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Comment by dventimi | Hacker News Reader

Yes. That's why I wrote, "Through at least two administrations". Personally, I consider the scale of injustice in Latin America alone at the hands of U.S. policy to be vast and unsparing in the culpability it lays at the feet of every American. I recognize that not everyone will be joining me out on that limb, however, so I chose to make my opening bid smaller but more unassailable.

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There's not really anything the average person can do to influence this policy, so by saying "of every American", the blame is diluted across the population, instead of held directly against those responsible.

So what is the answer? Large scale protests against imperialism are just shut down and the protestors get doxxed or arrested and the band plays on.

> There's not really anything the average person can do to influence this policy, so by saying "of every American", the blame is diluted across the population, instead of held directly against those responsible.

Assign for yourself whatever share of the blame your conscience will allow.

> So what is the answer?

I have no idea, but whatever it is I suspect it's not yelling at strangers on the internet.

Probably the best example I can think of where a vast injustice was halted, while assigning broad social culpability, with participation of some of those deemed culpable, and without substantial reliance on external force… would be the end of Apartheid in South Africa. Notably, the assignment of broad culpability was probably an essential component of that… and so probably was the limited application of consequences for that culpability.

There are other historical examples I can think of which involved mass violence as a significant part of the means to halt the vast injustice. Those examples are probably not what we’d want to model, but they’re notably more readily available for reference.

Latin American countries wouldn't have become banana republics without Western demand for bananas. There are different levels of culpability but the rest of us aren't blameless - our collective demand drove these policies and I don't know about you but I've enjoyed a lot of tropical fruit in my life.

To be honest I can empathize. I'd totally support going to war with Mexico if it threatened my year round supply of avocados.

What refreshing candor!

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