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Original poster

AIBU to want Americans to stop using the phrase "leader of the free world"?

80 replies

Mittens67 · 16/02/2025 09:21

The term originated during the cold war implying moral and symbolic leadership of democracy.
It has continued in common usage with America viewing itself as the centre of world.
I find this hugely arrogant at the best of times but given the current debacle with an orange megalomaniac in the white house, a person who has no morals at all and is intent on over turning democracy if he possibly can, it is utterly abhorrent.

OP posts:
Blobbitymacblob · 16/02/2025 09:50

Gaslighting on a global scale.
Free to what exactly?

You cannot consider yourself to have free elections when you can only vote for millionaires and billionaires or the puppets thereof.

America was instrumental in nurturing democracy in Western Europe, and for that gift I am grateful. But the values we adopted and upheld are not American. And the current administration represents the biggest threat to freedom that Europe has faced in a century. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/03/musk-tech-oligarch-european-election-influence/681453/

PenneyFouryourthoughts · 16/02/2025 09:45

There's a reel on Instagram from a show called The Newsroom where Jeff Daniels tells a young woman how far down the rankings the USA is on the world stage. This was some years ago now and I think they may have sunk even further.

Americans are told this lie from when they are at school.

Yet JD Vance has the audacity to tell us where WE are going wrong.

America is not the greatest country in the world

Liv999 · 16/02/2025 09:39

I agree, it's laughable

Calamitousness · 16/02/2025 09:31

YANBU. There’s nowhere arguably less free than America in the free world.
They are now described as a ‘flawed democracy’ and rapidly heading south of that.
women no longer have equal rights and neither do LGBTQI individuals or different ethnicities. Revolting ‘leadership’ where one individual can single handedly revoke all checks and balances that promote fair treatment.

toomuchfaff · 16/02/2025 09:24

YABU to be bothered about what other people do or say, you won't change it ergo you'll always be annoyed.

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