The Americans owed us one for letting the French win their independence for them.
The Americans owed us one for letting the French win their independence for them.
I could go 3.5 hours north of DC and I'm in Cosmopolitan Socialist New York and I can go 3.5 hours south and I'm in Confederate flag bumper stickers next to gun racks country. It's pretty wild.Originally Posted by Spoonsky
Trump's Arizona speech was like something out of V for Vendetta.
He really seems cut from the same cloth as Benito Mussolini, politically. It's interesting to see how people like that can ride populist disaffection towards power.
I'm telling you guys, he doesn't want to win.
He's going to go full nuclear during the debates if he's still within 10% points in the polls.
"And part of what makes America an exceptional nation, is that we are also an indispensable nation.
In fact, we are the indispensable nation."
American exceptionalism is a lol-worthy doctrine to buy into, but whatever.
Nice caveat, because you knew I was going to disagree with you.
Best country in the world!
*Shotguns Bud Light and passes out
I wonder if any of the places I've lived in count.
Idk. I'd imagine I'm obviously one of the more " 'Murica!!!" type Americans we have here.
But even then, my dreams are to own a small shop and a little villa on the coast of Spain, Italy.. or somewhere in South America. Just have a very simple life with a wife and family.
I don't really feel like you can do that in America. There's too much hustle, bustle, expectation to do all of these extra things. People want the frivolities that money can bring.
People are generally rude as fuck, at least in major cities. The smaller towns most people are way too entirely set in their ways and don't care to meet new people or learn new ideas.
I just want to fuck off with a beautiful but simple woman. Just sell small goods. Newspapers. Maybe some fruits and things like that. Just live in love.
In America everything is so commercialized. Nothing is natural, everything is a caricature of something someone saw on television or an idea they came up with from the internet.
It's honestly not really that great. But I still love my country. I realize that there are plenty of opportunities to be afforded here that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. I realize that our standard of living is of luxury compared to 99% of the world.
It's crazy to me that we live in a country that basically uses more fresh water to flush our shit down a pipe within any 1 minute span than many people in the world even get in an entire year. But there's nothing you can do about stuff like that.
And I wouldn't trade it for the world. I wish I was that big of a person to say I'd rather suffer than someone else, but I wouldn't man.
I don't know. I think most of the modern world is shit. We're over-developed as a society. We have access to too much misinformation that people then consider gospel.
Anyways let me shut up I'm just rambling nonsense.
tl;dr: Ya, the United States are certainly better off than most countries, but the things we value in this country, the way we treat other people, are all honestly disgusting, materialistic, and not truly worthwhile.
Everything is a bandage to placate the masses to the real problems we have and completely ignore.
For example, I'm in class last night. Mind you, everyone in my class is a bit younger than me (I'm 27, they're basically 18-21) as I've finally gotten back into college just recently.
Point is, the assignment was to interview another person and class and then introduce them to everyone else (it's a public speaking elective). The one girl said her dream life goal was to own a pair of Christian Louboutin heels.
Could you infer that, if she were to own such expensive shoes, she was to already be successful in other areas? Sure.
But it just kind've threw me back that her goal was just to own the shoes, not to be successful in general.
Maybe I'm overthinking it a bit.
@Pepe I apologize for this. I was still waking up to the day and, as I mentioned before, was already annoyed by the anti-USA rhetoric.
But that was a dickhead comment and I apologize.
That's the sort of vapid twat who ends up on Big Brother because their goal is to be famous, rather than to do something well and have fame as a byproduct.
The United States of America is exceptional as far as the original concept went, but then the imperialists started using it to bolster their poorly-planned, universalist shit ('Empire of Liberty' roflmao), and now it doesn't mean what it actually means.
It's all good.
Freedom.
It is entirely embarrassing that the country was basically (i realize it's not this simple) founded on freedoms such as... dare I say... freedom of religion....... yet we're probably the most intolerant (as far as Western civilization goes) of anyone who isn't Christian/Catholic or Jewish lol.
That is most definitely not true.
American exceptionalism is definitely real, by the way. There's no other country anywhere near our size that upholds rule of law. Japan is the closest, but they're a shithole for other reasons
India. Not that that is relevant.
India's getting there, that's true
And of course it's relevant
The most lol part of the US is the love for 'the troops.'
Playing the anthemn before Mamma Mia? Fuck off.
Upholding the rule of law doesn't make the United States exceptional, and it isn't even compatible with the bullshit modern definitions of 'exceptionalism', most of which seem to factor in a healthy disregard for international law.
Upholding the rule of law
Unless it's someone else's or you know, vaguely inconvenient.
I don't see why 'support the troops' is something deserving of contempt.
Their political leaders who send them off to wars? Yes, fine.
But not the lads actually tasked with doing it.
I don't hold contempt for the soldiers. I hold contempt for the concept of thanking them for our freedomz.
You can lol me off the board if you want, but it just shows your ignorance of the subject. At least Lewis can make claims based in historical accuracy even if his views are different. Even then we mustn't forget that Lewis cums to the thought of Enoch Powell grandstanding.Upholding the rule of law
Unless it's someone else's or you know, vaguely inconvenient.
You take any other country anywhere near our size - yes, this includes India and Japan - and put them in our shoes, and the world is a monumentally less secure place. Obviously we've done some stupid shit; Rostow, Kissinger, Nixon were all incredibly poor decision makers, McCarthy made Americans afraid to exist, and Bush destroyed the Middle East. But the United Nations is a pretty incredible achievement, so are the altogether humane military strategies we pursue (yes, this is the case. Until about 2012 soldiers were legally obligated to value civilian lives over their own. Where else are you going to see that?), the free and open immigration policies we have; you might see this in modern Germany, or France, or the UK, but they only have the security and stability to do these things because of our military and diplomatic strength.
If you're as huge as the United States, any actions you take will have grave consequence, so it's not surprising that we've fucked up a lot. But shit, do some fucking reading, learn something, before slagging off the US. Don't be an ignorant tool.
Why's that?
Because bombing Iraq and freedom in the US have fuck all to do. if they were defending their country from invasions from every corner then fair enough. Also, it's a job and they choose to do it. No one thanks you for cracking a couple of spreadsheets.
It's a job with a huge amount of personal risk, whether they choose to do it or not. I'm comfortable not comparing building a financial model with disarming a roadside bomb. Ultimately if some people didn't choose to do it, they'd be conscripting people like you or I and fuck that.
Whether you think they're "fighting for freedom" or not is irrelevant. The armed forces, in the civilised world anyway, do what they're told to do by their political leaders. I may not agree with the aims (did Bush have aims? fuck knows) of the political leaders taking the decision, but you should have full respect for the lads who're sent over there to implement them.
I have respect. I am not thankful.
I see.
Where do you stand on humanitarian military intervention, investment in defence and the nuclear deterrent? I'm curious about this in an American context, certainly from the Democratic side.
Would love to go on but I need to go to my amateur bicycle race, where the anthem will be played before the start. Do they play the anthem in sunday league matches over there?
EDIT: Those will have to wait.
The Gaelic Games play Amhrán na bhFiann before their matches, but that's only because it's the last acceptable platform for republicanism in the north.
I'm a British patriot through and through, and I reckon I've sung God Save the Queen, in a public setting, fewer than twenty times in my life. Maybe even fewer than ten.
That's the great thing about patriotism. It can, and perhaps should, be silent.
Conveniently posted today:
https://www.thenation.com/article/co...-the-military/
This country—despite its awful treatment of soldiers when they return home—worships the cult of the military. And professional sports—especially the NFL—have played a central role. In addition to the military flyovers, the generals flipping coins at the start of the Super Bowl and the staged “reunions” at NFL games, the US Department of Defense paid $5.4 million from 2011 to 2014 to 14 NFL teams to stage “Salute the Troops” events. These involved product placement, advertising, and “casual” (also known as “subliminal”) mentions.
And now we have arrived at a frightening point where an act of dissent that has nothing to do with the military is labeled disrespectful to men and women in uniform. The message is that Kaepernick has this “freedom” to protest only because of the protections accorded us by our military. This is such a disturbing—and a very post-9/11—concept.
The military doesn’t “give” us the right to protest. The Constitution does that. Two hundred years of struggle for civil liberties does that.
If we accept the notion that we are allowed to raise our voices, or take a knee in dissent, only by the good graces of the military, then we are also implicitly saying that the military has the right to take that ability away.
The defense budget thing is tricky, because it's one of those things that, once you begin to raise it, there's really no going back. There was a year towards the beginning of the Eisenhower administration, after the NSC 68 was published, where defense spending tripled within a year. That's insanity! But you're never going to be able to pull that back down, because a) you'll always have prominent hawks who will eat you alive for ostensibly endangering the country, and b) once endowed with power, the military establishment, behaving like any other interest group, will have the resources for continued lobbying. And the military is the one actor within society who will always favor interventionism, because, at the end of the day, what other purpose do they serve? If you're the head of the US Armed Forces advising the president, and you've got his ear, you're always going to be on the side of action, in a very basic sense because you want to be *doing* something.
Basically, this is all a relic of the Cold War past that will be very, very difficult to pull back on. We could make do spending half as much as we're spending now, and use all of the extra money for healthcare, education, etc. but I don't see it ever happening.
Nuclear policy is really cool but it's such a complicated subject that I don't know too much about.
The British Empire (which effectively invented the rule of law) did that as top nation, and continued to do so in much of the world long enough to help devise and establish the apparently wholly-American United Nations. The notion of 'exceptionalism' is nothing if not rooted in historical precedent, so you're just conflating it with supremacy like every other wank.
Humanitarian intervention is usually pretty pointless. That's where free market / technology / media disseminating across the world will probably do more good in the long run.
I'm not saying that our ideas are unique, I'm saying we've been in a unique geopolitical and historical position to implement them on a global scale. You weren't, because you weren't big enough or isolated enough. And we're probably on the decline now, so the next couple centuries are going to be dominated by the 'exceptional' Chinese
You can call it supremacy but if the Russians had cultural supremacy the suicide rate would quintuple
They play it before England games at Twickenham but I don't think I've ever been at my seat in time for it (we have the walk from the Winning Post timed to perfection) and I'm struggling to think of anything else I go to where it would be played.
The Chinese won't be 'exceptional' either (although they will think they are, with their Sinocentrist shite). The original concept is a good one as far as 'Murican pride is concerned, so I don't know why they have to ruin it for themselves.
@Lewis Because Mokbull, like Pepe, GS, and pretty much everyone in the US, have no clue what de Tocqueville's concept of Anerican exceptionalism was. It has long since been co-opted by everyone (including the American Communist Party who brought the term back into vogue) to the point of meaninglessness. It is now just rah rah home team cheerleading nonsense everyone does but only the US is accused of. You can argue about degrees but the entire world partaken. No different than the fate of the Confederate flag. Who cares what the original intent was; it was co-opted and reinstated into public life and public spaces by segregationists.
What i said was pretty much exactly what de Tocqueville said, so i don't know what happened there. It's also still valid to this day, though less so ever since we got involved in world affairs
It has admittedly been decades so my memory may be faulty but I remember an emphasis on "why" as opposed to "result."
To me the results that you are referring to are far more likely explained by Olson's Power and Prosperity than de Tocqueville.
Because they're stupid and don't read books.
I thought mokbull was some from somewhere in Europe? Czech Republic or something, no? What's all this 'we' shit?
I framed the results in terms of the uniqueness of American history, as well as geographical setting. Pretty much everything in the evolution of human civilization can be explained with geography, the growth of the US especially
Mom's side is Czech, dad's side is American
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