I would feel better about america, as a non american, if the country on the whole would accept they aren’t the only country in the world, and didn’t continuously consider themselves the greatest. Actually acknowledge their history and the atrocities committed to get it to where it is today.
Yes. As a black man, America has produced a long very involved legacy of which I’m proud being my heritage.
Sure, it was absolutely founded on treating people like as sub-human, and there are people today that are trying to return me to that state, but fuck them as they’ve been fucked for the last century and a half. I’ll be damned if I let them represent America.
I’m genuinely glad we live in a country that recognizes the horrors of its past. Even with all of the “whitewashing” that occurs in textbooks in parts of the country, like “states’ rights” in the Civil War and praising Columbus, there’s still an overwhelming consensus that minorities were wronged for our entire history.
I hate it despite realizing what a good life I have because I was born here with a lucky set of circumstances (cis white male). But I love parts of it, like the Bay Area and Oakland and all the surrounding hiking spots. If we didn’t share it with lunatics I’d feel a lot better about it from a policy perspective.
America is the center of the world, hate all you want. This is the cutting edge today. Hollywood is the dominant music/media power. Silicon valley is the dominant technology power. NY is the dominant financial hub. The hippie cultural revolution was largely here, and the civil rights revolutions that inform modern morals. America spends more on military than the rest of the world combined, and therefore has massive influence
So that’s my context for being here. I was born pretty far away in Europe, which is great in its own ways. But if you really want to play the game at the highest level, America is the place to do it. Everyone else is just trying to catch up. Or they are enjoying a happy low stress life of wine and women with a high standard of living and low inequality — which are definitely unamerican ideals XD
It depends on what you mean. America the government courting christofascism? Hell fucking no. I wish all the Republicans and neolibs in power would have a heart attack. I also wish to live long enough to read Trump’s and Alito’s obituaries. But I do love my local community too much to just abandon them. At best, I would call my relationship with America akin to Stockholm Syndrome.
Fun fact: The term “Stockholm Syndrome” was a term coined to silence a woman who criticized the bumbled police response that put her and other hostages in even more danger. She wasn’t enamored of her captors, but instead critical of the police.
I’ve visited America a bunch of times and I really like it as a place, they have amazing scenery pretty much everywhere you look, and just about every individual American I’ve met has been really nice.
BUT…
I’d never want to live there. Their healthcare system is insane (sorry Americans but it is) and politically as a nation they’re pretty bonkers. Guns, religion, general sort of global belligerence etc.
Also as an aside, San Francisco is genuinely one of the strangest places I’ve ever been to. I dunno if I was just there at a weird time, but it seemed like every single person there was either a millionaire or homeless. Absolutely nothing in between.
Work takes me to Houston from time to time, and I wholeheartedly agree. I would never want to live there.
It seems that whenever you find something likeable about the place, it turns out to be a product of a predatory system.
I seriously hope the workers at T.J. Birria Y Mas down in Missouri City are well paid and cared for (I doubt it), because they’re doing an awesome job and it’s hard not to love that place.
Oh nobody likes the healthcare system except the people profiting from it and the people who think billionaires will love them and share if they sing their praises enough.
Meh. I’m an American and I don’t hate it here. But I’m from (and moved back to) a culturally distinct place (New Orleans) so I don’t really identify with the dominant culture. I loathe the politics/corruption and how our government is structured. (The amendments are the best part of our constitution and maybe we should think about that for a bit.) I’m deeply ashamed that we’re the world’s biggest arms dealer and oil/gas producer.
That being said, we have beautiful landscapes and individual American people are usually kind, decent people, at least on an interpersonal level. The corruption of companies and elected officials doesn’t usually extend to the middle class. (Like, you don’t have to bribe someone to get a driver’s license or permits or whatever.) There’s obviously loads of advantages to being an American citizen, just as there are to being an EU citizen. I love our national parks. Just the western half of the United States contains enough varied forms of amazing landscapes to keep a person occupied for a lifetime.
So, I wouldn’t say I like America as a political entity. It’s definitely in my top 30 or so countries to live. I wouldn’t give up my citizenship for a random place but, having travelled extensively, there’s a lot of countries that have a better form of government and a healthier balance between oligarchs and labor.
I’ve always thought of America as a teenager - we’re sophomoric, rebellious, and self- centered. We don’t have the history of most other countries. Our settlement and the beginnings of our government are really not long ago and most of us are just a few generations deep. I’m thankful for my life here and appreciate the struggles my family endured to make life better for the next generation.
Careful with the idea that you’re a young country with limited history. Your indigenous peoples may view the matter (rightfully) quite differently.
In Australia we actually changed the lyrics to our national anthem a few years back. It did say “…we are young and free”. Which is a bit of a ‘fuck you’ to the people who have lived on and cared for the land for upwards of 50,000 years. So it’s now “we are one and free”.
I’m not chastising you, just prompting you to think about things differently.
Not sure I share that viewpoint for the US, the history of the indigenous is the story of the people, not the nation.
And the US has many more populations that have great history, from EU and Africa.
But the beginning of its history is founded on the gathering and interaction of all those different cultures.
So for me saying the country is young doesn’t quite have the same connotations of erasure from colonialist, it mostly makes me think of how current the melting pot of all those different cultures are.
I still agree we shouldn’t diminish the importance of indigenous people in it.
Arguably, many people groups indigenous to what is now the US (and often times into Canada and Mexico as well) were each their own countries and sometimes joined into confederacies (for example the Iroquois Confederacy and some others). I do think indigenous voices frequently get lost (and that does need fixing), but I don't know if there's value in representing them as a single unit as though they were a single nation before. Many groups came over at different times, migrated around, etc. They're not even all in the same macro language families (and may have come from separate peopling events, but that's a whole other can of worms).
You’re past your teenage years; Australia and New Zealand are younger. America is more like someone in their 20s fucking up their life with party drugs. You might make it, you might not. Either way it seems right now you need a hard reset.
I fucking hate this dystopian hellscape of misery and torment and I hope it gets glassed. Land of the fee, home of the slave. If I get drafted in WW3 I’m a turncoat as soon as they hand me a gun.
Not even a little. We are being forced into sickness and poverty. We make just enough to put food on the table and even that’s getting harder. An unexpected illness is setting people back on their bills. Every law that’s passed goes against what the people want and the only way this will ever change is if we can afford to pay off a politician like all the major companies do. Voting doesn’t feel like it makes a difference anymore and the only platform it feels like they use is “at least I’m not them”. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again if someone paid for us to leave the US I’d be packed within a couple of hours.
I have distant extended family in New Brunswick. It’s not good enough to get me Canadian citizenship, but it could be worth a try when Civil War 2: Here We Go Again starts.
If you say “I’m going to America” pretty much everyone on the planet knows you mean “I’m going to the United States of America”. No one cares if someone uses the short hand of “I’m going to America”.