A lot of people were talking about the US being the greatest nation on planet Earth in that other thread and I figured I might as well make one about how the society is viewed from the outside and how the claims to American Exceptionalism is not only incorrect, but also dangerous in its promotion of blind nationalism and imperialism. No country is perfect and I'm not saying the US is the worst of all time, nor am I pointing fingers (I dislike many parts of my own country), I'm just saying that the US is clearly doing so many horrible things towards its own citizens and towards other people abroad, despite it being one of the wealthiest and most powerful countries in the world.
The reason why I say this is also because it is disappointing to hear how Americans view themselves while their country is doing all sorts of terrible things towards its own citizens and towards non-Americans. It will invade a country or a extrajudicially kill a non-American while saying its the most democratic and just country in the world. It will retaliate a terrible terrorist attack while ignoring its own terrible imperialistic actions towards other nations and people (Chile, Iran, Cuba, etc.). It will collect data on anyone, anywhere, while promoting "small government" and protecting private companies. It will pollute and emit a large of Greenhouse Gases relative to its amount of citizens, while doing nothing to curb it or even obstruct international efforts to.
But before people jump on me, please be aware that I am not criticizing you - I am criticizing the domestic and foreign policies of the US. I am sure that you personally are a nice and great human being. I have friends and family from there, and I've also lived in the US for some time. Hell, I consume so much of its culture and I'm even regularly on this US-centric board. But the problem I have is with the society and the different structures, as it is completely messed up and have done some atrocious things then and now. So here are some of the reasons why the US or at least Americans should be more humble and try to realize the many flaws with their society in order to improve themselves and their actions towards themselves and the world:
First, some statistics from back in 2012 (which are based off this article by James Gustave Speth - read the article in full if you're interested):
Among the top 20 OECD countries, the US has:
The highest poverty rate both generally and among children
The highest income inequality
The lowest contributions of its GDP to social programs towards the worse off citizens
The lowest amount of paid vacation days and maternal/paternal days
The lowest score on the UN's material wealth for children
The lowest social mobility
The largest public and private costs towards medical treatment of its GDP
Moreover, the US has the highest:
Child mortality rate
Frequency of mental illness
Frequency of obesity
Percentage of citizens who do not receive medical treatment because of its costs
Uses of anti-depressants pr capita
The US now has the shortest expected life expectancy at birth (except for Portugal and Denmark)
When it comes to the environment, the US also
highest emitter of carbon emissions per capita
highest consumer of water per capita
The lowest score on World Economic Forum's list over environmental efforts (except for Belgium)
Biggest environmental footprint per capita (except for Belgium and Denmark)
Finally, the US suffers from
The biggest frequency of non-ratified international agreements
The lowest allocation to international development assistance and emergency help
The biggest international seller of arms and weaponry
The lowest score of student results in mathematics
The highest drop out rate in high school (except for Spain)
The highest frequency of homicides
The highest amount of imprisoned citizens both generally and per citizen
Then, the general things off the top of my head:
The point is not that the US should stop saying it's the greatest country in the world. The point is for Americans reading this thread to become aware what you are doing to yourself, to this world and to other countries. If you keep on convincing yourself that you're the greatest nation on Earth, you become blind to your own faults and risk not improving yourself. Poverty can be fixed, inequality can be fixed, you don't need to invade other countries or overthrow democratically elected leaders you don't like, and you really need to reduce your consumption of resources and emission of GHG. You shouldn't cheer when your country extrajudicially murder someone, nor should you think it's fine that your country is collecting private data about everyone.
Because in my lifetime I still see the same mistakes made over and over again and the hypocrisy of the so-called "free society" that Americans think the US is while their poor suffers because of stubbornness to realize how the societal problems can be fixed or how another foreign country is destabilized through foreign policies and military power. There are reasons why some people are anti-American and by looking inwards one might realize why this could be the case for some.
Please don't kill me.
The reason why I say this is also because it is disappointing to hear how Americans view themselves while their country is doing all sorts of terrible things towards its own citizens and towards non-Americans. It will invade a country or a extrajudicially kill a non-American while saying its the most democratic and just country in the world. It will retaliate a terrible terrorist attack while ignoring its own terrible imperialistic actions towards other nations and people (Chile, Iran, Cuba, etc.). It will collect data on anyone, anywhere, while promoting "small government" and protecting private companies. It will pollute and emit a large of Greenhouse Gases relative to its amount of citizens, while doing nothing to curb it or even obstruct international efforts to.
But before people jump on me, please be aware that I am not criticizing you - I am criticizing the domestic and foreign policies of the US. I am sure that you personally are a nice and great human being. I have friends and family from there, and I've also lived in the US for some time. Hell, I consume so much of its culture and I'm even regularly on this US-centric board. But the problem I have is with the society and the different structures, as it is completely messed up and have done some atrocious things then and now. So here are some of the reasons why the US or at least Americans should be more humble and try to realize the many flaws with their society in order to improve themselves and their actions towards themselves and the world:
First, some statistics from back in 2012 (which are based off this article by James Gustave Speth - read the article in full if you're interested):
Among the top 20 OECD countries, the US has:
The highest poverty rate both generally and among children
The highest income inequality
The lowest contributions of its GDP to social programs towards the worse off citizens
The lowest amount of paid vacation days and maternal/paternal days
The lowest score on the UN's material wealth for children
The lowest social mobility
The largest public and private costs towards medical treatment of its GDP
Moreover, the US has the highest:
Child mortality rate
Frequency of mental illness
Frequency of obesity
Percentage of citizens who do not receive medical treatment because of its costs
Uses of anti-depressants pr capita
The US now has the shortest expected life expectancy at birth (except for Portugal and Denmark)
When it comes to the environment, the US also
highest emitter of carbon emissions per capita
highest consumer of water per capita
The lowest score on World Economic Forum's list over environmental efforts (except for Belgium)
Biggest environmental footprint per capita (except for Belgium and Denmark)
Finally, the US suffers from
The biggest frequency of non-ratified international agreements
The lowest allocation to international development assistance and emergency help
The biggest international seller of arms and weaponry
The lowest score of student results in mathematics
The highest drop out rate in high school (except for Spain)
The highest frequency of homicides
The highest amount of imprisoned citizens both generally and per citizen
Then, the general things off the top of my head:
- Staging coups in Iran, Indonesia, Cuba, DRC, Chile, Afghanistan, Nicaragua
- Vietnam
- Iraq
- Afghanistan
- Crazy gun laws that won't even get changed in the face of children being murdered
- Climate change denial despite the country being the biggest GHG emitter per capita
- Rampant consumerism & commercialism of everything
- Taking away the vote from convicted felons (seriously what the fuck?)
- A large part of the country condones torture
- The death penalty
- The prison industrial complex
- Private healthcare
- Pollution
- Hating their poor as if it is their own fault for being in the situation they are in
- High exploitation of natural resources
- White supremacy and its complete oppression of Black citizens
- Genocide of Native Americans,
- Chattel slavery,
- Housing laws and segregation
- Guantamo
- Severe hypocrisy of ideals (freedom, justice, liberty, etc.)
- Supporting Israel
- Using its foreign aid to Uganda to promote evangelical Christian morals to sex (abstaining), thus throwing the country back in its efforts to curb HIV.
- Drone strikes (imagine how the US would react if another country were flying drones of its country and extrajudicially killing its citizens)
- No due process for non-Americans
- Celebrating violence and murder (see the hypocritical public reaction to the killing of bin Laden)
- Marshall plan impeding democracy by suppressing communists for running
- Shitty TV with billions of commercials every five minutes
- Militarized police force
- Air conditioners for everyone, everywhere
- Cars for everyone
- Shitty collective infrastructure
- In this so-called Land of the Free you can't even drink in public
- Inherent aversion to socialism and left-wing politics. The left is non-existent in the US.
- Broken two-party political system (it's certainly not a representative democracy)
- Christian right-winged nuts with political and economic power
- Boot straps rhetoric
- The American Dream is childishly naive and completely overlooks social environmental factors
- Supporting Saudi Arabia
- Spending an insane amount of money on their military
- Fighting against the right to abortion
- NSA and surveying everyone, especially non-Americans
The point is not that the US should stop saying it's the greatest country in the world. The point is for Americans reading this thread to become aware what you are doing to yourself, to this world and to other countries. If you keep on convincing yourself that you're the greatest nation on Earth, you become blind to your own faults and risk not improving yourself. Poverty can be fixed, inequality can be fixed, you don't need to invade other countries or overthrow democratically elected leaders you don't like, and you really need to reduce your consumption of resources and emission of GHG. You shouldn't cheer when your country extrajudicially murder someone, nor should you think it's fine that your country is collecting private data about everyone.
Because in my lifetime I still see the same mistakes made over and over again and the hypocrisy of the so-called "free society" that Americans think the US is while their poor suffers because of stubbornness to realize how the societal problems can be fixed or how another foreign country is destabilized through foreign policies and military power. There are reasons why some people are anti-American and by looking inwards one might realize why this could be the case for some.
Please don't kill me.
