Kind of a vague question. But I guess anyone that responds can state their interpretation.
Edit:
I guess I’m asking because everything I’ve learned about America seems to not be what I was told? Idk how to explain it. Like it feels like USA is one event away from a civil war outright corruption and turning into a D class country.
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. As someone from a country currently going through civil war, the US is nowhere near close.
Sorry you’re going through that. Civil war is a tragedy no matter where or why.
The difference with America is, I think, that ours has already come and gone, but it never really did go away because we failed to stamp it out and rebuild properly. The rebellion was romanticized and whitewashed, sanitized and lionized. It’s always said that the south lost the war and won the peace. It’s probably never going to break out into a full-on fighting war like it was, but it exists very much as a bane on our social fabric, the integrity of our institutions, and our socioeconomics. America can never become as good as its advertising until it has reckoned with its deepest schisms.
To answer OP’s question: The America I was raised to believe in (this one, to put it succinctly) doesn’t exist. I emigrated with my family to the UK, my ancestral family home. Without America, me, my wife, and child probably could never have existed, coming together from different parts of the world as our families did. I’m glad of that, but we had to divest ourselves from its fate or remain complicit in tyranny and war. My process of disillusionment began before I was even fully grown, over 20 years ago, when the towers fell and I began to start asking questions about how we got to that point, and why we reacted as we did.
No matter where life takes me I’ll probably always stand for the enlightenment ideals of that mythical America I was raised to believe in, but it exists for me as a platonic ideal, a sort of mathematical absolute that can only ever be badly approximated in real world terms.
Every country is different.
I would say at least in the American civil war I know who to root for. In ours we’ve got a corrupt kleptocratic oppressive government turned military junta vs a genocidal militia headed by a rich and powerful warlord with ties to the Russian Wagner group. And oh by the way the militia was supported and enabled by the former regime as they used it to hold onto power but now it’s turned against them. So it’s like “pick your poison”. I thank my lucky stars I don’t live there but I also stopped following the news cause it’s horrible.
I agree America has some serious problems but they’re just not on the same level as the 3rd world.
That’s awful beyond words. I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that you’re caught in that, or that Wagner is so vilely prolific that what you’ve told me doesn’t even narrow it down to the continent.
It’s Sudan. War’s been raging since April of last year. The war is between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces, a militia responsible for a ethnic genocides in Darfur years ago that are now being repeated.
Also I’m not caught up in that at all. Some extended family is. But I’m very very lucky to have been living somewhere else since I was 6.
I’ve heard a bit about it. That’s a really messy one and it’s really hard to see things getting better anytime soon.
I kind of use that term lightly. I don’t mean an outright war exactly… I just mean organized corruption.
I’m continually disappointed that America doesn’t live up to what I learned about in civics class 30 years ago.
I have clear memories of sitting in class as a kid, asking the most basic questions about checks and balances, separation of powers, equality under the law etc. and being absolutely mesmerized by the topics. I remember thinking, “wow, I live there? I’m so lucky.”
When my teacher said “not even the president is above the law” I remember some other kid really trying to grasp the idea that every single person is supposed to be treated equally by the justice system, regardless of their family, job, or religion. It wasn’t a concept that came naturally to everyone.
It wasn’t until high school and college that I finally understood that these were just ideals that we talk about but don’t fully actualize. America is not the unicorn we think it is, but we’re great at lying to ourselves from a very young age. Howard Zinn was a big part of my waking up to reality.
That’s not to say we don’t strive for improvement, but when one of the two political parties is hell-bent on dismantling the administrative state, taking away bodily autonomy for more than half the population, reverting our ‘culture’ and laws to the 1800s, destroying our planet, discarding science, fetishizing killing-machines in daily life and warfare across the globe, and so much more regressive bullshit, we’re not really setting ourselves up to realize those ideals.
So yeah, America is a genuine country, but it’s not what it should be or what many people think it is.
The nation was built on ideals it wasn’t practicing at the time. It has made the country a hypocrite, but it also gives guidance on what the country should be.
That there is a conflict between the ideals of the country and the current practice of those ideals is nothing new.
I would say that the only thing that makes a nation genuine is that there is land that a government can control, defend and administrate.
Which also makes a lot of unrecognized nations still nations. And I’m fine with that. Taiwan is the most obvious example, but another would be Somaliland.
I find nations problematic because they are units that are too large and therefore are controlled by groups not easily overseen and almost impossible to make accountable by the population.
The USA is not only a nation but an empire, which is like a nation with an integrated, violently imposed pyramid scheme.
If only we could find a way to organize into independent smaller units that federate into larger units and remain tolerant of the differences of the smaller units. Ironically that is what the USA seems to have attempted to do with their united states thing?
Europe seems more successful on that front.
To a degree, but recent years have definitely shown the flaws of the EU model as it currently is. I do have some faith that the EU can and will reform itself to overcome those problems, as it is still a very young entity in the grand scheme of things and is generally quite effective legislatively. Things like Brexit and Hungary’s obstructionism show that it is currently far too easy for governments within the EU to scapegoat it for local problems, and the Syrian migrant crisis really tested the unity of it.
The US tried that. It was called the Articles of Confederation. It didn’t really work out.
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I feel like touching up the history books and even other areas of teaching is a disservice to humanity. It’s like it’s an active set up for failure or abuse. I was never taught anything realistic 20 years ago. It’s like I was cattle for someone else’s sick dream. Sometimes it feels like heartlessness is rewarded and masked as goodness.
I have to wonder if both our teachers (the good ones in elementary, at least) meant to inform us about how it should work, because that was all we could grasp at the time? Maybe it was their (misguided?) attempt to make us experience serious anger and feel called to action as we discover the truth of the system for ourselves. I’m a teacher, and I have sometimes realized students are not capable of understanding a complex situation, and in those cases I have attempted to at least ensure they understand I am giving them an idealized, simplified perspective of that situation that does not apply to how it works in reality. I try to plant the seeds for a critical understanding in the future, but I am sure there are students out there that believe I lied to them about how the world really works.
ETA: added “good” to modify “ones” in first sentence for clarity
I guess it depends on what you mean by “genuine”?
The US, federally, is a single country, but socially and regionally, it’s 50 separate states.
Nobody is going to confuse the overall social climate in my home state of Oregon with, say, Texas, or even our own neighbor, Idaho.
Yeah, we are a nation, but I can definitely see how we might look a bit dysfunctional from the outside.
First and foremost, remember that it is very rare for someone to write an article or post about things that are doing just fine. So you are mostly going to hear about disagreements or angry opponents or laws that are problematic. That kind of content gets more views.
I’ll also say that our 2 party system is practically designed to cause division and arguments. And it is always at its worst during presidential election years. But at the average citizen level, most of us are just going about our lives with no pent up malice for those who don’t see the world the same as us. We definitely have generalizations in our head about people from other areas of the country, but with a few radical exceptions, the vast majority of Americans view ourselves as a nation. Even if we don’t agree on a lot of the details.
I think what you and many others here are hovering around is the American Civil Religion. A blend of quasi religious dogma and beliefs sold to us at a young age to form a foundation for the shared delusion of American exceptionalism.
Might sound crazy but check out the precepts below and then keep them in mind when you hear politicians and observe the rituals that reinforce American propaganda.
The next time you are asked to stand and put your hand over your heart for the pledge of allegiance… the moments of silence for first responders… or you hear someone say “thank you for your service”’ to some dude who at best rode a desk and at worse tortured people at a black site like gitmo. Nowadays there is less overt mention of god but the ideals themselves take the place. When I hear someone grateful for freedom I ask to do what? And if there is not more context its probably just a little prayer to uncle sam.
In a survey of more than fifty years of American civil religion scholarship, Squiers identifies fourteen principal tenets:
Filial piety (veneration of founding fathers in context) Reverence to certain sacred texts and symbols such as the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the flag The sanctity of American institutions The belief in God or a deity The idea that rights are divinely given The notion that freedom comes from God through government Governmental authority comes from God or a higher transcendent authority The conviction that God can be known through the American experience God is the supreme judge God is sovereign America's prosperity results from God's providence **America is a "city on a hill" or a beacon of hope and righteousness** The principle of sacrificial death and rebirth America serves a higher purpose than self-interests (AKA spreading democracy, liberating any county that nationalizes their resources [or has very good bananas)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat)He further found that there are no statistically significant differences in the amount of American civil religious language between Democrats and Republicans, incumbents and non-incumbents nor Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates.[5]: 51–74
Rotted everyones brains out
Civil war? Not even close.
Outright corruption? Business interests have always ruled the country, this is not new.
The bigger picture is that America is the most violent country since Nazi Germany. No other country comes close to our death toll. We spend $1trillion each year on violence and weapons- and those bombs must be dropped, because we need a reason to spend >$1trillion next year.
I guess I’m asking because everything I’ve learned about America seems to not be what I was told? Idk how to explain it. Like it feels like USA is one event away from ~~a civil war~~ outright corruption and turning into a D class country.
Might be time to check how much doomscrolling you’re doing. You can drive from Miami to Seattle and you’ll just run into the same dude but with maybe a different flair.
The news and politicians try their hardest to make it look like we’re one single-issue vote bait away from war.
I don’t think you can get more genuine than a south Florida gator wrassler speed balling meth in his taint while voting against his own interests. Genuine does not equal intelligent or bestow leadership abilities.
America is a continent
I’m American, so i was taught to be stuck up enough to just say America.
Genuine in what sense? Like is it a ‘real’ country kind of genuine? I don’t see why it wouldn’t be.
Its a genuine nation in the sense it has sovereignty through projection of force and, agreement with other nations.
do you perhaps mean it wasn’t founded upon genuine ideals? As in it was founded “by the people for the people” but that might not necessarily be the case?
One event away from civil war
The previous civil war didn’t actually quash those who supported the confederacy - it even allowed traitors to be treated like war heros, and have statues put up. No other nation, as far as I am aware, celebrates their traitors in the same way they celebrate the victors.
“All men are created equal”
Is slave state
Never has been
