia would be on the same "continent" as the Northern Americas. But... it isn't. Half of Iceland would be part of that continent, the other half would be in Europe. But... that would be fucking ludicrous. Do you even know where the tectonic plates are? Learn what a fucking word means before you use it, dipshit.

Thanks for confirming that racist, ignorant Australians are truly living up to their big brothers, the racist, ignorant USians. The separate "Americas" are propaganda, meant to reinforce the notion that white 'North' Americans are somehow separate from everyone else. Now, run along. Don't you have some brown people to throw back into the sea off Christmas Island?

[(Anonymous)]

they're defined as "landmasses separated by a body of water"

You mean like Europe and Asia?

[(Anonymous)]

There's a reason the term "Eurasia" exists and is used, just like "the Americas". Thanks for providing another example of made up "continents" based on us-versus-them racist ideologies, though!

[(Anonymous)]

The Suez Canal is also man-made. However, sadly for troll anon I'm replying to, it's not just "racist shitbag" USians who consider Africa a separate continent. This would be because continents aren't geometrically discrete entities by any but the most strict model: one which posits four world continents (Afro-Eurasia, America, Antarctica, and Australia) and in which island nations such as Iceland, New Zealand, Madagascar, Cuba, etc. aren't part of any continent. Of course, basically no one uses this model on a day-to-day basis; most people follow a six- or seven-continent model.

Also, it's worth pointing out that the convention that America is a single continent was the dominant view in the U.S. until WWII, which not-so-coincidentally covered the time in which the Monroe Doctrine's "Big Brother" policy and the Roosevelt Corollary were conceived. Isn't it a shame that USians' conception of the relationship between North and South America has become so much more racist since then? </sarcasm>

[hateart]

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.

[jain]

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.