I live in a "Western", English speaking democracy, with friendly relations with both the US and China.

Our biggest trading partner is China, and we have a free-trade agreement with the US.

Who exactly is our ally again?

As a Brazilian that had ti witness the effects of US alliance during cold war... No, hell no. With a friend like that, who needs enemies?

You had enemies in the cold war. The USSR was much, much worse.

Things US did for Brazil:

Sent aircraft carriers, ships and soldiers to help depose a democratically elected president, just because he wanted closer ties with China and wanted to do agrarian reform.

Disappeared lots of people (I don't know any personally, because I am too young, but I DO know personally lots of people that still want disappeared people back)

Spied on us (erm, that part still applies, no?).

Sabotaged our agriculture (ie: some plagues started after US agrarian engineers visited us to "help" with our agricultural technology).

Supported and funded very repressive crazy dictators that killed boatloads of people.

What the USSR did for us during the cold war: Gave us some really cool technical books in spanish (yes, our language is portuguese, but spanish is good enough), I still have a bunch of them, they are really good, somewhere around my house there is calculus books, structural engineering, and lots of other cool stuff, russian books but written in spanish, targeted at Latin America.

USSR borrowed us some scientists (Russia and Ucraine still do, by the way).

Helped our exiles, not only left wing ones, but right wing ones too.

Sold us some very interesting stuff, even if shitty sometimes (example: during the cold war Lada cars were very popular here).

Computers! (for example when some companies here tried to develop a computer compatible with the Macintosh, US government helped Apple in forcing them to stop, while Russians borrowed us some engineers and books)

Now, who were our real enemies in cold war again?

nice propaganda. cold war was about influence. the super powers would do any and everything to gain a foothold in another country. feel free to ask any polish citizen about the friendliness of Soviet Russia, they may welcome your speech with a punch in the face for the sake of those who suffered and died because their brethren spread similar idiotic notions of "the Soviets are our friends look at these free Russian texts and cars and..."

It is not a question of propaganda.

It is just that this is what happened to us in Brazil, and USA never gave any clear indication that it wants to improve its behaviour.

So, why should we trust it now, if we could never trust it in first place?

Things the US did for Europe:

Stopped us getting nuked or invaded by the USSR

Don't believe everything you watch in hollywood movies.

Hollywood movies? I suppose all the USSR missiles were imaginary? They never really invaded Czechoslovakia?

And I suppose you believe the US has single handed saved Europe from WWII, the Enigma machine was captured by the US crew of U-571 and Inglorious Bastards was fact.

The fact is reality is much more complex than your simple statement which is further skewed by Hollywood.

...that's irrelevant to what he was saying.

Are you sure they were? As far as I can tell the US has done more damage in Latin America than any USSR meddling. Stalin was really bad but the USSR was not ruled by Stalin for that long.

The US in Central America weren't angels, for sure, but I doubt if the USSR funding of left-wing groups was any better.

Stalin was a mad man on a par with Hitler, but even under later leaders it was still a repressive regime with Gulags.

>I doubt if the USSR funding of left-wing groups was any better.

When you say that you doubt it, is that code for having no idea of the impact of Soviet funding in South America, but not being willing to say that you don't know? Or is it just that you know that everything bad that the US did was to counter something even worse that the evil USSR was doing?

Missile gap?

It's code for the funding of Right Wing Groups by the US having been publicised more widely than the funding of Left Wing Groups by the USSR.

However, Cuba is a repressive dictatorship which will was funded by the USSR for many years.

Previous to that, it was a repressive dictatorship which was funded by the USA for many years...

Completely disagree with that. That is like saying you would prefer to have your own brother punch you in your face than a stranger.

It hurts a lot more because you are meant to look out for each other, not distrust and stab each others back.

Well I trust what the US does with the information more than China. It's like Tiannamen Square never happened.

You trust the US of today. That is your right and well, that is fine.

But who is to speak for tomorrow? None of us can tell what the future brings. Not me and not you. So who is to say that in ten years, when that data is still there, that the US is still worthy of your trust?

It is the future we should distrust, even if you trust the past, and the present.

A fair point. Distrust of governments is a healthy position to have.

Tiannamen Square is believed to greatly affected Chinese politics, mostly for the better. They do not like talking about it but they have done much to prevent something like that from happening again.