We got this in the mail today:
I am an American. I am fairly highly educated: I have multiple degrees, certifications and hold patents, have written books and magazine articles and worked in a technical field where I travelled the world.
I have been to 23 countries and 46 US states. I read many things, from Foreign Policy magazine (boring) to Military History to fiction, including romance novels (who knew women liked reading so much graphic sex? Not me).
After all of this, I have to say that at one time, I did indeed think America was “the greatest country on Earth,” not because it didn’t make mistakes, but because it tried to be better, and for all the bad it did, it also did a lot of good.
It was a net positive on the world.
However, since the failed Republican invasion of Iraq in 2003, I have curdled on America as “great” as I have watched it spiral ever downward like a fighter plane that has lost a wing in combat.
“How great am I right now?” - the US
In the last 25 years, Republicans have been responsible for torturing innocents, raping children, creating the biggest deficits in history despite receiving a balanced budget, allowing the 9/11 attacks on US soil, leaving doubts that they WANTED it to happen so they could destroy civil rights and engage in warfare with the wrong enemy while letting the actual enemy get away.
I have watched them destroy civil rights, justify torture and extraordinary rendition and betray allies.
I have watched the inept handling of a pandemic, the attack on health services, and the suggestion that chugging bleach was a cure for whatever.
I have seen innocent people hurt, and the US military killing people on the high seas and then killing shipwreck survivors.
I have seen children being put in cages, torn from their families, and raped by Republican guards.
I have seen Republican lawyers argue against nutritious food, mattresses, soap, toothbrushes for these unfortunate children who committed no real crime other than being born.
I have read about mass shootings at churches, schools, concerts, bowling alleys, always with the same response: get over it.
I have seen swastikas and neo-Nazis accepted by Republicans as heroes and tools.
I have seen a rise in racism, misogyny, and attacks on the most vulnerable.
I’ve seen the US become a willing vassal of Russia, a nation not fit to tie the shoes of paupers of whom the evil Nazis didn’t handle enough in WW2.
"I can’t even write what I want to say because this post will be deleted before it even gets put up!" (Gasp!)
The US is not “the greatest nation on earth”.
Far from it...
From what I can see and have experienced with my own eyes, Sweden and Norway are probably the greatest developed nations on earth.
And many more nations you can simply pull from a hat are far, far better than the US.
The US had potential once. It was the greatest nation on earth because it was in the greatest position to do the most good for the most people worldwide.
Our position now is “let them die because they are not white”.
Soon, we will go to war with Venezuela.
Who would ever have imagined that? (And the worst thing about imagining that is that I hope the US loses.)
I hope it costs trillions and that we lose badly.
How bad has your nation become when you have to hope it loses a meaningless war it starts for no reason whatsoever and kills your own children and neighbors?
Republicans hate John Kerry and mock his service in Vietnam while hailing a coward who shits his pants and fucks children, but Kerry was right when he said, “How do you ask a soldier to die for a mistake?”
The Republicans are happy to - if he’s Black. And then they will not honor him and will erase his name from the roll of heroes no matter what he does the same way they take down WW2 monuments to Black soldiers in military cemeteries.
Because Republicans have destroyed the greatest nation on earth and made it a third world pariah.
