To think The West is morally bankrupt

[Elrae]

America democratically elects an adjudicate rapist who sympathises with racists, hates women and will do anything to hang onto power. The UK and it's lickspitrlw leader fawn over Trump and says that Israel has rhe right to cut off food and water to Gaza. Then wairs a year watching children die before saying it is intolerable. Except he is tolerating it.We all are.
The West is pumping out carbon at a vast rate and will no doubt reject the flood of refugees that this will cause.
The West takes more than it's fair share of the world's wealth. Much of the West is based on colonial exploration and murder of the global south.
I used to think we were the good guys.
We are not. We are one of the worst things ever to happen to the planet and it's inhabitants.

I don't know about West specifically but it does make me wonder if democracy has failed as a concept. And capitalism isnt looking too good either. I have no solution! Just saying...

well "the west" encompasses many countries (usa, canada, australia, new zealand, as well as western europe, add to that countries like finland and sweden who have western views) lots of room to wrongly spread blame.
the palestine/israel and generally middle east situation has been going on so long (biblical times) i highly doubt the entire gdp of canada would make a drop of difference.
57% of the WORLD pollution is caused by the following countries china 30%, united states 15%, india 12% and russia 7%. with 97 countries like brazil, peru, africa the old ussr states accounting for the most plastic pollution. take note north america (usa and canada are very low in this regard).
climate change...much of the trauma and damage is linked to aging and not upgraded infrastructure, population growth in certain centers without upgraded city drainage, modernization of bridges, and aging concrete. people who think living on flood plains (or building children's summer camps) in zones which have 200+ years of recorded floods is a good idea, or building without adequate regulations.
i will not accept blame! everyone tries to do the best they can during their lifetime. but some places (countries) make the same mistake over and over again and that is not my "fault" my parents "fault" or my great grand parent's "fault".

I don't think the West is any more morally bankrupt than other countries (or groups of). Asia's pretty shocking. South America too. Racists and rapists abound in leadership. Ditto Russia and China who have both got the same delusions of grandeur as the UK and US, they just haven't been as successful at their wealth generation and exploitation as the West was. History is littered with similar stories.

Every country is morally bankrupt in the world apart from North Macedonia, who are cool. Apart from giving Genghis Khan to the world, but that can be overlooked as his daddy was distant and that impacted on his emotional development.

I read the title , first sentence , yawned.

Can anyone name a political establishment of a defined country that has not inflicted hardship on another country or sections of the people it rules over. I say political establishment because it is not the people of most countries that cause war or hardship on others. So any country that has never caused hardship to another country in history? It's an interesting one.

What the 'to think' bit😂

Compared to what?

Good question. We always talk about 'the West' failings in absolute terms without making comparative analysis, or even knowing what a failing actually is or how it should be judged.

😂 because it’s the same old, same old, student sixth form debating society , predictable , guilt ridden , aren’t we terrible absolute bleep !

Nah you’re wrong. Us here in the UK (maybe I don’t speak for everyone) are sick of having to defend ourselves; explain past events ‘mistakes’ whatever you want to call them. The truth often gets overlooked we ended empires/colonisation we abolished slavery, infrastructure development in over 25% of the globe. The fact that 14 countries of the British empire (GB overseas territories) didn’t want independence tells us everything we need to know.
After the British Empire ended it introduced world trading, You’re Welcome!

Men in power (or fighting to gain power) are morally bankrupt. In the West, the Middle East, Africa, the former USSR, South America ..every fucking where.

If you hate the West so much, you can always go and live somewhere which is not the West - Eastern Europe, Russia, Africa, Asia, the ME?

I doubt we need you here and you are free to go.

Toodle pip.

You look at all the countries in the world and you think it’s just the west who are morally bankrupt? Why are you so keen to demonise the west over and above all of the other shit countries in the world?

America democratically elects an adjudicate rapist who sympathises with racists, hates women and will do anything to hang onto power And Iraq elected Saddam Hussein. Syria elected Bashar Al Assad. Zimbabwe elected Robert Mugabe. Pakistan elected Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif. Russia elected Putin. Indonesia elected Mohamed Suharto. The Philippines elected Ferdinand Marcos. Malaysia elected Najib Razak. Serbia elected Slobodan Milosevic. What’s your point? They are, or were, all corrupt, power hungry criminals who embezzled from their own countries and did more than their fair share of harm to their citizens. The west is no better and no worse.

Is Trump not am adjudicated rapist? No, I’m not sure he is. To the best of my understanding, the jury in the E Jean Carroll case found him not liable for rape, but liable for a ‘lesser’ sexual assault charge, and Trump subsequently sued and won a defamation case against ABC News, who reported that he’d been found liable for rape. I certainly don’t agree with it, but that’s what their determination was.

The UK and its lickspitrlw leader fawn over Trump and says that Israel has rhe right to cut off food and water to Gaza. Then wairs a year watching children die before saying it is intolerable. Except he is tolerating it.We all are.* How would you have him help the situation? And why Gaza over and above conflict in countries we colonised? Like Sudan? Do you know what’s happening to children in Darfur? https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/825000-children-trapped-conflict-rages-sudans-al-fasher-and-zamzam-internally Why not get involved with the Rohingya genocide? We definitely didn’t colonise China, but why not impose sanctions against them for their treatment of the Uyghur people? Or help the Yazidis? Which conflicts would you like us to police? And if we do so, will you then be upset because we’re acting like the world’s police force and imposing our will on countries that would rather we minded our own business? Which way would you like to have it?

The West is pumping out carbon at a vast rate and will no doubt reject the flood of refugees that this will cause We’re not pumping it out faster than anyone else is. Have a look at China and India first.

The West takes more than it's fair share of the world's wealth. Much of the West is based on colonial exploration and murder of the global south
https://www.worldatlas.com/gdp/the-richest-countries-in-the-world.html I chose geography rather than history for GCSEs so I’m happy to be corrected, but I do believe the UK colonised Singapore and yet they’re currently doing rather well for themselves, topping the global charts for 2025 for GDP per capita. Ireland too. Now I believe they also did a bit of colonising of their own, albeit on a smaller scale, but the UK certainly treated them shockingly badly. And Guyana, colonised by the Dutch and the British and yet have a higher GDP than the US.
Ethiopia and Liberia were never colonised by European countries, other than a very brief period under Italy for Ethiopia. Get yourself arrested in Liberia; see what happens to you https://www.state.gov/reports/2023-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/liberia/ And God help the poor sods in northern Ethiopia https://www.state.gov/reports/2023-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/ethiopia/. Did the West take any assets from either country? Did we impose our laws, our beliefs or our anything else on either country? No. And yet both countries are skint and both have shocking human rights abuses.

I used to think we were the good guys. There are no ‘good guys’ Humanity doesn’t come in ‘good’ and ‘bad’. We all do good things. We all do shit things. We’re not great. Agreed. But the UK is not some kind of malevolent force.

Speak for yourself.

OP, you listed the bad points (some of them valid) but ignored the good, which is unreasonable.

You ignore all the advancements that the west has contributed to the world, the vaccines, the technology that contributes to safety, the developments in agriculture, science, education, democracy, freedom of speech.

You have also ignored all the bad points of non-Western countries, which is completely illogical.

We are less corrupt than many countries which is why so many of their residents want to live here

Brace yourself and have a look at what goes on in the rest of the world. I think you’re going to be disappointed

I mean, humans are problematic everywhere. I agree though we're very wasteful; consumerism seems to be on steroids now. All my social media feeds are just full of people buying piles of stuff. It won't end well.

Well. Power corrupts. And humans (men) in power have always sought to expand, explore and subjugate when they’re in power. So the worst offenders will be the people who are best at the tactics of that and develop the best weapons.

Morality is a moveable concept too. A good Muslim will base their morality on their prophet’s instructions. A good Buddhist will do the same. A good atheist will decide for themselves.

If the West had no ‘morals’ it might be a lot worse. The establishment of human rights, law, removal of royal privileges, end of chattel slavery etc can be interpreted as doing what you would probably think of as moral activity.

You have nothing to compare your argument to. Immoral compared to what? To not existing? Do you mean immoral now as we obviously can’t change history? For example it was probably a bad thing that we waded in to so many other countries disputes but should we intervene when one people are bullying another people or should we leave them to it?

‘The West’ is a ridiculous grouping when you’re talking about something like morals and lumping USA in with Iceland. Ireland in with Hungary. We have inherited this world and this situation and I think ‘The West’ tries very hard to be moral. Back in the day a Trump type would just round up and kill who he didn’t like. (As so many non Western countries still do).

This sounds like someone in year 9 brainstorming for a history essay

OP your post could have been written by Putin. Or someone from a ‘camp’ in the Afghan mountains intent on doing harm on a massive scale to people who vote in western democracies. Is that really who you want to align yourself with?

Humans aren’t very nice to each other. Has ever been thus.

For all its faults, and there are many, since WWII, the West has led to the most prosperous and peaceful period in human history.

The advances made by the West have increased life expectancy across the world, and despite the wars that have occurred, death from conflict is FAR lower than it was in any prior period.

As for Climate Change, the West is far better than everywhere else - look at China!

So the West is far from perfect, but the rest of the world is worse.

Outstanding post! And I don’t make any apologies for re-quoting it in full as it needs to be read by those who somehow believe the West is the root of all evil.

I’m presuming you mean Alexander the Great, not Genghis Khan?!