My friend Florifulgurator brought me back here, to find the same condemnatory blindness I got away from some while ago. Yes, the sins of the US and other western empire builders are manifold and disgusting, things like the second Iraq war, the replacement of Mossadegh by the Shah, the financing of Osama Bin Laden to fight the Soviets, Vietnam, and our manifold sins in Central and South America (the informative video about Central America below is created by an American; I have some personal history in that conflict; Reagan was a monster*). Lumping us all together and blaming each of us for sins we've fought to overcome is unhelpful at best.
For example, why should I hold all current citizens of Austria to blame for Hitler? Should I assume that citizens of the countries mentioned here are all collaborators?
Far-right, even racist views go mainstream in Central Europe https://www.apnews.com/3861bc14ddaf46528007919491e7820aIn many places, the shift to the right has included the rehabilitation of Nazi collaborators, often fighters or groups celebrated as anti-communists or defenders of national liberation. In Hungary and Poland, governments are also eroding the independence of courts and the media, prompting human rights groups to warn that democracy is threatened in parts of a region that threw off Moscow-backed dictatorships in 1989.
Some analysts say Russia is covertly helping extremist groups in order to destabilize Western liberal democracies. While that claim is difficult to prove with concrete evidence, it’s clear that the growth of radical groups has pushed moderate conservative European parties to the right to hold onto votes.
Assuming we support and are to blame for everything that is wrong in the world may be satisfying, since I, for example, can be directly condemned and blamed, but in the larger scheme you are wasting your misdirected energy. My time is better spent working with the majority here in the US to return humanity to my country, and overcome TrumpRepublican's efforts to make hate great again. To do that, we have to get rid of vote cheating, and Putin's Russian support of Trump, McConnell, and Republican nastiness is very much a part of that problem. (McConnell is receiving direct support from Russia in several forms in his local election.)
If you would all simply put Putin and Trump together, along with all Trump's other faves, such as Kim Jong Un, MBS, Al Sisi, Duterte, Erdogan, and other conservative strongmen that he envies because they can jail, torture, and kill their opponents, you would have a better idea of the fix we're in. Those of us who prefer Elizabeth Warren or another progressive, the Squad, Greta Thunberg, and others fighting for real Democracy and equality from all points of the compass, are not helped by these single-minded condemnations.
You can hold your nose all you like, but it sure as hell is not helping action on climate change to alienate everyone who does not subscribe to your wholesale blamefest. In work to make things better, 1%, or even 10%, is not going to be enough.
Blaming those who work towards a better situation because they're not part of the 1% who demand perfection, bothsidism, abdication, and supporting factions and splinters that have no chance of effecting change, makes you "perfect" in your own eyes and those of your buddies, but it also makes you vulnerable to manipulation, which, I think, it the point some of us have tried to make here, and failed.
Here's some good ammo for your "side" - we individuals who did not support this - ever - are not the bad guys here.