this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2025
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The idea that the US has any restrictions on violence or war, formal or informal, is an illusion. It's part of the facade of "liberal democracy".
The US hasn't "declared war" since WW2, but has militarily killed somewhere in the area of 15 million people since then by my estimate. Probably a lot more when you add in all the illegal unilateral sanctions. The UN exists to legitimize US wars and imperialism, and fails to do even that most of the time. There are zero consequences, so the only meaningful policy the us has adhered to in the last 100+ years is "might makes right".
If you consider excess deaths from the birth of US (including all that is not "direct" military action) it is likely to be 500 mill - 1 billion deaths.
Addendum - conservative estimates
Yeah, the number has to be insanely high. It's hard enough starting at 1945 with direct military deaths, then you add in all the residual deaths from chemical weapons, depleted uranium, starvation sanctions and embargos, forced sterilization and eugenics, massacres by fascist puppet regimes, agricultural destruction.... It's beyond imagination for me.
And yet, your average amerikkkan seems to think the number is statistically irrelevant, and wants to deport you for defaming the perfect angel savior of global democracy.
I no longer believe in Chomsky's manufacturing consent. I think the right wingers are correct when they say the media gives the "people" ( I strongly believe the reactionary masses make up the "elite" rather than just billionaires) what they want in the US; the narratives are a license for their violent bigotry as they understand at some level they benefit from the exploitative relationship the US has with the rest of the world (even the vassal states that benefit from this hegemony).
If having the ability to livestream the genocide on their phones for the past couple of years isn't going to change their minds, then their consent for murder was never manufactured in the first place.