Pride in one’s nation is one of the weakest and most pathetic types of pride because a nation’s greatness is a result of so many different people’s contribution. Unless you are FDR level, you contributed very little.
But American pride in being American is ridiculous.
Americans have nothing to be proud of, not today’s Americans anyway. The people who made America great are all dead. The people in power today are those who threw away the greatness their predecessors: their betters, created. The same is true of the English. Victorians or even Regency English would despise their descendants pathetic weakness, foolishness and stupidity.
What are you proud of, exactly? Getting you asses whipped by Iran? Impoverishing 60% of your own population? Helping Israel commit genocide? Killing millions in Iraq for no goddamn reason, since Iraq never attacked America? Gutting the Bill of Rights? Having the most corrupt President in American history?
One can criticize FDR and the post-war liberals of the 40s and 50s and 60s for various reasons: but they built an America which was great in many ways: that worked for more and more people, that delivered a good life for many, and which became more fair over time (civil liberties, for example, and increased rights for women.)
Americans were given the best hand in the world: the industrial and tech lead, and they pissed it away. They literally, voluntarily, shipped their industry to China acting as if making a an extra percentage point more profit was all that mattered.
America’s always been evil. All Empires are, and so are all settler colonial states. It’s just the way it is. But Americans of previous generations were competent, and starting with FDR, they at least took care of their own people. They were an American Athens, where immigrants were welcome, where people could make something of themselves, where the world’s great scholars and scientists wanted to be.
America had it all, and pissed it away.
No country, like no person, is of a piece. There is always good and evil, things to be proud of and things to be ashamed of.
But everything great in America was created by people who are dead or old, or are downstream of the post-war liberal period. The tech for the internet was created by post-war government agencies. The world wide web was invented by a government scientist working in an agency created by post-war liberals. Modern GUI interfaces were created in the early 70s and everything that flows from all this, including cell and smart phones is a result of technologies created by government or Bell Labs.
The great tech revolutions of the 80s, 90s and 2000s were all matters of exploiting fundamental discoveries and work done in the post-war era and the cupboard is now bare. America is cutting spending on research, burning its seed corn, even as China ramps up research. America is impoverishing its own people, even as China forces housing prices lower and works to improve wages and living standards for the majority.
To be proud of being American today is pathetic. What is there to be proud of? Destroying the bill of rights? Having a president who openly takes bribes in office? Losing the the tech and industrial lead? Making most of the population poor? Being the attack dog of Israel, with most politicians doing the bidding of a foreign country to the detriment of their own people?
Everything great about America is a legacy of the past, not a product of the present and being proud of being American is like being proud your parents left you a billion dollars, and you’re now worth a hundred million.
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