No problem. The internet should be fun, not stressful.

I would still have to see any evidence that what I said (essentially that the US has been the biggest bully in the world for the last 80 years) is way off the mark.

If we’re including post-WWII decolonisation, pretty much point to any former colony - which is a rather large map area. The British or French didn’t just let them leave, but did atrocities to stop them until they couldn’t anymore. I went looking for casualty figures, but it turns out there’s not much information known. Maybe we’ll have to wait until the guilty parties are all dead.

I think you’d arrive at the same conclusion that it was a two-sided competition if you were to read up in detail on a few times and places during the Cold War, as opposed to just the US coup greatest hits. Mao did not fight alone. The thing is, it’s hard to capture that all in one number. The USSR spent maybe 20% of it’s GDP on it’s military, while being a third the economic size of the US, to give a sense of scale of the kind of resources that were piling in from the communist direction.

Over a period that long and the area of the whole world that’s about as good as I can do in a Lemmy comment.

Social media manipulation is in no way equivalent to supporting or initiating coups.

Ukraine comes to mind (did we talk about that already?), as does Georgia. It’s in no way just social media, either. In places like the Baltics there’s your classic people with suitcases full of money going around and paying for sabotage, access or votes. That’s not just hearsay - some have been caught.

In the West they’re more limited because it’s harder to get away with, so yeah, they mostly mess with social media. I’m pretty sure there was somebody that went to jail in the US during Biden’s time, though.

I’m not sure I understand your second point here,

It wasn’t a point, I just won’t/can’t argue with the basic idea that they’ve been too aggressive.

why should anyone support the US or any of its closest partners?

I mean, the most conservative stance would be just to support nobody and say every country is awful. Why isn’t that in consideration?

have not supported the US/West position in either Ukraine or Palestine.

Ukraine has lots of third world support. Palestine has some Western support; Canada just went against the US to recognise it in what is a very sensitive period in our relations.

The claims that it’s “for democracy” is very weak when there are examples in the recent past of the US either supporting or not opposing coups against democratically-elected foreign leaders. The first example that comes to mind is the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt after the Arab Spring. From what I recall, there was hardly a squeak from the US when that happened, because it benefited the US.

Support for an anti-democratic coup hasn’t happened since the “stop communism” era. If you include not getting involved, neutral Switzerland is a massive bully, and I actually can show it in a Lemmy comment.

I would guess Obama was concerned and disappointed, but also wanted some kind of stability, and to not alienate someone he was going to have to deal with one way or another. Starting another ground war in the Middle East was obviously out of the question at that point - even closing Libyan airspace was very controversial.