Americans may be surprised to find that foreigners actually don’t pay as much attention to US elections as they think. Even many people in the US don’t care, they’re just inundated with media coverage of it. At most about 66% of eligible voters even vote and the people that do vote aren’t necessarily informed. You may have seen interviews with undecided voters. They turn up to vote but haven’t necessarily put much thought into it.
As an aside, I find it funny when Americans scream about other countries empire building and carrying out provocative military exercises when the US has so many military bases everywhere. You don’t need to officially annex land to control it, that’s old style thinking.
America: Establishes military bases, missile silos, CIA blacksites, international espionage agreements to violate the rights of the citizens in dozens of countries, has invaded and overturned governments because they disagree with what the president wants, calls itself the world police.
Americans: “Why are so many non-Americans invested in what goes on in our country? I know we’re a big deal, but why would anyone be interested? Must be paid actors and bots! I don’t care about French elections, why would they care about American?”
Nobody in America thinks this fyi. We know exactly why the world cares and it’s because we are the world’s only super power.
You know this?
We’re also pretty pissed about how cheap our senators are. Like bro I couldn’t buy a 2025 Tacoma for what your selling the free world for.
Dear Earth,
The U.S. is about to fuck over humanity.
Zero fucks about climate change.
Leadership connections with the worst ass hats on the planet.
I apologize.
I wish y’all the best.
about to
🧐
Inauguration ain’t till January
Some things don’t change from administration to another, such as:
U.S. Military Is World’s Biggest Polluter
And Democratic politicians are just as capable of war crimes.
Cool.
I’m sure there will be no difference in the US’s impact on and relations with the rest of the world once Trump realizes over for Biden.
I’m glad it’ll be the same, because I was thinking it’d get worse.
Silly me!
During Clinton’s administration 500,000 Iraqi children were killed through sanctions and Albright on 60 Minutes said it was worth it.
Now during Biden we have a genocide with over 50,000 dead.
The US foreign policy has been terrible even under Democrats. Liberals only care when the president is a Republican.
Brain dead take of the day.
Yikes, that’s a pretty strong aversion to reality.
Unfortunately, leaving a salty comment doesn’t make the truth go away. The democrats have literally been facilitating a genocide for the past year. They suck. They can be “not the absolute worst possibility” and still be very very shit.
We were never good, we’ve just excavated a whole new bottom to hit. It’s almost impressive considering how much we’ve always sucked.
Americans: Why don’t foreigners care about every aspect of America every second of every day?
The picture is an exaggeration. India DOES NOT allow foreign military bases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_black_sites
Sri Lanka participated in the US redition process. This image is also rather old. Very likely the Modi government has opened the back door to this shit in the last ten years.
Yeah the Aussie presence is in completely the wrong spots too. It’s bullshit.
Neither does Pakistan, those are actually super top secret CIA outposts lol
American exceptionalism is ingrained so deep in most people here that they would never even consider or doubt why the world pays attention to them, just: “Duh of course they do, because we’re America!”
Correct. I think the entire premise that an American would question this idea is an indication that the meme was made by somebody from a country with one of these pins in it.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending this mindset. I am myself an American making this observation with a sense of shame and mild horror.
Yeah, I abolutely agree. In American culture, this is treated more like a natural law, like the Sun rising each day or objects falling down when dropped. It is just something self-evident and isn’t even a thought that occurs in most American’s heads.
It is self evident that America is the world’s only super power.
Going by experience here, the American WILL question this idea the very seconds the foreign has a diverging opinion or calls them out on something.
Americans run around moralizing while exploding everyone. They impose their views and politics into every country on earth. But if you criticized them for being idiots who allowed Trump to win, they tell you “you’re not even American!” As if American stupidity doesn’t affect the rest of the world. And this is the kind of shit I’m hearing from the American left now the side that was supposed to be smart and reasonable, and you know, not racist or xenophobic. But they’ve also gone toxic extreme as well. Americans are nuts.
But if you criticized them for being idiots who allowed Trump to win, they tell you “you’re not even American!”
Not from me. Anyone who voted for Trump or sat around to let him be elected is a fucking moron.
I learned in 2016 I had too much faith in my fellow citizens. There are many, many stupid people here.
I think there should be a major distinction between Democrats/neoliberals/however you want to classify them and “the American left”/progressives.
They often fall under the same tent because progressives do not have another substantial place in American politics, but I think these are 2 different groups with different beliefs and ideas.
👋 yep… Tbh, I just never thought through the “their shit is next door” part… just the “they have a lot of shit” part
Or they could realize the reality of the situation without making it about taking credit for being “the best”. As an American I know our country sucks, especially now, and also that it’s important for global stability.
Nah, it’s probably what you said. I just truly think the US is way better than any other country. /s
Edit: I missed that they wrote “most”. In my defense though a lot of users are currently cruelly shitting on Americans unconditionally. A lot of us didn’t want this bullshit
Huh? Sorry, not ALL Americans. I did say “most”
I missed that. My bad.
The US doesn’t have any military bases in Alaska? Not even one?
Huh. 🤔 . They do of course. https://militarybases.com/alaska I also see 9. :T well that’s annoying. Now that I look closer I do see Closed military bases on this list and the scale is absolutely horrendous. Decidedly not effective for communicating information specifically, but great for reaffirming the general you know like the US has a bunch of them and it operates troops and such out of them
take note canadians
This site says there are 9. 3 Army, 3 Air Force, 3 Coast Guard.
Certainly does. My father-in-law served up there, which he thought was a much better assignment than Vietnam. It was pretty important for early ICBM detection from Russia, since the shortest path to the continental US is through the arctic circle. Still is, so yes, there’s bases up there.
and in hindsight, it turned out to have been much better than going to Vietnam
And where’s the one in antarctica they’re always threatening to send people to?
Imagine if China had bases like that
If you do a search for “are there secret chinese police stations in canada”, would that count?
Not to be a china apologist, but overt military presence in the form of missiles and boots on the ground is very different from clandestine operations abroad. Basically all major powers have the latter. What do you think the CIA is?
If you mean https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_police_overseas_service_stations, then yes, but imagine they have soldiers and illegal weapons and claim to be ensuring stability of the region
My first thought was to wonder if we’ll try to buy Greenland again.
Apparently, some have been pushing that last week already…
Sorry, World. 😑
If the US bought Denmark, they’d probably get Greenland with it. Just saying.
(now some idiot is probably going to try this)
In 3 months we’re going to have a Secretary of Defense that’s on the Fox and Friends B-Team, and a panel of MAGA generals purging the ranks. I am not ruling anything out of the future timeline we’re on…
These are some of the same people who don’t know who the president of Puerto Rico is, so they might just move in thinking the place is abandoned.
Comparisons here on Wikipedia, sometimes on the linked page.
Putin is gonna pee his pants in glee when his orange tool starts shutting them down
Hegseth is as hawkish on Russia as he is on China. But I would be less worried as Putin than I would be as a draft-eligible American. We’re only going to double down on wars with this new guy in charge and that manpower needs to come from somewhere.
That boy has likely been away from service long enough not to know his head from his toes
To be fair the red balloons shown are much less deadly than American military bases.
Seems like they just hate industrious hard working war mongers. Can’t a warlord catch a break?
I’ve never once wondered this.
Iirc the way these bases work is with the agreement from the host country.
Tell that to Cuba.
More like an “agreement”
Having a US military base (that wasn’t forcibly installed by the US military) in your country is usually great for a country’s security at a fantasic price. Especially if you’re a country that’s not likely to have an adversarial relationship with the US.
The US isn’t likely going to invade or go to war with Romania anytime soon, so having US military thousands of US troops, aircraft, and the world’s most advanced missile defense systems placed there offers great security that they’re paying for just by being located in a strategically useful position.
The price is that the US might overthrow your government if they don’t like the outcome of an election.
That was CIA interference.
It’s bad, but it doesn’t require a military presence.
Yes, I’m sure the presence of Pine Ridge had nothing to do with it. The CIA never coordinates with the US military after all.
Okay, how about the US service members that keep sexually assaulting women in Japan?
You’re interrupting the circle jerk.
Iirc the way these bases work is with the agreement from the host
countrycountry’s government and most definitely NOT the people of said country.FTFY.
Some countries have their people elect their government
Right, right… like the US just did?
How’s that vote on healthcare coming along?
I was thinking more European countries, since the discussion was, you know, foreign countries hosting US military bases
So-called “liberal democracy” works pretty much the exact same way it does in Europe (or anywhere else) as it does in the US.
Ie, it’s 95% capitalism and 5% fake democracy substitute (the ratios vary slightly but never by much). And, like “liberal democracy” everywhere, the 5% fake democracy substitute will be rapidly replaced with 5% very not-fake fascism if you threaten the 95% capitalism part in any way whatsoever.
So-called “liberal democracy” works pretty much the exact same way it does in Europe (or anywhere else) as it does in the US.
Lol no. Much of Europe ranks much higher in all sort of democracy, press freedom etc indexes. Not all liberal democracies are created equal.
I’m guessing you’re having a real hard time understanding that there is absolutely NOTHING democratic about so-called “liberal democracy,” eh?
Why is that? Is the new information clashing with your programming?
They do. However, I’m sure you can imagine an elected government acting in a way that the majority disagrees with. We’re about to see it in the US (actually, we have for years if not decades). This is not just a US phenomenon, there’s actual research showing that in liberal democracies, there’s very little correlation between what the general public wants, and the policies instated by their elected officials. There is a strong correlation with the interests of the owning class though.
Here’s a study for American politics: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B
There’s a Danish study as well. I’m having terrible trouble finding it though. It’s an important addition because the democrats not representing the interests of the working class could in theory be a consequence of the US’s two party system. The same result holding in multi-party Denmark shows that this is not the case.
At any rate, the point is that just because these countries are liberal democracies doesn’t mean their population wants a US military presence.
No it doesn’t automatically mean people want it, but add in stuff like living next to Russia and suddenly it’s very easy to understand why some actually want it.
to be fair, most of these countries allow usa bases because of the countries that explicitly dont have usa bases. see map.
they use expensive infrastructure and most countries would rather fund their own bases.
oooo cake 🎂
If the base in Okinawa is famously unpopular amongst the Okinawa locals and a political head ache for the Japanese government, I don’t imagine that other bases in less allied countries are more popular.
I know even the bases in Europe are famed for being rough and a blight on towns. (but then so are most British military bases in at least England…)
Bases, plural
There are 4 US military bases in Okinawa that accounts for 22% of the land on the island. It’s no wonder they’re pissed.
It’s mostly the rape that they’re pissed about.
I’m fairly sure there’s historical and cultural reasons for the Okinawa bases being disliked amongst the locals. There was like a little war thingy you may have heard of, I believe it was the second of its’ series.
Anyway.
I’m from one of those countries where NATO troops and equipment get stationed. Most locals seem to be grateful, I know I am. Putin will be too scared to make any moves if there are both American AND British troops in our bases.
Eastern Europe would be the probable exception, due to the ever threat of Russian invasion.
(As for the Okinawan bases… I think all the sexual assault has something to do with it, beyond the fighting in the Second World War.)
You got down voted because some folks are either ignorant of wider geopolitics, or of certain inclination and don’t want to hear the inconvenient truth.
I am originally from Philippines which hosted a major US military base. Despite the protests, the Americans did not leave until a major volcanic eruption nearby prompted them to do so in the early 90s. I am anti-imperialists as much as the next guy and the overseas American military presence is an on-the-face sign of imperialism, but the fact of the matter is that many countries literally “free ride” under American protective umbrella. It saves the country money and deter rivals. That being said, in hindsight the Americans should not have left, as China has now started claiming an entire sea region and bullying Filipino and Vietnamese fishermen. China has also literally set up a military base within 200 nautical miles of Philippine exclusive economic zone without permission, which the international court deemed to be illegal.
Many Filipinos changed their tune from “go home Yankees” to “Yankees come back! You should have stayed” because hindsight is 20/20. Right now, American soldiers are dripping back slowly to the Philippines since the Chinese military is still squatting.
