5 ms·

>Not to mention stolen land via genocide, slave labor, accessible natural resources, huge geographic isolation from competition, and even a lucky point in time

>Not to mention stolen land via genocide, slave labor, accessible natural resources, huge geographic isolation from competition, and even a lucky point in time coinciding with the industrial revolution that began in Europe (and particularly Britain, which begat the U.S.). Similar things could be said of all the once-great powers of Europe and Asia. Big deal. (I really don't understand the self-loathing streak a lot of Americans seem to have. As a second-generation immigrant, I'm delighted and proud to be a citizen of a superpower and will fight to the last to keep it that way.)

noir_lord 10y ago
> Similar things could be said of all the once-great powers of Europe and Asia. They absolutely could but if two countries do X, it doesn't alter the fact that they both did X. I'm from the UK and our colonial history was pretty grim, I fully accept it, I'm not ashamed of it (I wasn't around at the time) and I'm not proud of it (again not around at the time), if you don't understand where you come from then you miss out on a lot. The US is a large, prosperous economy with a productive workforce, it's simply not possible to deny that and no sane person would but it's not perfect either. The US benefited from a confluence of events (and some very smart leaders who created a pretty good system in aggregate) to capitalise on those events and drive an economy. Europe and it's major powers destroying their economic bases with two catastrophic wars certainly aided in that, the US was largely untouched domestically by WWII and at the end it had a vast production capacity, a skilled workforce, abundant natural resources and a world that was crying out for it's products and it capitalised on it well, the thing was it also had comparitively weak workers protection but it didn't matter when you could charge a lot for your goods because you where the only game in town. As someone from Britain while there is much I don't like about the US (primarily it's politicians but some other stuff as well), I have to give a huge amount of credit for what they did in the post war years, the Marshall plan and the rebuilding of Japan was an incredible thing for a country to do (even if it wasn't for altruistic reasons, it was still an impressive feat to bootstrap multiple savaged countries back to relative prosperity inside 20 years).
rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
I am also proud to be an American and I could never live anywhere else (except perhaps with my extended family in Italy), but I am not unrealistic about the human costs that made the country what it is today. But just because other people do bad things doesn't make it better to do them yourself. In fact it makes things much worse to excuse yourself and others in those ways. Is spitefulness really the the best that this species can do?

noir_lord 10y ago

> Similar things could be said of all the once-great powers of Europe and Asia. They absolutely could but if two countries do X, it doesn't alter the fact that they both did X. I'm from the UK and our colonial history was pretty grim, I fully accept it, I'm not ashamed of it (I wasn't around at the time) and I'm not proud of it (again not around at the time), if you don't understand where you come from then you miss out on a lot. The US is a large, prosperous economy with a productive workforce, it's simply not possible to deny that and no sane person would but it's not perfect either. The US benefited from a confluence of events (and some very smart leaders who created a pretty good system in aggregate) to capitalise on those events and drive an economy. Europe and it's major powers destroying their economic bases with two catastrophic wars certainly aided in that, the US was largely untouched domestically by WWII and at the end it had a vast production capacity, a skilled workforce, abundant natural resources and a world that was crying out for it's products and it capitalised on it well, the thing was it also had comparitively weak workers protection but it didn't matter when you could charge a lot for your goods because you where the only game in town. As someone from Britain while there is much I don't like about the US (primarily it's politicians but some other stuff as well), I have to give a huge amount of credit for what they did in the post war years, the Marshall plan and the rebuilding of Japan was an incredible thing for a country to do (even if it wasn't for altruistic reasons, it was still an impressive feat to bootstrap multiple savaged countries back to relative prosperity inside 20 years).

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago

I am also proud to be an American and I could never live anywhere else (except perhaps with my extended family in Italy), but I am not unrealistic about the human costs that made the country what it is today. But just because other people do bad things doesn't make it better to do them yourself. In fact it makes things much worse to excuse yourself and others in those ways. Is spitefulness really the the best that this species can do?