Hey USAian, out here in the rest of the world, we see your governing party going full fascist about the ICC, and your opposition party staying silent. And that's not fucking funny because it means this shit is the position of the sum of your political system. You want me to blame USAian voters? Sure whatever. But don't expect me to engage in your little intra-tribal blame game dance about Kamala in your last election.

It’s a systemic failure. A democracy where a third of the country doesn’t feel represented by their options (and thus chooses none) is not a functioning democracy, and that’s ignoring all the other shit going on with your voting system.

Of course we'd ignore the republicans. The dems are the only group we have any hope at all in ever working with, but they have to prove that they are even slightly on our side before we'll give them votes. The time of blindly trusting the DNC is long past. "Vote blue no matter who" is dead now and the centrists poisoned that well of solidarity we were all happily drinking from for so long.

Thats what being republican lite gets you, dont blame us for the DNC's bad choices. They started a genocide for some AIPAC money. They should count themselves lucky we will consider working with them at all anymore, because they cant win elections without their base, and their base doesnt beleive in supporting the war crimes regime in Israel, which the centrists refuse to disavow even now.

And I dont care if you like it. Your internet blame and outrage is meaningless to the rest of us. Not all of us embrace your sellout logic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court#Trial_history is a good starting point.

In terms of toothlessness? The active refusal to weigh in on the Uyghur Genocide is a "great" example of this. Or, for the tankies in the audience, the refusal to weigh in on all the evil the US is doing with ICE et al. Let alone our decades of wars of aggression.

Also... ya know, Netanyahu and Putin.

But generally? Their trials are weighted heavily towards African warlords who aren't useful anymore.

As for legitimizing? Recent events are skewed due to a lack of interest in both the crime and the trial itself. Instead, I would recommend looking at the reality of the Nuremburg Trials themselves. Jacob Gellar did a spectacular video on this (that is only kind of tainted by doing Youtuber Voice for a lot of the quotes). But the short of it is that a lot of "crimes against humanity"... aren't actually crimes in legal systems. And by making a farce of having an actual defense lawyer, it mostly just gives the accused a chance to lie about what they have done... or brag about it.

But, generally speaking, the ICC is, in many ways, the worst sins of the UN. Having a venue where nations are encouraged to discuss things and negotiate is good. But the moment you try to apply any penalties or enforce any of those negotiated terms, you just highlight how toothless the org itself is. And the ICC have very much done that as nations too powerful to be acted upon are, at best, given a slap on the wrist. And mostly it is a matter of punching down on "global south" nations where enforcing said rulings largely benefit the "global north" interests.

Like... in a lot of ways, your average HOA has more power than the ICC.