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this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2026
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You should know that USA wasn't even near normal under Obama. Spying on allies, and thousands killed in illegal drone attacks is not normal.
I don't trust USA to return to normal anytime soon. American exceptionalism isn't an exclusive Republican thing.
But closer to normal would still be preferable.
Anyone who knows anything about history and politics should understand that everybody spies on everybody and that's fine because knowing what other countries are up to is how you avoid war. Countries trust their allies because their spies help them KNOW that they can trust them. As soon as spies are taken out of the equation, everybody starts getting WAY more paranoid about what other countries are up to, and that's how you get pointless wars. Sometimes, foreign spies even HELP a country, because they can sometimes catch things that domestic intelligence misses, like "hey, such-and-such foreign nation has infiltrated your such-and-such government agency; you might wanna do something about that. How did we get this info? Trade secret. But you're welcome".
Spying ON ITS OWN is almost utterly benign. It's certainly better than the alternative. Expecting humans to not be nosy about what their neighbors are up to is just asking for disappointment. Nosiness is an inevitable fact of life. Sure, if you CATCH a spy, you eject them. But it's naive to be offended by the attempt.
Wrong, spying used to be MOSTLY a wartime thing you did against enemies.
USA changed that after WW2, and most countries followed. Because now apparently everyone is an enemy, and no one can be trusted.
That's completely bullshit, it is absolutely not benign that USA is spying on allies, they are trying to use it to undermine their political views.
Do you really believe that?
Also:
That's not "spying on its own" anymore, though, is it?
It's a fact, look it up.
I looked it up. I didn't put a ton of effort into it, but I found some things.
First link I found was this one, https://www.mi5.gov.uk/history/between-the-wars/the-inter-war-years, talking about spying going on between WW1 and WW2.
British intelligence service was started in 1909. They weren't at war, but they were concerned about spying, German spies in particular:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Steinhauer
UK was not a normal country before WW2, they were a gigantic colonial power, and used "intelligence" also as a secret police to keep the Empire under control.
It was not normal for countries to have spy agencies that spied on allies. And even USA didn't have it at the time.
But Franklin D. Roosevelt was worried about Germany, and wanted an intelligence service like the one UK had, and so he created the CIA.
Before that it was more ad hoc as necessary by the different branches of US military. This was mostly used by colonial powers like UK and France, and then USA mimicked it, And shortly after WW2, they were treating the entire world as a colony and an enemy in that regard.
This does not make it "normal", CIA is a disease, their false intelligence has done a lot of harm, their activities in other countries are widely illegal, and they use illegal methods even in allied countries. However after WW2 USA normalized it, so other countries now have to do the same in self defense.
So, you say spying wasn't done outside of war prior to WW2, then I provide examples of intelligence organizations prior to WW1 and you wave it away with talk about Britain not being "normal", while at the same time ignoring the link indicating Germany had intelligence agents operating in other countries.
There's something pathetic about someone not being able to admit they were wrong.
No I wrote it was a war time thing, as outside of war it was more ad hoc if at all. Of course there was military intelligence, but not the crazy shit we have today, with manipulation of politics and industrial spying. There are degrees, and USA turned that up a lot.
Before the more normal thing to do was LEGAL intelligence, where agents at embassies read the papers, and followed politics. It was not the illegal spying we have today.
Look in the mirror.
Wow were you born yesterday? You think espionage is a thing the US invented after WW2? Lmao.
Your reading comprehension is very low.
Oh my reading comprehension is perfectly fine. Your statement is just extraordinarily untrue and ridiculous.