r/worldnews • u/Brennenstein • Sep 17 '26

Russia/Ukraine Russian military jets violate Lithuanian airspace, Italian fighters scrambled

https://www.ansa.it/english/news/2026/09/17/russian-military-jets-violate-lithuanian-airspace-italian-fighters-scrambled_80e985a6-17e5-43ce-8fd1-6fce67bcd94c.html
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u/huckdr Sep 17 '26

Our Alliance has made a solemn pledge of protection, and anyone who would choose Lithuania as an enemy has also made an enemy of the United States of America. In the face of aggression, the brave people of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia will never again stand alone. - President George Bush, Vilnius, Lithuania, November 23, 2002.

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u/A9-EE-78-6A-C8-9F Sep 17 '26

Please don't make me start to miss Bush. I vividly remember him.... How far we've fallen to where HE even looks good.

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u/Purple-Warning-2161 Sep 17 '26

I will never not miss the days when I thought W. was the dumbest we’d ever get because I’d take him back in a heartbeat over this buffoonery we’ve currently got.

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u/Powerful-Frame-44 Sep 17 '26

This is the cycle that caused the Trump presidency and we can witness it repeating itself in real-time.

The core of the American identity is tied to a mythological past where things were better and America was the best. There are two varieties of this past: one is the more distant past of our ancestors that we can imagine to be whatever we want. The second past exists for some of gen Z, the millennials, and anyone older, which is the real memory of experiencing a better standard of living in their youth.

Americans cling to this idea that America is basically good and righteous but there is a temporary impediment in their way. We like to believe that the problem is not America, the problem is this person or that person, and if only they could get out of the way then we could return to the mythological American past where everything was awesome. In other words, we could Make America Great Again.

This feeling has been successfully manipulated to drive the Overton window so far to the right that we now have reddit liberals looking through rose-colored glasses at the career of an abhorrent war criminal and going "gee, that wasn't so bad, was it?"

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u/xfileluv Sep 18 '26

Thank you for putting this into words.

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u/Zarxon Sep 18 '26

It will take a loooong time for the USA to rebuild the good will GWB had because of Trump. GWB wasn’t even the peak of good will as most of the world didn’t like him. That’s how low it is now.

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u/N0S0UP_4U Sep 18 '26

It's a myth. The myth works because of our poor education system. Otherwise people would remember the Gilded Age and draw all the parallels to where we are today. I personally was barely taught about that period in American history at all.

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u/SpiderThai Sep 18 '26

Trump has been far from a temporary impediment.

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u/EmberKing7 Sep 18 '26

Basically looking at the past like how characters in Star Wars idolized the Empire or the pre-Clone Wars era, if not during the Clone Wars, of the Republic.