“Corporations are people, my friend,” Mitt Romney famously said in 2011 while running for president. The Supreme Court decided the previous year that corporations could give money to political campaigns, just like people, and in 2014, the high court gave corporations religious freedom to deny contraceptives to employees, thereby letting them behave just as badly as people. If you prick corporations, do they not bleed?
Actually no, they don’t. But as of now, they can get presidential pardons.
The notion that corporations are people did not originate with the Supreme Court’s notorious Citizens United decision in 2010. Way back in 1886, the high court ruled in Santa Clara County v. Union Pacific Railroad that corporations were covered by the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. To be more precise, this question was addressed not in the decision (which resolved a local taxation dispute) but rather in a headnote that said the court “does not wish to hear argument on the question” of whether the Fourteenth Amendment applies to corporations because “we are all of the opinion that it does.“ Somehow this non sequitur became legal precedent. “Later cases,” wrote Stetson University law professor Clara Torres-Spelliscy in a 2014 analysis for the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice, “uncritically cited the headnote as if it had been part of the case.”
You know what isn’t declining? Pardons for corporations. Trump has granted nine. These were never a thing before Trump—not in the modern era, and possibly never. According to Bloomberg’s Ava Benny-Morrison, the nine pardons wiped out $200 million in financial penalties, “some of which were destined for victims of wrongdoing.” Frank Bowman, a law professor at the University of Missouri, told Bloomberg: “In any previous era no president would touch this with a barge pole. Maybe individual cases with some compelling reason, but the systemic elimination of criminal liability of major financial crime would never have happened before, and it didn’t.”
Half of the $200 million in wiped-out fines can be attributed to a single crypto company, BitMEX. The three co-founders of the company, a pioneer in crypto derivatives, all pleaded guilty in 2022 to violating the Bank Secrecy Act, which requires maintaining certain safeguards against money laundering. Each paid $10 million in fines. Then, in July 2024, BitMEX itself pleaded guilty to the same crime, and this past January the company was fined $100 million.
The United States has expanded right throughout its history. Yes, its been a constant struggle. Yes the South has been forced to be dragged kicking and screaming at every point, and sometimes there are setbacks. But, the course of its history has an overall bend towards liberty.
What part of committing genocide did you miss? What is far worse is the US had its hand in several other genocides as well. This isn’t a struggle, it is continuous mass murder. The US has only been at peace for about 25 years since it’s murderous inception.
Tell me how people who have died by US hands are experiencing liberty. How did the Cherokee experience liberty when even though they completely conformed to western instruction, were still driven from their land.
https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/cherokee-removal/
How did the blacks feel even after the fact that slavery ended, they were still forced to segregate. When they formed their own communities they were burned down. Almost every major city park was built over a poor minority neighborhood. When the US built its highway system it was of course routed through poor neighborhoods.
How do the Palestinians feel when the US is supplying Israel the money and weapons it needs to destroy them. How does the Middle East feel about having over 300,000 bombs dropped on them by US forces. This is not liberty, this has always been tyranny.
There is no nation that comes close to the amount of death and destruction the US has wrought in all of history. The US has toppled countless governments, destabilized entire continents, and committed the most prolific war crimes.
If I were to detail all the deaths that the US has caused I would literally die before I could explain them all and the entire time we would be committing more.
Be a good person and do the right thing, but don’t believe in the mythology of America spreading liberty or democracy. The facts paint a very different picture.
Like I said, setbacks.
Tell me all about the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. Tell me all about Loving v. Virginia, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and Titles VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
I never said it wasn’t messy. I even explicitly said “sometimes there are setbacks”. Or, did you miss that?
If you can hand wave multiple genocides including ongoing ones as a “setback” I am afraid I can’t take you seriously.
I can tell you that the federal government was structured to prevent the poors from ever gaining any power. You have the senate representing wealth meant to check the power of the people. You have the executive branch representing wealth that is meant to check the power of the people. You have the judicial branch representing wealth that is meant to check the power of the people. Lastly you have Congress which is supposed to represent the people but is bought off by the wealthy.
This is extremely dismal at the Federal level although some states are absolutely awful as well. People definitely should get involved though if they want change. Local government (city/county/borough) is a great place to start.
You can talk to me about the US spreading liberty all you want but it is a fucking fantasy.
Yes its galling today, but ultimately its a setback that time will cause to fade. Ancient Egyptians and Romans were paramount record keepers who ruled to ancient world, and they were rife with horrendous crimes too. But, their stuff ultimately faded. Ours will too. Frankly, humans and its civilizations don’t matter that much. The Universe will keep expanding long after we’re gone.
Its worth mentioning that, in fact, the Romans and Egyptians actually reinforce my point: they were abysmal for the stuff you’re on about. But, human civilization evoles. Where slavery was tolerated by the most powerful civilizations for thousands of years, today’s powerful civilizations have outlawed slavery in their jurisdictions pretty quickly (only took the USA like 70-ish years). On a long enough timeline, the overall arc of history has bent towards liberty. For someone who “took a history class in college”, you should be aware of that.
You really have to go back to ancient times to try and rationalize it. Yes, I did the same many years ago.
The US blew past the worst of the worst a long time ago. Not just to non-Americans either. A lot of people like to relish the idea of American imperialism turning on itself to which I gladly point out millions of minority families destroyed by the War on Drugs. The scale of the incarceration and human abuse is truly incredible.
We have lost more people to gun violence in the last thirty years than every service member death from every war we have ever fought. I know many people who have died from gun violence and overdoses.
Then we get to the environmental impact of the technology we proliferated. Hundreds of millions of people dead from lead poisoning with estimates as high as 5 million a year to this day mostly due to air pollution from burning gas. The entire Earth blanketed in lead so bad it is released in significant quantities when you burn wood now.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/may/15/wood-burning-for-heat-reintroducing-lead-pollution-into-the-air-us-scientists-find
Not to mention every single human on earth simultaneously poisoned by micro plastics and forever chemicals. I have personally estimated the loss of life due to pollution and environmental degredation to close to a billion people in the last fifty years. We haven’t even got to global warming or the tons of other ongoing environmental calamities.
We have more slavery today than at any time in history. I am afraid you are not going to gaslight me about liberty and in fact, you remind me of myself decades ago before I learned so much more. I totally get where you are coming from.
Fair-ish. But, while the US proliferated the assembly line, the IC engine actually came about from a combination of French and German inventors. Though, the US did propegate an oil empire, its a tad unfair to place the blame solely with the US. Admittedly, the US has taken a hard right as to getting off its oil addiction.
The industrial use of lead goes back to the 4th century BC. Can’t blame a country that officially formed 250 and unofficially started ~600 years ago for a problem that was around for ~2,000 before its start and had global usage. You’d be better off pointing to Agent Orange. But, that too was invented by a British company, Imperial Chemical Industries.
The existence of micro plastics isn’t inherently the fault of one country. The biggest plastic-polluters are Africa and Asia. But, plastic was originally invented by the British.
13th Amendment + a nations right of self determination make that inherently not the US’s fault ongoing fault. Slavery has been around for thousands of years. Africans did slavery too. Just look at the make up of Mansa Musa’s pilgrimage (had ~12,000 slaves). Europe didn’t get around to banning slavery until not long before USA did. Slavery was a crime against humanity by all of humanity, not an inherently unique problem to the USA, which got off its slavery addiction pretty quickly in comparison to the rest of the world. That again shows the general tilt towards liberty.
The widespread lead poisoning we experience is not from antiquity. It is from air pollution. Leaded gas was only recently phased out completely. We will be dealing with this for several hundred years.
It doesn’t matter who invented a technology, it mattered who proliferated it. Also, the smoking gun was real. US scientists were responsible for the petro chemical revolution and this technology was brought to the rest of the world. They had misgivings at the time it was not safe for human exposure and later confirmed it with their own studies.
While the concept of plastic may be traced back to other countries, the commercialization is not. Bakelite, the first mass produced plastic, was invented and manufactured in the US.
Just like global warming, they always knew it was a problem and ignored it and later lied and created massive propaganda to counteract public opinion. This can be seen clearly with recycling and plastic. They created an impossible burden on the consumer in order to shift the blame for the pollution they created. This is rather common across different industries think big tobacco, pharmaceuticals, and our US food manufacturers.
How much agent Orange was dropped by the British? Also, I don’t believe you are correct with who invented it even.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Galston
The US has had its hand in destabilizing the countries that have modern slavery and has taken advantage through the markets to make profits from human slavery not to mention engaging in forced labor themselves. This is also ignoring other flavors of modern slavery like wage slavery. The US abolishment of slavery was more about economic considerations than morality, so I think your entire premise may be off a bit. Simply put, it was cheaper to have sharecroppers than slaves. Slavery was outlawed in name only but never the spirit of it.
Europe banned the slave trade decades before the US. Unless you are talking some specific example and then you may have a point. That point is quickly lost when you see the institutionalized racism that exists in all of the US and is currently being denied by the US government while instituting more systemic racism everyday.
At any rate, I get it. Your obsessed with the concept of liberty but ignore that the US uses it as lip service to dominate and poison the world. I have only touched on a fraction of what I know the US has done. I have researched this for decades now and I am always learning awful new truths. I also know I am no expert because the more I learn the more I realize I don’t know. Any one of the topics I have brought up would take a lifetime to truly approach mastery of.
I also have detailed explanations of why it isn’t so bad to live in the US despite living under a fascist oligarchy. I totally get your denialism. It is literally baked into the very being of the US and started all the way back in the American Revolution.
I know you are not trying to come off as an apologist, but yet we are here. This is why I don’t carry water for nations and instead look to a better future that is not chained by the myopic rulers we have now.
The lead poisoning rate has actually dropped off:
The US lead poisoning rate is actually pretty decent when compared to the rest of the world:
It does, and it doesn’t. The EPA finished phasing out leaded gasoline in 1996. It started in 1973.
True, but that isn’t a sin inherent to the United States. That is a sin belonging to all of humanity, and there are numerous cases of such things being done related to other hazards over the course of human history. I’m not trying to excuse the US’s industrial sciences, but I am trying to put it into perspective. Also, the corporate responsibility does not weigh on all of America. The US is not the gasoline industry alone.
Yes, but the US generally keeps from perpetuating its impact on plastic pollution, unlike much of the rest of the world (including other industrialized countries).
As I mentioned, the US took a hard right with respect to climate change recently. but it is not the leader in CO2 emissions, and it is not the only developed nation with an undue per capita emission of CO2. Further, its C02 emissions has been dropping for the last ~30 years.
As a means of tactical warfare, Agent Orange was originally utilized by Britain during the Malayan Emergency of the 1950s. Britain used Agent Orange to defoliate the trees that could provide possible cover for insurgents as well as to destroy food crops.. In fact, the British were the first to use Agent Orange as a defoliant in South Asia. Under your logic of “the first to invent the process are the ones who bear all the blame” (which you have pointed to numerous times), the British would then be responsible for all of Agent Orange’s use is South East Asia.
It was the Cold War. The USSR also has effected such changes. In fact, the Russians are attempting to do that right at this very moment.
Oh, so an exchange of value of wages is given? The value of labor is inherently bargained for. It is fundamental to contract law. The 13th Amendment inherently bans explicit slavery when it is not a punishment for a crime. What constitutes a crime is up to the legislative process for enacting a statute. Criminal law is expressly stated in Title 18 of the US Code. So, its not like ignorance would be an excuse, and the nature of labor as punishment for a crime =/= the colonial slave trade propegated by Europe.
Actually, it was done through the Emancipation Proclamation, where Lincoln specifically said “I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free”. Admittedly, it was done because it was a necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, but the 13th Amendment kept that from coming back.
Maybe, but Europe was well ready to continue benefiting from slavery, but Europe was discovered colluding with the Confederacy during the Trent Affair. Also, the UK had only banned slavery 30 years prior to the US, and France did so only during the French Revolution which was from 1789 to 1799. Hard to bash the US for being slower to do so when it was more or less within the lifetime of the revolutionary war’s fighters’ grandchildren.
It is not lip service. All Americans are obsessed with the concept of liberty. If fact, the document that dissolved the US’s bond with the UK even mentions liberty in saying “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.
My point is that its human nature to do so, not an original sin from the US only. No nation is free from sin, but the US’s history as generally swung towards supporting liberty.
It is well admitted the US has done bad things. But, the US did and does a ton of good things to support the world’s well-being too. Hell, the US basically propped up the UK in fighting the Nazis with tits supply convoys.
Clearly . . .
Keep learning.
Thanks for knowing and explaining my point/intent to me. Its always helpful to have someone explain that to me. Now that you’ve explained it, I now know my point wasn’t that it isn’t a nuanced topic.
That we both can agree on.