Ask Lemmy

America is a continent

"All men are created equal"

Is slave state

Never has been

I think what you and many others here are hovering around is the American Civil Religion. A blend of quasi religious dogma and beliefs sold to us at a young age to form a foundation for the shared delusion of American exceptionalism.

Might sound crazy but check out the precepts below and then keep them in mind when you hear politicians and observe the rituals that reinforce American propaganda.

The next time you are asked to stand and put your hand over your heart for the pledge of allegiance... the moments of silence for first responders.. or you hear someone say "thank you for your service"' to some dude who at best rode a desk and at worse tortured people at a black site like gitmo. Nowadays there is less overt mention of god but the ideals themselves take the place. When I hear someone grateful for freedom I ask to do what? And if there is not more context its probably just a little prayer to uncle sam.

In a survey of more than fifty years of American civil religion scholarship, Squiers identifies fourteen principal tenets:

Filial piety (veneration of founding fathers in context)
Reverence to certain sacred texts and symbols such as the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the flag
The sanctity of American institutions
The belief in God or a deity
The idea that rights are divinely given
The notion that freedom comes from God through government
Governmental authority comes from God or a higher transcendent authority
The conviction that God can be known through the American experience
God is the supreme judge
God is sovereign
America's prosperity results from God's providence
**America is a "city on a hill" or a beacon of hope and righteousness**
The principle of sacrificial death and rebirth
America serves a higher purpose than self-interests (AKA spreading democracy, liberating any county that nationalizes their resources [or has very good bananas)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat)

He further found that there are no statistically significant differences in the amount of American civil religious language between Democrats and Republicans, incumbents and non-incumbents nor Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates.[5]: 51–74 

Rotted everyones brains out

No. I saw American CIA death squads killing my people, funding one side of a civil war while Russia funded the other. America and Russia used us as pawns, America wanted to keep Russia out of this hemisphere, and destroying my country and people was an acceptable loss. After our country was gutted, we fled to safety and any way to find work to survive, so we went to the place that kept saying it was the best in the world, and we were called wet backs, and told we were job thieves. After all this, my country was rebuilt by American corporations, who now own everything. Now, half the American politicians who fought so hard to keep Russia out, are sucking Putin dick and continue to blame my race for all the ills of their own fucked up society. And the other half is self righteous, telling everyone else around the world how to behave and calling everyone else out, while forgetting all the shit their country did and never made amends for.

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.

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.

Genuine as in means what it says and does it?

Doesn't seem so. Seems like a lot of people are happy to twist the letter of the law in order to corrupt it's spirit and get their own way.

I don't think you can get more genuine than a south Florida gator wrassler speed balling meth in his taint while voting against his own interests. Genuine does not equal intelligent or bestow leadership abilities.

America is 2 continents with dozens of nations and countries.

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.

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.

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.

Its a genuine nation in the sense it has sovereignty through projection of force and, agreement with other nations.

do you perhaps mean it wasn’t founded upon genuine ideals? As in it was founded “by the people for the people” but that might not necessarily be the case?

One event away from civil war

The previous civil war didn’t actually quash those who supported the confederacy - it even allowed traitors to be treated like war heros, and have statues put up. No other nation, as far as I am aware, celebrates their traitors in the same way they celebrate the victors.

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.

Yeah, we are a nation, but I can definitely see how we might look a bit dysfunctional from the outside.

First and foremost, remember that it is very rare for someone to write an article or post about things that are doing just fine. So you are mostly going to hear about disagreements or angry opponents or laws that are problematic. That kind of content gets more views.

I’ll also say that our 2 party system is practically designed to cause division and arguments. And it is always at its worst during presidential election years. But at the average citizen level, most of us are just going about our lives with no pent up malice for those who don’t see the world the same as us. We definitely have generalizations in our head about people from other areas of the country, but with a few radical exceptions, the vast majority of Americans view ourselves as a nation. Even if we don’t agree on a lot of the details.