@Lash,
I think big changes are ricocheting across the globe. The bullying the US has always gotten away with wasn’t based on our own strength, but the strength we’ve derived from Saudi mostly—based on their acquiescence to our bargaining to make the dollar global oil currency.
If we’d appreciated that great coup and bent over for Saudi when asked (which we have done in glorious fashion for decades), we might have remained a stable country, but we stood on the shoulders of that favor and ruined other countries, used the favor to bark orders at the rest of the world. We took that favor and lunged back at the world with it, acting as though we were the power behind the petrodollar, and threatened the rest of the world with it.
The US has wielded sanctions like a nuclear weapon, threatening to cut off from this life blood any country that doesn’t do exactly as we command.
This is primarily why we are hated globally. We’ve been the bossy bully of the world. We’ve made life miserable for so many other countries, subverting the way of life they chose with coups and our own puppet regimes. We’ve caused so much death and destruction. We’ve been the undisputed tyrant of the world.
To add insult to injury, our govt claims all of this death and destruction was perpetrated in the pursuit of…democracy. It’s horseshit. Everyone knows it. The US govt has made the word democracy a joke.
People were afraid to laugh before, though. We held that loaded petrodollar gun to the heads of the entire world. ‘We’ll wreck your world with sanctions. Do as we say.’
But that gun was loaded for us daily by Saudi.
We’re still shouting orders and threats, waving our gun around, but today the world is laughing. They all know that today, Saudi handed us an unloaded gun.
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