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"Visigoth" always sounded very chivalric to me. Not sure why.
Will, you said something above about us "breaking" all sorts of countries. You do realize that the density of variables in each of those situations is so thick that that comment makes no sense, don't you? Outside of physically invading and overthrowing a dictatorship and then occupying the place, which is what we did in Iraq, it makes no more sense to say the US "broke" any other society than it does to say that everything traces back to the Kennedy assassination -- in some ways it does but it's not significant or informative. There are lots and lots of other factors involved in every other example you gave -- and it would be nice if you paid the people in those other societies the elementary human respect of according them responsibility for their own decisions, which are far more likely to be causally determinative in their lives than anything the US government does or did. Not to absolve our govt of its responsibility for bad decisions it may make - it makes plenty - but it's far from omnipotent.
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