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Is the United States Exceptional?

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Re: Is the United States Exceptional?

#111

Post by Jensson »

WalterBright wrote: post #50
karpierz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> principles of all men being created equal, along with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness Unless you're black. Or female. Or Asian. etc. Why does this founding myth persist?

It applies to Blacks, females, and Asians. Etc.

Not when it was founded, your argument was that it was exceptional since it was founded on those principles but it wasn't. USA gave rights to black people and women about the same time the rest of the western world did, they weren't ahead on this.

Re: Is the United States Exceptional?

#112

Post by srvmshr »

osigurdson wrote: post #104
jaqalopes wrote: post #67

All the facts here are fine but I'm left wondering, what are the stakes of "proving" how great America is? What good do all those aircraft carriers do me? Holding down the Chinese, I guess. But then, isn't holding the rest of the world down while the "American way of life" carries on the whole point of all this "greatness"? At the end of WWII, America was the last rich country standing and proceeded to go round the w…

I don't think any historical power (Assyrian, Persian, Roman, Mongolian, Japan and even Britain) can be compared to the modern US. Those were just different and far more brutal times across all of humanity. If the US had been even remotely like one of these powers at the end of WWII, they would have dominated the entire world as the only nuclear power. Yet, they choose not to do so and allowed their enemies to develo…

> Yet, they choose not to do so and allowed their enemies to develop nuclear weapons on their own.

If they had a choice to not allow them develop lethal weapons, they would by all means. McCarthyism executed a few, incarcerated several & targeted scores on charges of defense espionage, over a decade, including Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. Not a great example. If the world has misunderstood this grandiosity, US should be willing to let Iranians & Koreans build their nuclear weapons, no?

> The US has been an incredible force of good in the world for the most part.

Reference needed to make such "exceptional" statement. The natural status quo would have inadvertently kept some power balance with or without US. International policing has just made the waters murkier. AFAIK US has meddled with politics of dozens of countries for political & economic gains. Count almost the whole of Latin America in it. Confessions of an economic hitman is a good read (it exaggerated several claims but the theme is consistent & accepted to be major US policies) Middle East is a quagmire, and hard to comment in this post - but what was the rationale of pitting Pakistan against India militarily for decades & now India against China. This is setting up a war of attrition on someone else's expense. As an Indian by birth, I know the numbers run into thousands of soldiers & civilians killed in conflict, mostly funded by arms & assistance to Pakistan over 80s & 90s. Could you forget Nixon sent 7th Fleet to Arabian sea with an intention to nuke India if IndoPak war persisted to favor a dictator in Pakistan [1,1a, 1b]? Not to forget Taliban was propped up by US [2] & ISIS was created in the vacuum of lawlessness left behind after Opn. Iraqi Freedom [3].

> I don't believe the "American way of life" is keeping anyone down other than those that wish to oppress others.

Space is a constraint for a full scale diatribe, but the Hispanic part of the world would like to have a word about it at least. Trade protectionism & political bullying has affected Latin American countries for several decades. Hispanic workers suffer lower wages in general than Americans, although working harder on most menial jobs [4]

1. https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-indian...

1a. https://www.firstpost.com/world/the-1971-war-when-richard-ni...

1b. https://www.nytimes.com/1985/07/22/us/nixon-says-he-consider...

2. https://www.agoristnexus.com/taliban/

3. https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/iraqs-power-vacuum-cou...

4. https://universitybusiness.com/press-release/study-hispanic-...

Re: Is the United States Exceptional?

#113

Post by yucky »

pishpash wrote: post #88
yucky wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>this is typical puffery by the ascendent Anglo-Saxons who were looking for a superiority narrative By what metric was there not superiority?

At the time? The Revolution-era US was none of the things that the linked article quotes as examples of exceptional greatness. It was a relative backwater, facing internal and external security threats and struggling to get a national government working.

Even then you had superiority over the native population in every metric (economic, health, education etc) unless I'm missing something.

Re: Is the United States Exceptional?

#114

Post by thiht »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #98
srvmshr wrote: post #11

US definitely has exceptional successes, but there are so many systemic flaws which other countries may or may not have, and where US could vastly improve. * High medical costs * Highest maternal mortality among developed countries * Highest income gaps * High education cost & the vicious circle of college debt. * Increasing trends of bankruptcy & paycheck-to-paycheck sustenance. * Lack of public transportation issue…

This reads like a sudden kick to a friend in the nads and then telling him "you're a pretty good guy". What is the point of a post like this? It's not balanced at all if your last statement is to be considered. If you don't like the country then just come out and own it.

OP didn’t say they don’t like the US, but that there are tons of things to improve.

Thinking US is the best country in the world and rejecting the issues is why it’s considered a shithole by a growing population of the world. As a French, the US seems like at third world country to me regarding social rights and benefits.

Re: Is the United States Exceptional?

#115

Post by timbit42 »

rfreytag wrote: post #94

The author fails to consider the direction or rate of change the USA standing versus other nations. For most factors considered by the author the outlook is not good for the USA. Churchill did say the USA can be counted on to do the right thing after trying every other option; but nothing changes for the better if one's head is stuck in the sand.

It wasn't Churchill who said that.

Re: Is the United States Exceptional?

#116

Post by wahnfrieden »

kentonv wrote: post #66
oblio wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, the common misunderstanding is one of the core American tenets. It's one of the core American myths which is directly transmitted through American education, and the vast majority of Americans believe it. Even those that say they don't will recoil when you disprove or contest some key aspects, it's a very ingrained idea. Everyone wants to be part of an exceptional nation because then there's a chance th…

I'm American and the first time I remember hearing the term "American exceptionalism" was when I was about 30 years old. Even then, I've almost always heard it brought up in the context of questioning it. Maybe once or twice I've heard a politician on TV professing to believe in it. To this day I'm still not sure I know what the phrase is supposed to mean. So I don't think it's as widespread as you say, though I can…

extremely popular in certain right wing circles

Re: Is the United States Exceptional?

#117

Post by cat_plus_plus »

palmetieri2000 wrote: post #107
cat_plus_plus wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does a Wikipedia page improve my life and why do I have to dig into it rather than seeing these innovations around me first hand? As for Russia, remember you are talking to a Russian. Sure Pushkin was pretty good, in early 19th century. What good did you see coming out of Russia in 21st century, which we are almost a quarter into? Lots of things being invented in US suggest that US circumstances are pretty good f…

>How does a Wikipedia page improve my life and why do I have to dig into it rather than seeing these innovations around me first hand? Might as well read: "why do I need research, evidence or information when I could just take anecdote and opinion?" Because no one cares about your opinion and your anecdotes lead you to draw incorrect conclusions. You have countered precisely 0 of my points because you are conflating…

No, you are conflating theory and practice, innovation entails bringing science and technology to public awareness and benefit. I don't need Wikipedia to know that China is brilliant at gain of function research for viruses, but can't say that I am grateful for the results. German BioNTech and American Moderna mRNA research that lets me go out without worrying about dying from said viruses is much more handy in my daily life. And if Huawei made a robot that washed my dishes and took out my garbage everyday, I would appreciate that too.

Re: Is the United States Exceptional?

#118

Post by osigurdson »

srvmshr wrote: post #112
osigurdson wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think any historical power (Assyrian, Persian, Roman, Mongolian, Japan and even Britain) can be compared to the modern US. Those were just different and far more brutal times across all of humanity. If the US had been even remotely like one of these powers at the end of WWII, they would have dominated the entire world as the only nuclear power. Yet, they choose not to do so and allowed their enemies to develo…

> Yet, they choose not to do so and allowed their enemies to develop nuclear weapons on their own. If they had a choice to not allow them develop lethal weapons, they would by all means. McCarthyism executed a few, incarcerated several & targeted scores on charges of defense espionage, over a decade, including Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. Not a great example. If the world has misunderstood this…

> Yet, they choose not to do so and allowed their enemies to develop nuclear weapons on their own

The US was the only nuclear power in the world from 1945 to 1949. My argument is, if the US had acted like any of the historical (and much more brutal) great powers such as Mongolians, Romans, Assyrians, Persians, etc, they would have used this to eliminate geopolitical enemies such as the Soviet Union. My argument is the US represents a fairly significant change to how great political powers operate - which is nothing like the Mongolians as the previous commenter suggests.

Re: Is the United States Exceptional?

#119

Post by srvmshr »

osigurdson wrote: post #118
srvmshr wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet, they choose not to do so and allowed their enemies to develop nuclear weapons on their own. If they had a choice to not allow them develop lethal weapons, they would by all means. McCarthyism executed a few, incarcerated several & targeted scores on charges of defense espionage, over a decade, including Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. Not a great example. If the world has misunderstood this…

> Yet, they choose not to do so and allowed their enemies to develop nuclear weapons on their own The US was the only nuclear power in the world from 1945 to 1949. My argument is, if the US had acted like any of the historical (and much more brutal) great powers such as Mongolians, Romans, Assyrians, Persians, etc, they would have used this to eliminate geopolitical enemies such as the Soviet Union. My argument is th…

The US acted with a lot of contempt for "commies" as they called them. The reason they didn't attack was not because of magnanimity but the very fact that world had exhausted itself with the bloodiest war in mankind over the last 6 years. By 1949, the cat was out of the bag with the RDS-1 with USSR. Until 1952, US didn't have a viable means to fly several heavy thermonuclear devices to a heavily fortified Russia & drop it (The B-52 Flying fortress was the first viable delivery vehicle which could fly high & heavy)

And they did try, if you remember Korean War happened in 1950, which was a push to terminate communism in Asia. That failed. It was not because of a lack of bombs - but winning a war takes boots on the ground eventually. And US post-war, as mentioned, had just started ramping on its military might again after the heavy material losses. WW2 was not a PlayStation game fought with cheats. US lost lots of machinery & money in the process- and desperately needed to recuperate. Driving a weathered military to fight the brutal Red Army was unthinkable (Fun fact: Japan did not surrender because of the bombs, but an impending Russian invasion very soon. They were preparing to keep fighting on. Russian brutality was a precedent that the Imperial mandarins were not prepared to face & Sakhalin was already seeing Red Army buildup. They would have exacted their revenge for their 1905 defeat with heavy costs)

Whats the point of dropping a few bombs? US didn't have enough nuclear materials post-war immediately & USSR was a vast country sparsely populated except Moscow & Kyiv. If in doubt, just look at the map of USSR & how spread out the military bases were.

Summarily, it was not magnanimity but a lack of provocation, opportunity & resources to carry out a total annihilation of its adversaries.

edit: more context

Re: Is the United States Exceptional?

#120

Post by WalterBright »

Jensson wrote: post #111
WalterBright wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It applies to Blacks, females, and Asians. Etc.

Not when it was founded, your argument was that it was exceptional since it was founded on those principles but it wasn't. USA gave rights to black people and women about the same time the rest of the western world did, they weren't ahead on this.

The US did not give rights to Blacks, etc. The US recognized those rights. This is the genius of the Declaration of Independence. This is exceptional.

The criticism that the Constitution didn't go all the way in the first go is a bit unreasonable. People forget how far it did go. For example, it rejected the notion of a nobility class. It explicitly rejected establishment of a state religion. We forget how exceptional this was at the time, we just take it for granted.

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