As I got older and I reflected on all the grumpy old men waving at the clouds and complaining constantly about this-or-that being better in their days when I was a kid, I realized why.
Now I'm the old man and I avoid becoming bitter my reminding myself of the following truth:
When you're a kid, the world belongs to the grown-ups - your parents, adults of authority around you.
When you reach teenage years, the world starts being yours: you've developed tastes for things people your age do and create. As you go through puberty, your identity is reinforced with things of your time, and other young people your age with which you do the same things. You all have a bright future in front of you.
When you get out of puberty, hopefully you get our of school and start working: the world is fully yours. The trendy things in the world are things you find trendy too. Other people speak like you. You're not a powerless kid and you're not weaker old guy/gall yet. You're fully part of it and it suits you. You may not like the world, but it's yours. It shares your values and your values are what makes the world go round at that point in time . Your personality, your cultural identity and the cultural norms you respect, and your value system are fully developed, and a pure product of their time.
And then they stay that way. But the world keeps evolving. Slowly but surely, the things you learned become deprecated. The things you like become old. The way you speak becomes strange to younger ears. The values you believe in no longer apply. The world slowly shifts beneath your feet, but it's happening very slowly, year after year, until...
You reach an age at which you're very visibly and obviously out of sync with the world. Even you notice it at this point.
And here lies the trap: you can either reflect on how the world has changed and acknowledge that it's not your world anymore, but it's younger people's now. People who are now the age you once were: it's their turn to have a go at owning the world. You're just in it for the ride.
Or you can take refuge in your old values, wallow in the old things you've liked for decades, and bitch and moan about the world going to shit. It's not going to shit, but it feels that way to you. It's easier to reject the world around you than admit it's just not how you like it anymore, but it's poisonous: it turns you into a bitter person everybody hates.
I choose to ignore the things I dislike - which, at this point, constitute a lot more of the world than the things I like from the past, from my youth. But I also choose to not pass judgment on them because they're not from my world: they're from today's youth's world, and I have no say in it.
If you're old and angry, think about this. You might find some comfort in letting go.
The corollary of all this is: there is no better America in the past: the past simply seems rosier to older eyes. America has always been as great or as shit as you find it to be today.
That's the tragedy of government: rulers and lawmakers need to be old enough to be wise, but age also disconnects them from the needs of the world of today.
That’s the tragedy of government: rulers and lawmakers need to be old enough to be wise,
No, they don't. Under a representative democracy (what most of The West is at this point) your "rulers" are not meant to be kings who duck into their study to decide what is most Just.
Their responsibility is to surround themselves with experts and to listen to them. Your representative should not need to study economics and computer science to understand what Google is. They just need to be able to understand a wikipedia level overview so that they can communicate with the scientists and economists on staff.
Similarly, your representative should not be sitting and deliberating on what is Right. They should instead be communicating with their constituents to do what is right by them. Which works better when they aren't lugging around a canister of oxygen everywhere they go.
Which is why we tend to not use the word "rulers" anymore and instead focus on "civil servants".
There IS an argument that the President/Prime Minister needs "wisdom" because they may need to make very quick decisions. But even that is mostly about listening to the domain experts who just happen to be generals in that case.
That is actually a good reason to have a wide variety of ages in government, so that there is a mix of those connected to the world today and those that have more wisdom.
That's not a bad idea. But then you have to outlaw money in politics, because as soon as money is in the picture, it invariably favors rich old dudes, or people with connections that can only be formed over time.
In other words, nothing like this will happen in America in my grandchildren's lifetime, let alone my children's or mine.
That would help, but it isn't just the money. Both Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were able to secure offices when they were right around 30 years old and both lacked solid support from their own party. Entrenched political parties are arguably an even bigger barrier to involving younger participation in government, not just because the parties control their own purse strings but because they resist up and coming candidates by treating office holders like they have tenure.
I think the meme is more about reflection about nationalism and its ties to history…
While for some countries like Hungary to be nationalistic is just funny (I am hungarian); while other countries say Germany, Britain explicitly outline their crimes against humanity in their education; but some countries who are not revolting dictatorships like Japan or US are explicitly proud of it… The last group is very concerning…
This is drivel. Previous generations did have it easier than some recent ones.
Did I claim otherwise?
Of course we gen-Xers had it easier. And our boomer parents before us even more so. This is totally unrelated to what I said, which is that older folks tend to remember the world as better in the past than it truly was.
Also, America sucks and always will.
That is what I said. There is no better America in the past.
There has not been a single year in American history that was great for all groups of Americans. This country was founded on the murder of natives and the exploitation of slaves/immigrants: that foundation has reverberated throughout our entire history. Government and corporate policy, often racist and sexist, works to maintain a permanent under class of exploited workers that provide cheap labor for the ruling class (e.g., Jim Crow, redlining, denial of reproductive rights, etc.). So while I wholeheartedly agree with taxing the rich, taxation alone did not prevent injustice in the 20th century.
Not to mention the devastation that America has inflicted on the developing world. Obvious examples include millions of civilian casualties during our wars in Asia and the Middle East, foreign resource extraction that provides us with cheap consumer good (e.g., banana republics in South America, slave mines in the Congo, etc.), as well as CIA operations that have been brazenly declassified (e.g., overthrowing presidents, installing dictators) because this country can't even pretend to live up to its professed ideals. Any serious study of American history suggests this country has never been "great" in anything beside our wasteful military expenditure and our inexhaustible favoritism of the wealthy.
Im Latino indigenous, I grew up in a war where Americans are funding death squads and bombing half the country to keep Russia out of this hemisphere. After America bombed my country and nothing was left, we moved up to the US to follow my country’s stolen wealth to the empire that took it. There we were called wetbacks and spics and told we were streaming jobs and weren’t welcome, go back to your country they would say, you know the country that’s filled with American craters. Now those Americans who wanted Russia out, are sucking Putin cock, and we’re still being rounded up like cattle!
Move on to Canada eventually and never got over Americans being such monsters.
These past few years have been wild as even the amaerican leftists have turned racist. I’ve called out a few young people on their anti colonial hypocrisy and anti war stance but only on some wars, etc. Not even against their views, just trying to point out their own colonial past, and I’ll get called all sort of slurs.
Exactly, only dumb America hicks think America was ever some great nation. They're just the biggest bully on the block and they can't stop patting themselves on the back about it.
I think we're more acutely aware of how much we suck because since the Internet took off and we should be able to communicate with anyone on the planet (within reason. Obviously madfrit tribes with spears in the jungle dont) we should have reached a new age of peace and enlightenment. Scientists can share ideas instantly so science goes through the roof, and commoners across borders can talk so we know eachother is being fed propaganda and nobody really wants to send their sons to die killing the other ones sons.
Unfortunately it somehow seems to have turned into a propaganda machine itself and gives us outlets to be awful to eachother with relative anonymity.
the vikings called it "vinland", and stayed there for a very short time before fucking off back to greenland/europe
their settlements amounted to a very glorified camping expedition
In the 1950s for white men, America was pretty great. For just about everyone else no one would say it was "great". So when they say "Make America Great Again" they mean "Make America Suck Again For Everyone But White Men".
Most people understand that becoming a billionaire requires a ruthless pursuit of your own interests. Regardless of the impact on small business owners, the environment, employees, etc. the billionaire does what it takes to beat the competition. And even though everyone has done good and bad things, the propensity for billionaires to harm millions of people in search of endless profit makes them particularly immoral.
In this regard, global superpowers are like billionaires but on the world stage. American atrocities are particularly bad because American geopolitical hegemony has harmed millions of people both domestically and abroad. We can acknowledge this history while agreeing that every country has done immoral things.
Yes but 1 thing I believe the American people have against them is the propaganda. Their elders were brought up with such heavy propaganda that american n1, america the best, america is the only free country etc. They can not think differently, and the younger gemeration, still bombarded with hollywood movies, is trying to break free but they don't hold the power and the money.
Shit, after operation paperclip it was pretty obvious that high level leadership didn't have that much of an issue with Nazi ideology. It was true then, and it hasn't become any less true as time has separated us from the atrocities they commited.
Native Americans are still people, and it's a universal truth that people (as a whole) suck. I'm not excusing the horrors that came with colonization: but wars, slavery, murder, etc were still common things in America prior to colonization -- just at a much smaller scale.
All the horrible things people do to each other are just easier when you're not stuck using stone-age technology.
"Great" is subjective. For them, america's greatness came from the KKK lynching black people without repercussion before coming home, rape their wife and beat up their children
As recently as 3 years ago I was inspired by huge investments in renewable energy and climate change, starting to work on a huge backlog of infrastructure work, there was hope for high speed rail, incentives to bring manufacturing back to the us, support for unions, we had an ethical fact-based government, the rule of law and primacy of the constitution, respected all people and were working on quality of life improvements ……
Remind me again why we voted to tear all that down?
Pretty sure the way we as the American people chose to receive this beating was that at one of the billionaire orgies between 2023 and 2024 Musk, absolutely trashed, turns to Soros and says "you think you're so good for getting Obama elected in '08, well hold my beer and watch this!" The rest is redacted history that will make an excellent documentary in about 10-20 years
Historically separation of powers worked. We’ve never had such a naked power grab by the executive branch, so many illegal orders, ignoring the courts, a sycophant congress. Agency leaders were generally competent and tried to fulfill agency missions. There’s never been such blatant bribery, spite based action, conflict of interest, profiteering off government roles, insider trading. Previous administrations mostly followed the constitution.
Sure we have our share of unethical actions by the government but they generally stayed within the legal structure of the government and were somewhat accountable.
Yes, the decline of our institutions is more blatant now. But it's a difference of degree, not of kind.
Congresspersons, on the left and right, have been insider trading for decades.
The SCOTUS ruled that corporations are people that have unlimited "free speech" with their money.
Bush started targeting terrorists with drones and now the U.S. president can order drone strikes. (Some have called Obama a war criminal due to excessive civilian casualties resulting from drone strikes. But Americans don't really care about this.)
Biden bombed Yemen without congressional approval and now Trump has bombed Iran.
Bush sent "enemy combatants" to Guantanamo Bay without due process. Now Trump sends "illegal aliens" to detention camps without due process.
The CIA has brazenly declassified many covert operations to stop the spread of communism. Including installing brutal dictators and interfering with democratic elections. (They admit to doing this but, again, Americans do not care.)
Bush and Obama both bailed out corporations that are "too big to fail".
Questionable wars in Asia and the Middle East that fed the military industrial complex and made a well-positioned few unimaginably wealthy.
###
You likely disagree with some of these examples. But my point is only this: Trump is the symptom of a disease that we have ignored for far too long. We all pledged allegiance to the flag in school. We all learned that America stands for liberty, justice, equality, etc. for all. But this country has never lived up to those professed ideals.
No country has ever been great...especially the U.S. Its greatest period was probably 2015 just before the orange dust settled. Not great, but its greatest.
Back between September 2, 1945 (WW2 end date), and November 1, 1955 (First day US involved in Vietnam). Unless of course you were black. Then it would have been August 28, 1963 (MLK's I have a dream speech date).
Indigenous people being humans means there were violent conflicts between different cultures and groups within cultures like anywhere else in the world. It was relatively less violent than colonial occupation like how Europe was less violent than during the world wars.
America 7 millenia ago might have been empty enough of people to be peaceful (though I highly doubt that) but people died young of easily treatable diseases because they didn't have vacc....
I mean how many people are fleeing America to other countries for asylum(Haiti, China, North Korea, Columbia, etc) ? How many Americans are being bombed daily(Gaza, Ukraine)? How many Americans are being killed because they are in the wrong Tribe(Africa)? How many Americans are arrested for social media post(UK)? How many Americans are getting sick because of no sanitation standards (India)? How many Americans being taxed to pay for illegal migrants arriving by boat loads (UK)?
Americans have already been breaking immigration records into other countries this year.
Americans may not be getting bombed, but the national guard is being called in to enact brutality on protesters in cities that are left leaning. Historically, this type of escalation leads to bloodshed, and is an illegal and heavily fascist tactic.
People get arrested for social media posts all of the time, virtually everywhere. I don't even know what you're trying to imply here.
Americans are being deported without due process to facilities in other countries where they will likely die due to being the wrong skin color.
Americans are getting sick because the current administration has been destroying the EPA, removing the ability to get COVID vaccines, and continuing to prop up a healthcare system that is solely motivated by greed.
I'm not even touching the xenophobia of the last point, not that any of the points you made were either salient or made in good faith. You're just parroting alt-right talking points.
Now you'll reply back with some goalpost moving or an ad hominem attack without addressing that you're caught in a lie.
Spicy take incoming: it's pretty great right now. We're a continental country rich in natural resources. We're very friendly with our only two major neighbors, Canada and Mexico, so tits hard to imagine us being attacked over a land border. We have tropical beaches and snow sports 365 days a year, and they all speak English and take dollars. Our universities are some of the best in the world and graduate Nobel Prize winners in arts, sciences, and mathematics. Yes the current American experience sucks but for a lot of people it always has and has even sucked worse. We've experienced massive civil rights expansions over the past three generations.
If you think America sucks you're right, and always were, and always will be, but if you can't think of anything nice to say about it then you're just not paying attention.
The president is the leader of one branch of our three branch system. Cooperation between Mexico and the USA and Canada and the USA is generational and extends across various diverse dimensions like scientific cooperation, infrastructure protection, border security and law enforcement, fire protection and prevention, trade, and food safety, among others. It would take much much more than one presidential administration much longer than four years to make meaningful progress toward the goal of destroying all these cooperative agreements at all levels of government that took generations to build.
Donald Trump sucks but he isn't America, nor should we be judging any country by the actions of its corrupt billionaire leadership.
The tone from many of us, is that if he's able to cause so much havoc, un checked, that the US is now seen no longer as an ally, but a cautious acquaintance.
Brother, I dont think you can call anyone that you attempt to intimidate your friend... and our relationship with those two countries mat well be generational, but they will never forget what we have done to them because while it may just be Trump making the mistakes, its America that has shown what we are willing to put up with even if it was only a plurality that got this asswipe elected. America, as it stands, is untrustworthy.
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As I got older and I reflected on all the grumpy old men waving at the clouds and complaining constantly about this-or-that being better in their days when I was a kid, I realized why.
Now I'm the old man and I avoid becoming bitter my reminding myself of the following truth:
When you're a kid, the world belongs to the grown-ups - your parents, adults of authority around you.
When you reach teenage years, the world starts being yours: you've developed tastes for things people your age do and create. As you go through puberty, your identity is reinforced with things of your time, and other young people your age with which you do the same things. You all have a bright future in front of you.
When you get out of puberty, hopefully you get our of school and start working: the world is fully yours. The trendy things in the world are things you find trendy too. Other people speak like you. You're not a powerless kid and you're not weaker old guy/gall yet. You're fully part of it and it suits you. You may not like the world, but it's yours. It shares your values and your values are what makes the world go round at that point in time . Your personality, your cultural identity and the cultural norms you respect, and your value system are fully developed, and a pure product of their time.
And then they stay that way. But the world keeps evolving. Slowly but surely, the things you learned become deprecated. The things you like become old. The way you speak becomes strange to younger ears. The values you believe in no longer apply. The world slowly shifts beneath your feet, but it's happening very slowly, year after year, until...
You reach an age at which you're very visibly and obviously out of sync with the world. Even you notice it at this point.
And here lies the trap: you can either reflect on how the world has changed and acknowledge that it's not your world anymore, but it's younger people's now. People who are now the age you once were: it's their turn to have a go at owning the world. You're just in it for the ride.
Or you can take refuge in your old values, wallow in the old things you've liked for decades, and bitch and moan about the world going to shit. It's not going to shit, but it feels that way to you. It's easier to reject the world around you than admit it's just not how you like it anymore, but it's poisonous: it turns you into a bitter person everybody hates.
I choose to ignore the things I dislike - which, at this point, constitute a lot more of the world than the things I like from the past, from my youth. But I also choose to not pass judgment on them because they're not from my world: they're from today's youth's world, and I have no say in it.
If you're old and angry, think about this. You might find some comfort in letting go.
The corollary of all this is: there is no better America in the past: the past simply seems rosier to older eyes. America has always been as great or as shit as you find it to be today.
The only problem I see with that is, even though I’m 40, the government and corporations are all still run by people older than me.
Hell, some of the folks in Congress are older than my parents.
And they've been running it since your parents were younger than you now. This has got to change, get our parents politicians out of office!
That's the tragedy of government: rulers and lawmakers need to be old enough to be wise, but age also disconnects them from the needs of the world of today.
No, they don't. Under a representative democracy (what most of The West is at this point) your "rulers" are not meant to be kings who duck into their study to decide what is most Just.
Their responsibility is to surround themselves with experts and to listen to them. Your representative should not need to study economics and computer science to understand what Google is. They just need to be able to understand a wikipedia level overview so that they can communicate with the scientists and economists on staff.
Similarly, your representative should not be sitting and deliberating on what is Right. They should instead be communicating with their constituents to do what is right by them. Which works better when they aren't lugging around a canister of oxygen everywhere they go.
Which is why we tend to not use the word "rulers" anymore and instead focus on "civil servants".
There IS an argument that the President/Prime Minister needs "wisdom" because they may need to make very quick decisions. But even that is mostly about listening to the domain experts who just happen to be generals in that case.
That is actually a good reason to have a wide variety of ages in government, so that there is a mix of those connected to the world today and those that have more wisdom.
That's not a bad idea. But then you have to outlaw money in politics, because as soon as money is in the picture, it invariably favors rich old dudes, or people with connections that can only be formed over time.
In other words, nothing like this will happen in America in my grandchildren's lifetime, let alone my children's or mine.
That would help, but it isn't just the money. Both Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were able to secure offices when they were right around 30 years old and both lacked solid support from their own party. Entrenched political parties are arguably an even bigger barrier to involving younger participation in government, not just because the parties control their own purse strings but because they resist up and coming candidates by treating office holders like they have tenure.
Yes, and Bernie Sanders is old as dirt yet a decent politician in touch with young people.
But they're exceptions. We need AOCs and Mamdanis and Sanders as the norm in politics.
I think the meme is more about reflection about nationalism and its ties to history…
While for some countries like Hungary to be nationalistic is just funny (I am hungarian); while other countries say Germany, Britain explicitly outline their crimes against humanity in their education; but some countries who are not revolting dictatorships like Japan or US are explicitly proud of it… The last group is very concerning…
Welcome to conservatism!
Yeah OP is delusional. "Oh well I turned {{age}}, guess I'll just stop caring about anything."
This is drivel. Previous generations did have it easier than some recent ones.
Also, America sucks and always will.
Did I claim otherwise?
Of course we gen-Xers had it easier. And our boomer parents before us even more so. This is totally unrelated to what I said, which is that older folks tend to remember the world as better in the past than it truly was.
That is what I said. There is no better America in the past.
I can say with certainty that I had it way easier than my son.
1930s-1980s. So when the superrich were supertaxed. Remember 91% income tax in early 1960s?
That was a pretty great time for middle class white people!
Well if we could try that era's tax policies again, but without Jim crow this time, that would be a great starting point...
Yes, but that would require learning from history and we suck at that.
Middle class white males. Though granted, white women probably had it best out of all women.
There has not been a single year in American history that was great for all groups of Americans. This country was founded on the murder of natives and the exploitation of slaves/immigrants: that foundation has reverberated throughout our entire history. Government and corporate policy, often racist and sexist, works to maintain a permanent under class of exploited workers that provide cheap labor for the ruling class (e.g., Jim Crow, redlining, denial of reproductive rights, etc.). So while I wholeheartedly agree with taxing the rich, taxation alone did not prevent injustice in the 20th century.
Not to mention the devastation that America has inflicted on the developing world. Obvious examples include millions of civilian casualties during our wars in Asia and the Middle East, foreign resource extraction that provides us with cheap consumer good (e.g., banana republics in South America, slave mines in the Congo, etc.), as well as CIA operations that have been brazenly declassified (e.g., overthrowing presidents, installing dictators) because this country can't even pretend to live up to its professed ideals. Any serious study of American history suggests this country has never been "great" in anything beside our wasteful military expenditure and our inexhaustible favoritism of the wealthy.
The wealthy game the system. This was always recognized, hence the high taxation.
How to show you're white and don't know and understand the experience of everyone else.
Others did a better job explaining that this period was far from perfect to a non-American that doesn't always remember all the crucial caveats.
Im Latino indigenous, I grew up in a war where Americans are funding death squads and bombing half the country to keep Russia out of this hemisphere. After America bombed my country and nothing was left, we moved up to the US to follow my country’s stolen wealth to the empire that took it. There we were called wetbacks and spics and told we were streaming jobs and weren’t welcome, go back to your country they would say, you know the country that’s filled with American craters. Now those Americans who wanted Russia out, are sucking Putin cock, and we’re still being rounded up like cattle!
Move on to Canada eventually and never got over Americans being such monsters.
These past few years have been wild as even the amaerican leftists have turned racist. I’ve called out a few young people on their anti colonial hypocrisy and anti war stance but only on some wars, etc. Not even against their views, just trying to point out their own colonial past, and I’ll get called all sort of slurs.
Deleted by moderator
Meanwhile the US is fueling up their tanks getting ready to run you and everyone you know over for funsies.
Exactly, only dumb America hicks think America was ever some great nation. They're just the biggest bully on the block and they can't stop patting themselves on the back about it.
We are great! At killing the environment, brown people, and women's rights.
Sorry about all that, but line had to go up. You understand.
Get outta ma head Charles!
It was probably pretty chill before a bunch of chodes came over and named it America.
Ehhhh, fwiw the Native American people had some fairly warlike cultures and long held beefs, we have documented genocides they did on each other.
Humans, generally, suck.
I think we're more acutely aware of how much we suck because since the Internet took off and we should be able to communicate with anyone on the planet (within reason. Obviously madfrit tribes with spears in the jungle dont) we should have reached a new age of peace and enlightenment. Scientists can share ideas instantly so science goes through the roof, and commoners across borders can talk so we know eachother is being fed propaganda and nobody really wants to send their sons to die killing the other ones sons.
Unfortunately it somehow seems to have turned into a propaganda machine itself and gives us outlets to be awful to eachother with relative anonymity.
We could have had it all....
Viking settlements. Or the dutch?
the vikings called it "vinland", and stayed there for a very short time before fucking off back to greenland/europe
their settlements amounted to a very glorified camping expedition
Yessss. And i was making a joke about that
It wasn't too bad before all those illegal immigrants showed up in the big sailing boats, I hear...
The moon landings were pretty great. Let's just not mention the contributions made by all those ex-Nazis.
In the 1950s for white men, America was pretty great. For just about everyone else no one would say it was "great". So when they say "Make America Great Again" they mean "Make America Suck Again For Everyone But White Men".
before 1492
1491 and ¾.
Apparently when white men ran it, women stayed in their place, gays stayed confirmed bachelors, and minorities stayed under the table.
The more history I learn the more I understand that every country is awful, and people have been terrible forever.
Most people understand that becoming a billionaire requires a ruthless pursuit of your own interests. Regardless of the impact on small business owners, the environment, employees, etc. the billionaire does what it takes to beat the competition. And even though everyone has done good and bad things, the propensity for billionaires to harm millions of people in search of endless profit makes them particularly immoral.
In this regard, global superpowers are like billionaires but on the world stage. American atrocities are particularly bad because American geopolitical hegemony has harmed millions of people both domestically and abroad. We can acknowledge this history while agreeing that every country has done immoral things.
Ordinary people have done terrible things, too.
We’re all a bunch of bastards and have been since we invented agriculture
Yes but 1 thing I believe the American people have against them is the propaganda. Their elders were brought up with such heavy propaganda that american n1, america the best, america is the only free country etc. They can not think differently, and the younger gemeration, still bombarded with hollywood movies, is trying to break free but they don't hold the power and the money.
People didn’t have propaganda when they slaughtered 95% of men and subjugated women after discovering agriculture.
Happened pretty much everywhere, too.
What do you call religion?
Back when they were fighting Nazis instead of being them.
Sadly there were Nazis in the US government before and during WW2.
The Dullas brothers are the prime examples. They spearheaded operation paperclip, which rescued Nazi scientists and moved them to the US.
The Dullas brothers are the reason why the US loved arming South American dictators from the 50s onward.
They also pulled a Japanese war criminal out of prison and put him in power in post war Japan.
You mean the days when black people weren’t allowed to ride the bus?
We only caught German Nazis. In America, Nazis were in power or the heads of major corporations (See Henry Ford).
Shit, after operation paperclip it was pretty obvious that high level leadership didn't have that much of an issue with Nazi ideology. It was true then, and it hasn't become any less true as time has separated us from the atrocities they commited.
That nostalgia filter though...
Indigenous and African Americans beg to differ.
Deleted by moderator
Ding ding ding, we have a winner!
Native Americans are still people, and it's a universal truth that people (as a whole) suck. I'm not excusing the horrors that came with colonization: but wars, slavery, murder, etc were still common things in America prior to colonization -- just at a much smaller scale.
All the horrible things people do to each other are just easier when you're not stuck using stone-age technology.
So i think i can post this without getting banned for anti-white racism here, lets see: readsettlers.org
I'd call what you linked to "deranged, but fascinating."
It's charming mix of "freshman humanities student" and "2012 tumblr".
Have you read it? Its a history book. This section on bacons rebellion I found eerily similiar to the dem vs rep split of today.
"Great" is subjective. For them, america's greatness came from the KKK lynching black people without repercussion before coming home, rape their wife and beat up their children
June 6, 1944. Been downhill slide ever since
As recently as 3 years ago I was inspired by huge investments in renewable energy and climate change, starting to work on a huge backlog of infrastructure work, there was hope for high speed rail, incentives to bring manufacturing back to the us, support for unions, we had an ethical fact-based government, the rule of law and primacy of the constitution, respected all people and were working on quality of life improvements ……
Remind me again why we voted to tear all that down?
Pretty sure the way we as the American people chose to receive this beating was that at one of the billionaire orgies between 2023 and 2024 Musk, absolutely trashed, turns to Soros and says "you think you're so good for getting Obama elected in '08, well hold my beer and watch this!" The rest is redacted history that will make an excellent documentary in about 10-20 years
When has the United States government ever been ethical? The older I get the more I realize that I live in the Death Star.
Historically separation of powers worked. We’ve never had such a naked power grab by the executive branch, so many illegal orders, ignoring the courts, a sycophant congress. Agency leaders were generally competent and tried to fulfill agency missions. There’s never been such blatant bribery, spite based action, conflict of interest, profiteering off government roles, insider trading. Previous administrations mostly followed the constitution.
Sure we have our share of unethical actions by the government but they generally stayed within the legal structure of the government and were somewhat accountable.
Yes, the decline of our institutions is more blatant now. But it's a difference of degree, not of kind.
###
You likely disagree with some of these examples. But my point is only this: Trump is the symptom of a disease that we have ignored for far too long. We all pledged allegiance to the flag in school. We all learned that America stands for liberty, justice, equality, etc. for all. But this country has never lived up to those professed ideals.
I'm not even American but I laughed at this
No country has ever been great...especially the U.S. Its greatest period was probably 2015 just before the orange dust settled. Not great, but its greatest.
Back between September 2, 1945 (WW2 end date), and November 1, 1955 (First day US involved in Vietnam). Unless of course you were black. Then it would have been August 28, 1963 (MLK's I have a dream speech date).
Before the human species arrived 4 sure.
Anyone who has seen The Village knows how this ends. It's actually like The Jetsons out there. We were the North Koreans/Sentinelese all along.
It probably wasn't so bad and internationally disruptive pre-settlers.
Indigenous people being humans means there were violent conflicts between different cultures and groups within cultures like anywhere else in the world. It was relatively less violent than colonial occupation like how Europe was less violent than during the world wars.
oh, about 6,700 year ago
That's an illusion.
America 7 millenia ago might have been empty enough of people to be peaceful (though I highly doubt that) but people died young of easily treatable diseases because they didn't have vacc....
Nevermind...
and if i understand correctly there were no horses
At this point I can't see Chuckie X without thinking of the Holocaust beam.
Which... is generally what the magats are thinking of...
I mean how many people are fleeing America to other countries for asylum(Haiti, China, North Korea, Columbia, etc) ? How many Americans are being bombed daily(Gaza, Ukraine)? How many Americans are being killed because they are in the wrong Tribe(Africa)? How many Americans are arrested for social media post(UK)? How many Americans are getting sick because of no sanitation standards (India)? How many Americans being taxed to pay for illegal migrants arriving by boat loads (UK)?
Americans have already been breaking immigration records into other countries this year.
Americans may not be getting bombed, but the national guard is being called in to enact brutality on protesters in cities that are left leaning. Historically, this type of escalation leads to bloodshed, and is an illegal and heavily fascist tactic.
People get arrested for social media posts all of the time, virtually everywhere. I don't even know what you're trying to imply here.
Americans are being deported without due process to facilities in other countries where they will likely die due to being the wrong skin color.
Americans are getting sick because the current administration has been destroying the EPA, removing the ability to get COVID vaccines, and continuing to prop up a healthcare system that is solely motivated by greed.
I'm not even touching the xenophobia of the last point, not that any of the points you made were either salient or made in good faith. You're just parroting alt-right talking points.
Now you'll reply back with some goalpost moving or an ad hominem attack without addressing that you're caught in a lie.
It's easier not to get bombed when you're the one doing the bombing
Is your point that America is better than other countries? Or that every country is bad?
Racist cunt.
Spicy take incoming: it's pretty great right now. We're a continental country rich in natural resources. We're very friendly with our only two major neighbors, Canada and Mexico, so tits hard to imagine us being attacked over a land border. We have tropical beaches and snow sports 365 days a year, and they all speak English and take dollars. Our universities are some of the best in the world and graduate Nobel Prize winners in arts, sciences, and mathematics. Yes the current American experience sucks but for a lot of people it always has and has even sucked worse. We've experienced massive civil rights expansions over the past three generations.
If you think America sucks you're right, and always were, and always will be, but if you can't think of anything nice to say about it then you're just not paying attention.
Your fascist in chief isn't
The president is the leader of one branch of our three branch system. Cooperation between Mexico and the USA and Canada and the USA is generational and extends across various diverse dimensions like scientific cooperation, infrastructure protection, border security and law enforcement, fire protection and prevention, trade, and food safety, among others. It would take much much more than one presidential administration much longer than four years to make meaningful progress toward the goal of destroying all these cooperative agreements at all levels of government that took generations to build.
Donald Trump sucks but he isn't America, nor should we be judging any country by the actions of its corrupt billionaire leadership.
The tone from many of us, is that if he's able to cause so much havoc, un checked, that the US is now seen no longer as an ally, but a cautious acquaintance.
Brother, I dont think you can call anyone that you attempt to intimidate your friend... and our relationship with those two countries mat well be generational, but they will never forget what we have done to them because while it may just be Trump making the mistakes, its America that has shown what we are willing to put up with even if it was only a plurality that got this asswipe elected. America, as it stands, is untrustworthy.
Fuck you fascist. JD, please do you magic.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. – George Santayana, Spanish-American philosopher