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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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.