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.
that’s not a nation, just 4 corporations in a trench coat.
France. Motherfuckers will go on strike at the drop of a hat. I wish, at least in Canada, we had the same kind of guts. Quebec is the closest but not nearly close enough.
I love the French for being the most outspoken people among the European countries and having a ton of good initiatives going on. But don’t idolize them, most of their population is just as braindead and complacent as the rest of us Europeans, and their general unwillingness to speak English like most other Europeans hinders the spreading of their radical initiatives in the rest of Europe. (Sorry for the blatant generalizing. Not every French, not every European, …)
It depends. America is really big, so it needs more corporations to fill a coat.
The Uk is just 1.5 corporations in a trench coat
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
No. I saw American CIA death squads killing my people, funding one side of a civil war while Russia funded the other. America and Russia used us as pawns, America wanted to keep Russia out of this hemisphere, and destroying my country and people was an acceptable loss. After our country was gutted, we fled to safety and any way to find work to survive, so we went to the place that kept saying it was the best in the world, and we were called wet backs, and told we were job thieves. After all this, my country was rebuilt by American corporations, who now own everything. Now, half the American politicians who fought so hard to keep Russia out, are sucking Putin dick and continue to blame my race for all the ills of their own fucked up society. And the other half is self righteous, telling everyone else around the world how to behave and calling everyone else out, while forgetting all the shit their country did and never made amends for.
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’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.
