Happy Birthday to the greatest nation on the planet !

[Lightning Lord]

Oh sciborg2, you know it's not that simple. There is nothing to the sentiment "if you don't like it, go somewhere else" when it comes to nationality. Moving to another country is a lot harder than those people who say "If blah blah blah then I'll move to Canada!" think it is. And I'm not even speaking to the personal life entanglements that ensue, just the procedural difficulties.

[Sci-2]

I'm thinking of people who just go on and on about how they hate the US, how evil it is, how this or that....while living in its borders.

I'm not saying people shouldn't criticize, but there's a difference between constructive criticism and endless whining and denigrating the country you live in.

[Lightning Lord]

I know they're annoying...but they're also the type of person least likely to go through the process of actually leaving. Sadly.

[Sci-2]

yeah, being part of a lot of protests and sit-ins...I hate those guys. We're trying to inform people about negatives of the IMF and you're holding an upside down flag with anarchist symbols...

it's like they''re not even here because they give a fuck about the issue, they just want to be faux-rebels getting off on pissing people off.

[Robin Of House Hill]

It would level the playing field. Everywhere would be mediocre. Nations are necessary.

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

Notice how people tend to bitch and moan only when someone from the US says, "my country is the greatest on Earth!".

Notice how there's just one modern country that, within the last 40 or so years, has used rhetoric about its "exceptionalism" and belief in its status as a "shining city on a hill" to justify ethnic cleansing, aggressive warfare, support of dictators and terrorists, etc. and so on. Nationalistic braggadocio exists everywhere, but when it's actively used as a justification for, you know, killing people, that's a serious problem. So pardon some of us, Americans included, from verbally rolling our eyes when our overweight, undereducated compatriots (who, odds are, believe the Earth is only 5000 years old) proclaim the greatness of the motherland.

[Sci-2]

Notice how there's just one modern country that, within the last 40 or so years, has used rhetoric about its "exceptionalism" and belief in its status as a "shining city on a hill" to justify ethnic cleansing, aggressive warfare, support of dictators and terrorists, etc. and so on. Nationalistic braggadocio exists everywhere, but when it's actively used as a justification for, you know, killing people, that's a serious problem. So pardon some of us, Americans included, from verbally rolling our eyes when our overweight, undereducated compatriots (who, odds are, believe the Earth is only 5000 years old) proclaim the greatness of the motherland.

And what are you doing to change it? And what makes you so educated, and [what] does being fat have to do with anything?

ETA: I mean, I get imlad's rejection of all nationalism, but I don't see why Europe should get a pass on all the complaints you mentioned because they fucked up before the 40 year mark.

I'm not sure if there is a country that has done incredibly, humanitarian things and not done anything bad in the history of the world. Singapore? Tibet? I'm happy to have one pointed out to me.

[litechick]

For fucks sake, it's a Birthday thread.

[Sturn]

For fucks sake, it's a Birthday thread.

Exactly, this is the reason we are complaining at the saracastic jabs at the US. The 4th of July is supposed to be a celebration of the US, can the US-haters take a break for that single day? They have 355 other days to cry all they like.

[Howdyphillip]

Ya know, I am not really sure what the greatest nation on the earth is. I do know that I have a bullet hole in my leg that I earned fighting for the USA, and I absolutely love this country. So if you are going to question my patriotism because I am not a Neanderthal, chest beating idiot saying we are the best, then you can pretty much shove that up your old pooper.

It is absolutely embarrassing to me, that my country leads the world in absolutely nothing except for uneducated pride that we spew in fountains to the rest of the world. So to answer the question again, I'm not sure who is the best, but I am positive that it isn't us.

For further proof that we aren't the best country in the world, I leave you with this...

Any country that can make a song like this a hit is not in the running for best...

[Robin Of House Hill]

Exactly, this is the reason we are complaining at the saracastic jabs at the US. The 4th of July is supposed to be a celebration of the US, can the US-haters take a break for that single day? They have 355 other days to cry all they like.

What happened to the other nine days?

[snake]

I'd like for the US to just mind it's own affairs for once and leave everybody else alone to see how long the rest of the world would enjoy that. Not very fucking long would be my guess.

[Nipz]

This thread is about 3 days late.

]Just about to post the same thing, lol.

[Sturn]

What happened to the other nine days?

Apparently I'm math-dyslexic, subtracted 1 from 356 instead of 365. :)

ETA: Yep and a typo in that sentence above, you have rattled me sir!

[Salome the Persian Witch]

What happened to the other nine days?

:lmao: USA #1

[Artas]

Notice how people tend to bitch and moan only when someone from the US says, "my country is the greatest on Earth!".

In my (limited and doubtless biased) experience, Americans on the whole are more prone than other nationalities to proclaim their country's unsurpassed greatness, or even to tacitly assume it as a self-evident truth that no sane person could dispute. Just listen to the rhetoric of many American politicians. No matter what statistics say about the standard of living, freedom of press, etc. in other countries (some of which score much better than the US in many regards), the notion that the USA is somehow exceptional and attains to higher standards than the rest of the world is prevalent in American thinking in a way that I don't think exists (to the same extent) in most European countries.

I guess that's partly because patriotism played a key role in the founding of the US (as opposed to many European countries developing from medieval structures and only being infused with nationalism in the nineteenth century) and partly because the great wars of the twentieth century have done much to discredit such nationalistic notions on this side of the pond. That's not to say that European nationalism doesn't exist, of course, but for all the smugness and navel-gazing that exists in, for instance, Dutch society, I still have a hard time imagining one of our politicians to state with a straight face that we're living in the greatest country in the history of the world and everybody else should take note.

ETA: That said, happy Independence Day, even if I'm a few days late. :)

[MinDonner]

:agree:

A bit of tongue-in-cheek cynicism towards unbridled nationalism is no bad thing, and the idea that most other nations would even unironically say WE'RE NO.1!!, much less do so without anyone laughing at them, is quite peculiar. I admit, all the patriotism here is quite sweet, but the ugly side of it showed a flash of fin when anyone not 100% gung-ho with the fuck yeahs is suddenly a "US-hater". Come on now. You can still love your country without having to brag about it; we're laughing at the bragging, not the country itself.

[Sci-2]

It is absolutely embarrassing to me, that my country leads the world in absolutely nothing except for uneducated pride that we spew in fountains to the rest of the world. So to answer the question again, I'm not sure who is the best, but I am positive that it isn't us.

It's not about being the best in an absolute sense or not criticizing people who rationalize all the bad things done by the US. It's more the idea that if one really cannot stand anything about the US, meanwhile living in it, after a point it's nothing more than whining.

It's the difference between thinking the US has problems (it's got a whole fucking lot of those!) and the US is intrinsically a horrible place full of shit bags incapable of change. Having traveled the country, even in the (gasp!) rural South, I've met some prejudiced people but overall I've had some great experiences.

If people want change, they can fight for it. Protest, become a teacher, writer some research papers and put them on Scribd, make educational Youtube videos, work at a non-profit helping other citizens, so on and so forth.

[Robin Of House Hill]

Apparently I'm math-dyslexic, subtracted 1 from 356 instead of 365. :)

ETA: Yep and a typo in that sentence above, you have rattled me sir!

I understand. I though it might have been a result of our revoking Pluto's planetary status. :laugh:

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

It is absolutely embarrassing to me, that my country leads the world in absolutely nothing except for uneducated pride that we spew in fountains to the rest of the world. So to answer the question again, I'm not sure who is the best, but I am positive that it isn't us.

Well, the U.S. is the world's largest economy.

And it does have the world's most powerful military.

And it does lead the world in medical advances.

And we are by far the most inventive, as measured by the number of patents.

http://suite101.com/article/most-inventive-countries-a8271

And we do seem to have extraordinary numbers of people from all over the world who really, really want to immigrate here, which would seem odd if we weren't much of a destination. In fact, 20% of all immigration is to the U.S., with the next most by any country at 5%.

http://www.livescience.com/6358-country-immigrants.html

I can understand people disagreeing with the premise that the U.S. is the greatest nation on the planet, in part because it is an inherently subjective determination. But at the same time, "leading the world in absolutely nothing" is, objectively, an incredibly false statement.