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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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I think this topic is sensitive to Americans, since it basically means they aren't the Good Guys that they were led to believe.

Yes, but reality doesn't care about your feelings. If you follow anti-imperialists like Aron Mate and Max Blumenthal, it's obvious that USA has not been the good guys in the past few decades, and if you read Noam Chomsky you realize that has never been the case. Of course most people from USA are not aware of that.

How many Americans know they are occupying one third of Syria right now to get their oil? I bet not many.

We should also make a distinction between the US Govt and the American people.

Of course.

Instead of grappling with this issue from a structural basis, folks have been trying to personally smear Hersh.

It's always the same tactic. The Hunter Biden laptop story was a "conspiracy theory" and anyone who tried to investigate it like Glenn Greenwald was smeared. Max Blumenthal and The Grayzone wikipedia pages are completely vandalized. They tried to do the same with Seymour Hersh (somebody added that he was a conspiracy theorist), but it seems there was pushback because Hersh is more reknowned.

It will work, because even though Americans know the mainstream media lies, they for some reason believe that when it truly matters they'll tell the truth.

whereas much of the rest of the world will just go on

I don't think the citizens in Germany will just go on, they'll see it for what it is: a supposed ally engaged in clandestine energy sabotage without regards to what would happen to their economy, just to punish Russia for geopolitical reasons, and destroying their industry in the process.

I bet many Germans are realizing just now that USA is not their ally.

Ah yes the hundreds of US troops in eastern Syria occupation to get their oil….

The Kurds / SDF take all the oil revenues. Lol. The country that produces the most oil in the world does not need to steal Syria’s, and the Syrian oil production is inconsequential to the world oil prices markets.

I don't think the citizens in Germany will just go on

I suspect you vastly underestimate the meekness of the modern German these days. I'd love to be proved wrong, but I don't think I will, sadly.

I lived in Germany for a while, and I'm aware of the weakness of German bureaucrats, but things change. In Mexico from one administration to the next the government changed from being a USA lapdog to be anti-imperialist.

If there was any spark that would ignite change in Germany, I think learning that USA blew up their pipeline is among the most significant that could happen.