It's no longer possible to tell. Some of the ideas that avg Americans have on the way just about anything works is frightening.

My favorite lately is that the US was the real bad guy in WWII because we used nukes.

That US was a "real bad guy", or that nuking cities was an evil and unnecessary thing? The latter, while not universally held, is a fairly common take, and has been that way for a few decades now.

I wasn't being sarcastic.