Is America Really That Bad?

Cannizzaro@feddit.ch to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 313 points –

Been seeing a lot about how the government passes shitty laws, lot of mass shootings and expensive asf health care. I come from a developing nation and we were always told how America is great and whatnot. Are all states is America bad ?

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Ah, what a great example of a thought terminating cliche, a statement that does what it says to save you from cognitive dissonance and nuance. You are clearly using chauvinistic as a pejorative, so you need to either justify how they're wrong or take it back and stop muddying the waters with your empty ideological language.

To be clear, I don't necessarily agree with op's statement. The US as a developed nation clearly has more opportunities and advantages than developing nations, but there are other developed nations that meet and sometimes beat the advantages the US brings. I'd argue the US is at least in top 3 of being the most successful nation in diversity and global influence, but other nations have better welfare programs, housing policy, and cultural aspects imo.

You're reading very far into my use of a word. I used it because its meaning is very applicable here. It's not "empty ideological language." It means something similar to "patriotic," though I didn't use that word because for some reason in the US patriotism is considered to be a good thing.

This user seems to think the US superior to all other countries. The word's definition certainly seems to apply:

Militant devotion to and glorification of one's country; fanatical patriotism.
Prejudiced belief in the superiority of one's own gender, group, or kind.

I agree you used chauvinistic to mean that, but you then followed it up by saying that you didn't have to justify why what they said is wrong. You do. It's also not the case that what they said was definitionally chauvinistic, although I'll let that slide because it was something similar enough.

Suppose it was the case that one nation was in every way better than all other countries. Shouldn't the citizens of that country be proud of that? Beyond pride, shouldn't they do everything they can to spread their glorious system to the world and bring prosperity to all? That doesn't necessarily mean wars and colonialism, that simply means all soft power efforts to implement systems that show themselves to work. I think the answer to this hypothetical is this nations citizens should feel pride and should spread their system.

The key point here is the United States isn't better than every country in the world, thus Americans shouldn't feel such extreme pride about their country. However, the United States is pretty good. I think some form of pride / patriotism are justified for Americans and even forms of soft power to implement effective policies are justified, but this answer is impossible to reach when you throw out all feel good thoughts about nations as chauvinistic.

This user seems to think the US superior to all other countries

I said no such thing.

Short memory, you said:

The USA, for all its faults, remains the standard against which other countries measure themselves (and find themselves lacking).

How to interpret that sentence:

  1. The USA has its faults
  2. Other countries compare themselves to the USA
  3. THEY find THEMSELVES lacking

How not to interpret that sentence:

  1. The USA is actually superior.