this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
630 points (99.7% liked)

You Should Know

44945 readers
1288 users here now

YSK - for all the things that can make your life easier!

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must begin with YSK.

All posts must begin with YSK. If you're a Mastodon user, then include YSK after @youshouldknow. This is a community to share tips and tricks that will help you improve your life.



Rule 2- Your post body text must include the reason "Why" YSK:

**In your post's text body, you must include the reason "Why" YSK: It’s helpful for readability, and informs readers about the importance of the content. **



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding non-YSK posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-YSK posts using the [META] tag on your post title.



Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

If you are a member, sympathizer or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- The majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.



Rule 11- Posts must actually be true: Disiniformation, trolling, and being misleading will not be tolerated. Repeated or egregious attempts will earn you a ban. This also applies to filing reports: If you continually file false reports YOU WILL BE BANNED! We can see who reports what, and shenanigans will not be tolerated. We are not here to ban people who said something you don't like.

If you file a report, include what specific rule is being violated and how.



Partnered Communities:

You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.

Community Moderation

For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.

Credits

Our icon(masterpiece) was made by @clen15!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 71 points 14 hours ago (5 children)

The United States has always been the villain of the story. But they used to at least try to hide it behind a sheen of soft power. The only difference between now and then is that Trump unabashedly takes the mask off and gives no fuck what the rest of the world thinks.

[–] Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 0 points 1 hour ago

That's stupid. This is something that's undoubtedly positive that's being painted as a negative by people who are naive. The one and only reason why we even know this was even a thing is because the US is a democracy with some degree of transparency. Even if its decades later, we can still publicly view, discuss, and criticize things that the government has done in the past because those documents were declassified and released to the public.

Most countries are not like this. There are a lot of instances like this that will never see the light of day until that regime collapses, and even then its successor might keep the secret going. For example, Turkey is STILL locking up the Ottoman archives relating to the Armenian genocide more than century later. There are so many evil plots and schemes made both in the past and present that we will probably never know about because they will never be released publicly due to the ruling regimes wanting to maintain their image. I wish there was more instances like this from the US and every country so we can see the good, the bad, and the ugly and get a real understanding of history.

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 5 points 10 hours ago

Exactly.

Not much is different here than the presentation.

[–] voodooattack@lemmy.world 14 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

US is the Andrew Tate of global politics right now. They were a lot more subtle about it before though. But the core values that have always held throughout history are absolute self-interest, entitlement, and hubris.

Apply Gestalt Theory to the US and watch how unrestrained capitalism raised this baby from an idealist freedom seeker and into a narcissistic bully with self-aggrandising sophist reasoning and a pure Machiavellian outlook on life.

Trump only did away with the pretences, by firing the people who took care of the subtle masquerade. He didn’t like the pushback from them on global policy, and because the shoes already fit, decided to just do it live on stage without the makeup.

Unfortunately for US citizens, that means that they get to experience the splashback as he pisses on their international credibility.

A historically meticulously curated and maintained image that’s now irrevocably ruined forevermore. No sane person can trust a promise or a treaty made through US foreign policy ever again.

[–] plyth@feddit.org 1 points 9 hours ago

No sane person can trust a promise or a treaty made through US foreign policy ever again.

And yet the Iranians rallied and did some revolting. Since dropping South Vietnam nobody can have relied on the US blindly. People must be taking a risk and hope that the support lasts long enough.

Trump is in power because he does what the elite needs. I would like to know why there is no need to hide the mechanisms from the masses.

[–] GuyIncognito@lemmy.ca 5 points 14 hours ago

Soft power is woke, deal from strength or get crushed every time.

[–] RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

Not just the US government. All government. Literally all of them. Not a single human government has ever existed in the history of humanity that wasn't the villain of the story.

I am not an anarchist, governments provide useful services and protections for their citizens. But lets not fool ourselves into thinking that any government is better than another, they are all bad equally, just in different ways.

[–] Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 4 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

I agree with you to a point. I would say however that it's not the fact that government exists that's the problem. It's the fact that government is controlled by corporations and billionaires that is the problem.

Take all of that away and have a government is actually by the people and for the people...we'd be golden.

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 10 hours ago

Can that be realistically achieved though? Any representative government is going to be vulnerable to the selection effects of people who want to be in charge ending up in charge, and those of them most willing to do whatever it takes having a competitive advantage. The formation of an elite class colluding at the expense of the rest of us seems like a natural result.

[–] RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 2 points 9 hours ago

No, the problem is the people. All the people. Even if you take away business and money, which isn't realistic, you still have to deal with the fact that humans are awful to each other, especially when they have power over each other. Government rulers throughout history have been horrible to their subjects just for the love of the game, sometimes they didn't even get anything out of it. They just wanted others to suffer.

Look at Reddit, or even here on Lemmy, honestly. Is every moderator and admin some magnanimous and benevolent person? No, of course not. Moderators have a bit of a reputation for being horrendously corrupt power trippers, right? Do they get paid to be that way? Sure, some, but even without that they would likely act the same regardless. And I am a moderator here on Lemmy saying this.

There are not enough "nice" people in the world for a human government to ever work the way you suggest. And even if there were, there is no guarantee that they would always be that way. All it takes is one person criticizing people with authority, one person suggesting something those with authority don't like, etc. No human government ever started from purely bad intentions. But the bad was baked in from before the start, it is unavoidable.