We don't have to deny our government's wrongs to condemn things other governments do.

Sorry to leave that impression.
Instead to the sense that if we did the wrong thing it justifies other
countries doing the wrong thing too.

I appreciate the thoughtfulness of your response.

Have a nice weekend.

First.

The Israel/Palestine situation is largely down to Netanyahu's obsession with preventing a Palestinian state from ever being created-an obsession largely driven by his vindictive, delusional belief that Palestinians are collectively responsible for the death of his brother in the raid on Entebbe.

Palestinians as a people are actually NOT responsible for that...that was Idi Amin's doing.

FDR was indefensibly wrong(as was the Canadian government, and partially, the British government)to bar almost all Jewish refugees from this country in the late 1930's and early 1940's, at a time when everyone knew Hitler's intentions towards Jews were genocidal and at a time when the English-speaking countries could easily have accommodated all of those fleeing the Reich, and(after Pearl Harbor) given military training to the able-bodied among those people who wished to go back and fight fascism.

FDR did that because he shared, at least in part, the sickening delusion, held by many in that era and more than we'd like to think in this era, that this country existed mainly for white Northern European Protestants and that the influx of anyone not of Northern European Protestant "stock" was in some way a threat to this country.

We don't have to choose between calling out what Putin did OR being honest about our country's past and sometimes present role in the world.

I understand the point Moore was making but Russia didn't learn this from us.

Moore's exactly phraseology isn't the point.

He was saying their actions are not unique.

It's not worth hairsplitting over: Michael Moore clearly wasn't defending or excusing what Putin did, and we all know it.

We armed this group

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_movement

And sent in U.S. troops in 1919 to fight to overthrow the new Bolshevik state, at a time when there was no way to predict what the ...an act that probably helped influence the eventual rise to power of Stalin, and undoubtably had a lot to do(in addition to all the other unprovoked Western invasions) with Russia's attitude of somewhere-between-wariness-and-paranoia in regards to "the West".

If we'd left them be, it's likely Russia's attitude to the rest of the world would be very different today.

In doing so, everyone involved in funding the Whites ended up, whether they meant to or not,

The great tragedy of the 20th Century, was not that the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia, but that there WASN'T a revolution in Germany. If there had been, we'd never have heard from THIS guy:




OR this guy:




Instead, we'd likely simply have had global human liberation and the end to want and war.

But the Soviets were no picnic.

No defense of Stalin.

Just pointing out that it's rarely as simple as one side being evil and the other being holy. Condemn what Putin did, but recognize that the rest of the world often has good reason to condemn what OUR leaders do, and take responsibility for getting our leaders to, at some point, STOP doing those things.

We'd never have stopped Hitler without the Red Army grinding the Nazi troops down at Stalingrad, and at some point(probably after Putin is gone)I'd suggest we go to Moscow and actually give them official thanks for that.

..and its citizens.

Trump/Putin thank MM for the assist.


Dumbass.

We don't have to pretend our state is morally superior to condemn what Putin did.

We don't have to lie to ourselves about our government's foreign policy heritage to object to what Putin did to us.

The reason we don't is that we are part of the people...and the people are not responsible for the acts of the government-in ANY state.

What specifically leads you to that belief?

in a great big case of whataboutism, is?

Don't come now "explaining" what Mm really meant to say.

We know what he said.
Why he needed to make a statement covering Trump & Putin's coup is beyond stupid.

He opened his big mouth again & revealed the truth about who he is.
STFU.

with the STFU

he “covered” absolutely nothing! My god..

And I myself might not have brought it up right now...but it is part of our country's history and its continuing foreign policy reality. Would you not agree that we have to address this SOMETIME?

Especially to know when to let go

It can be applied to MANY things.

... I do not understand why ANYONE would DEFEND him... or why ANYONE thinks this is acceptable and appropriate.

Funny how coincidental it is, especially just about now.

No one needs a point lesson on what Michael Moore 'really meant' or 'really said.' If you read above a 8th grade level you know that words have 'implied' meanings. MM wasn't being clever or subtle in his dismissiveness; he was being very pointed: Americans shouldn't complain about what Putin did because we provided the object lesson with Allende's overthrow. Tit for tat. So we deserve what we got.

Really?

Tell that to the children losing healthcare, the cancer patients who will not receive treatments, the seniors and disabled people who lose Meals-on-Wheels, etc. etc., etc. Tell that to women and immigrants and gay couples. Tell that to the whole frigging country, out loud, to their faces, not in some cheap twitter shot.

Here's the thing. I've heard Moore answer to why he's so critical of the United States and his standard line is because he loves the country and wants it to do better.

Well, here's my take: when you know your country's been assaulted, when you're willing to admit that our Democratic Republic is under attack, do you really think you're making anything better by playing out a whataboutism moment? Would you have said the same after Pearl Harbor? Did you say the same after 9/11? We deserved it??

If that's the case, then fuck you Michael Moore and all the Russian apologists and excuse handmaidens.

I have no problem accepting that we have made huge mistakes as a country, that we have plenty of room for improvement. But we've also done a lot of good in the world and at the moment we're at war, the 21st century kind. Our House is on fire and you're either a fireman or an arsonist. There's no in-between. So either grab a container of water and join the bucket brigade or . . .

Get the hell out of the way and STFU!

and stating the truth is never the problem either

trump conspiring with a foreign agent to effect the election of the presidency is the problem

Only that the whataboutism doesn't help anyone at the moment.

As for facing our mistakes? Have absolutely no problem with that. But right now we're fighting for our lives as a country, fighting for the continuation of a democratic Republic. If we're going to succeed at pushing out Trump and his enablers, we need to all be pushing in the right direction.

We can go back be yowling barn cats once the emergency has passed. But for now, it's every man and woman grabbing a bucket to put the fire out. Even a Michael Moore.

It's not "whataboutism" just to point out that others did it.

Why not just say "yes, our leaders did those things in the past, those things were wrong. That doesn't make what Putin did ok, though".

It's not as though we have to pretend our country's foreign policy tradition is more righteous than any other countries on Earth to say that what Putin did here is indefensible.

there's a lengthy history of the U.S. interfering in other nations' politics. I'm sure there's no "right" time to point that out, but it's history and it's a fact.

I never got the sense Moore is a Putin supporter in any way.

...have been continually suppressed within this party since 1972.

We've been continually told that we CAN'T question any of that because, supposedly, the voters won't elect Democrats to the presidency unless they unquestioningly buy into the whole post-1945 status quo on foreign policy.

It's sometimes even implied that we have to defend and be willing to casually engage in military intervention simply to have the chance to be barely progressive on domestic policy.

Given that we've mostly lost in the elections where we made that assumption, isn't it time to consider the possiblity that it may not actually be valid?

"Given that we've mostly lost in the elections where we made that assumption..."

I'm guessing that requesting any objective evidence for your allegation would by a waste of time.

I'm not clever, but by-golly... I'm finally starting to get it: simply type a statement and then maintain the pretense of being wounded or offended should anyone ask for evidence supporting the premise.

"may not actually be valid..." indeed.

their success, we should be kicking our rears, on both sides, for letting Ruskies or others - including some former DU members - get away with outright lies, swift-boating, hacking, and maybe worse.

IF Moore or anybody wants to have a discussion about Chile '73 (and Ethiopia '74 while we're on the topic), then fine... That is a *SEPARATE* discussion which has jack fucking shit to do with USA '16

"we admit that these things happened, and shouldn't have happened, and we who are progressives will work to make sure they never happen again. The fact that these things happened is no excuse, however".

We don't have to pretend our government's actions in the world were flawless to be able to call out Putin.

We people. we're NOT the government.

We, as people, do not bear the shame of what our government has done to the world.

When do we get to ask the Russians to "own" Ethiopia, among other things?

And ask them to own Eastern Europe and the famine of Ukraine.

I've never ever said we should let the Stalinists off the hook.

If I ever see you falsely accused of something, I'll do the same.

Leave it at that.

When we invaded Iraq, I was certain that Saddam Hussein was the ultimate bad guy. In the continuous story of America, he was a mustache-twirling comic book villain, laughing maniacally as he lead innocent people to the slaughter. Young teenager me thought for sure we were going in to save the Iraqis, and they would love us!

The nay-sayers didn’t make sense to me. Why did they hate America? We were the good guys, spreading freedom! I even made some (cringey) posts online defending America’s honor against those “Michael Moore loving Liberals who hated America.”

Then I became less naive as I grew up. My eyes opened. I realized how simplistic my views were. I learned that America, while having done some great things, is not this great, infallible super hero with a cape. We are not always the “good guys,” and often there are none. It seems, though, that some people either never learn or don’t care.

This is what Michael Moore is trying to tell us. When I was a young teenager, I would have wondered why he hated America so much. Now, I understand what he means.

I don't often quote the Apostle Paul, but his words(though not in a context he'd have meant them for) summarize what you wrote there:

Trujillo...Duvalier..Suharto...Ceaucesceau..the Shah..Batista...

I asked my schoolteacher for history, “Why??” Why did the U.S. continue to support right wing anti-democracy regimes? Why were we not on the side of the oppressed? Why on earth would the U.S. help overthrow Pinochet or teach the death squads new torture and intimidation techniques at “School of the Americas”? Why would decent Christian archbishops get assassinated while giving Mass on the altar, by men who were allies of those the U.S. had trained?

He did not give me an answer.

Twenty years later I picked up a Noam Chomsky book and finally learned why. Ur government is frequently in the business of “Deterring Democracy”. And with Manufacturing Consent, I learned why the U.S. media covered such obvious disconnects so timidly.