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 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.
America is a continent
I’m American, so i was taught to be stuck up enough to just say America.
It may have been white picket fences and opportunity before my lifetime but I never seen it. Feels like its all been milked dry and you got to run the hamster wheel or starve.
The rich call the shots in government since they just bribe and whine till they get what they want.
Americans are all bark and no bite domestically (I know where the big evil worldwide). I don’t think anyone has the balls to push a civil war. Even Trumps cultist folded after someone got shot attacking the capital.
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.
This is a very good way to say it.
I love my country for its heart, its people, its ideals.
I mourn my country for its ignorance, its failures, and its systemic ills.
I hate my country for what it has done to most of the rest of the world in trying to ‘supposedly’ promote freedom and democracy.
It’s a very complicated thing, patriotism. And it means nothing if you have it while your eyes are closed to reality.
A lot of that is politicians creating an ‘us - them’ situation and the news sensationalizing it because it makes people watch which is revenue. That said, the Republican party has gone completely off the deep end. I have some friends that are very worried. I have some friends who believe strongly enough in our system of checks and balances that they’re not terribly worried, just irritated and frustrated.
ETA- also, they have to fill the 24-hour news channels with something, so everything is documented and shown over and over. That’s why people on the right think crime is increasing and people on the left think racism is increasing. Both occur less, but are in your face more.
America is 2 continents with dozens of nations and countries.
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.
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?
If only we could find a way to organize
I could not observe any attempts at reorganizing (except Trumpeltier’s little vomit recently) during the last decades.
So: wtf are you talking about?
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.
“All men are created equal”
Is slave state
Never has been
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.
Genuine in what sense? Like is it a ‘real’ country kind of genuine? I don’t see why it wouldn’t be.
that’s not a nation, just 4 corporations in a trench coat.
Okay but which nation isn’t?
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, …)
Ah, yes, strike, the national sport of France.
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
And a royal family.
You seen their estates? They’re the half corporation
Cuba?
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.
Eh? We are a real nation made of real people, yes. But if you look under the hood of any government in the Americas, yes even the US, yes even Canada, we are so close still to the trauma that our nations were born from, we just aren’t as civilized as countries that have been around longer.
