If you live just about anywhere. If you could pick a time to be a human but not know where you'd be born, the Pax Americana is your best choice by far.
Whenever I way variations of this meme (I wouldn't call it a thought) I weigh it and find it way too light.
For starters you're comparing different times, which is not even wrong, as they say. But actually the alternative to behaving as an aggressor is to behave "more decently" according to various standards, certainly differently; and that would not deter from any actual peacekeeping intentions and actions, to the contrary.
Compare to the hypothetical present times without sociopaths in power and conformists making excuses for them. And explain how "Pax Americana" and the foolhardy meddling in the Middle East go together. More like "peaceful munching sounds made by the wallets of some peeps, called FELLOW AMERICANS!!1 when convenient or cute, as an extraction device, not one one of them ever considering themselves as such".
There is no peace. There are people holding their ears, and there are people who will not unsee, ever. There's people who made their beds but pretend they will never have to sleep in them. But we cannot hide our own crimes behind those of others, ignorance does not protect from the consequences, lack of empathy does not protect from punishment. There is not a single history that is being written, what is swept under the rug today will be uncovered tomorrow, if there's ever going to be a day deserving the name.
If I just said "it would be better to behave more honestly", what would the response be? More often than not, something along the lines of "I know why it would seem that way, of course honesty should be used whenever possible, but diplomacy being so complicated and humans so mean, what actually would happen when you're too honest (or don't have double standards, etc.) is blah blah blah".
If you disagree, make an argument against it without any such invalid comparisons [It doesn't matter if you say the word "compare", if you don't want to see the woods for all the trees you'll always find excuses anyway and I for one don't need to hear them] because otherwise, there isn't even anything there I need to argue against, and anything beyond pointing that out is just a bonus for someone who doesn't get or doesn't like the point to get hung up on, if you will. On HN it's usually silence or responses like that, bleh, look for the least generous reading, squirt out a one liner. Oh well, you do you.
So you'd be happier with an empire honest about its behavior than one which seeks to dissemble about it? I mean I'm having kind of a hard time figuring out what you're getting at here, is what I'm trying to say. Can you explain it in a way that involves less vague inveighing against ill-characterized
malfeasance, and a more coherent statement of what you're actually about?
