The things that people love to spout or propagandize as making America great are mostly not really what made (or makes) America great. And where we could at least be trying to follow the ideals we love to proclaim make America great, most Americans — most traditionalist Americans — are far from adhering to or practicing such ideals.
Really, I claim that the main 2 things that made America great were:
1) the existence of “new” land that could be easily stolen from technologically and numerically inferior people (+); and
2) having an ocean on either side between us and the rest of the world (effectively).
(+) They were not inferior by capacity, such as intelligence, they were inferior technologically, by not having come freshly out of the evolutional maelstrom of post-Roman, medieval and Renaissance Europe.
1) We became “great” and were able to implement an experimental, new constitutional government, and institute “capitalism”, and belligerently, obstinately, childishly pursue religionist purity and other “ideals” only because we had new land to grab up, with, in a sense, little competition.
There was competition, both from other European countries and from the pre-existing residents. But, the US was aggressive and ruthless enough to keep grabbing it all up, until it had an ocean on either side. It was not capitalism or respect of individual rights that made us “win”.
Ultimately, this competition was not the same sort of thing as the feudal capital lord. It’s easy to rile up against “other” and take from them, and proclaim you are improving the world, because you are, of course, the righteous center of the world and avatar of God (so long as you’re winning, of course). But this is not capitalism. And, now, we are competing against our own feudal lords of capital. It’s not as easy to acknowledge the problems of established lords of capital (feudal lords) and stand against one’s own internal mercenaries (the knights who sign themselves up to defend “honor” and tradition, for the sake of having a little precious gold trickled down upon them from on high for their service and “patriotism”). Because, established feudal lords now “legally” own everything!
If we behaved now in line with the actions that originally acquired us the means to become “great” America, even if in the name of establishing a more just government and society, we would now be “violent”, “criminals”, and “terrorists”. We wouldn’t be brave warriors and pioneers carving out a new land for brave new ideals. Of course not!
This is, of course, always the irony of established power. Happy to sell you on how proper they were using exactly those same tools that would be improper if used to bring them back under control, or to move the world forward, away from their stale, dictatorial control. This truth of power, however, in no way diminishes the fact of truth that America is great not because of “capitalism” and “hard work”, but because it had “free” land and new resources to acquire “cheaply”, i.e. not by proper capitalist exchange, but by force and violence.
We are no longer “great”, or rather, we are becoming less great, because we no longer have this “easy” money, and we simultaneously refuse to adapt to the emerging realities of the new world — the world we helped create with our propaganda of freedom and capitalism and American empire and Christian “be fruitful and multiply” colonialism and proselytization. We no longer have this, because we freed the slaves, but also refused to help them become equal partners in the name of continuing to have “cheap”, easily abused labor (since capitalism only works to continue disgustingly enriching further those already rich if it ignores upholding, with integrity, procedurally fair laws and if it uses force, collusion, and slander to keep competition from equally acquiring capital); because we moved our slavery to China, and that empowered China, and now we have real competition in the true spirit of capitalism; because capitalism ironically does broadly succeed in raising up and empowering others, despite the attempts of the elites to still suppress all others for the sake of solely enriching themselves (not through the valid means of inventive competition, but through the cheap and easy method of established force or underhanded espionage). So now we’re competing against near equals, whom we made so accidentally by exactly that which we proselytized and propagandized to them. And now that we face the real competition of capitalism, rather than step up and compete validly according to our own rules, we attempt to maintain power by the age old rod of empires.
Ego forbid us from acknowledging that such things as established force (being the current “King of the Hill”) never lasts. And, of course, that those accustomed to it always put up the biggest hissy fit when losing it, rather than doing the proper work of maintaining it — or rather, doing the work to validly earn it according to their own propagandized rules.
2) We were able to flourish for the last 2 centuries because eventually we established oceans on either side of us between us and the rest of the world. This is not the success of capitalism and competition and hard work — except perhaps the violent, aggressive work of military expansionism. It is more the success of being on a rich island to exploit without competition for a while.
It made us largely immune to the damages of WW I and WW II. So we truly suffered very little from both of those, and had little recovery to do, or lessons to learn, while Europe and Asia had to do more real work of coming to terms with what the outcomes of those wars meant for living together. The US could go on believing that its success stemmed from purile beliefs in its own hard work and capitalist righteousness. It could go on thinking that its Puritanical, Protestant righteousness saved the day. Really, it was being able to safely punch at everyone else in their homeland, while being effectively completely untouched in our own that made us thrive in unparalleled fashion for a while. (Yes, we got hit at Pearl Harbor. Oh, boo hoo. Poor America. One substantial hit to their navy. Poor us. Such heroes!) (I mean, I do think, in those few wars, we were validly good and fighting the right fight; but that pretty much gets cancelled out by the domineering, self-righteous assholes we’re insisting on being afterwards.)
The rest of the world worked no less hard. They just didn’t have isolated access to fresh, improperly acquired resources and land to expand into; and lacked the space (and perhaps arrogance) to be able to continue believing they’re God’s singular gift to humanity.
There are ironies in much of this. I freely acknowledge them. It is difficult to reconcile. The ideas of capitalism and of valuing individual freedoms and proselytizing and propagandizing them all over the rest of the world have made substantial changes. American “Pax Romana” has perhaps enabled a good deal of peaceable development in the world broadly. The ideals have made substantial changes. They make it much less profitable to war, and to be violent, than to compete with something like integrity. But that doesn’t change the fact that America still has a lot of introspection and future work to do to recognize the real sources of our success, and what it will actually take to succeed in a capitalist-oriented, free market world, now that our oceans matter less, and we’ve succeeded in empowering others. Some of those ironies and the successes enabled by America’s time of supremacy as the new Roman empire don’t mean we aren’t violating our own proclaimed ideals any less. And they don’t excuse us from having to come to terms with living better by those ideals as the world changes, or struggling to improve in light of the hypocrisies of our behaviors.
Unfortunately, now that resources and land are all “owned”, now that resources might be getting used up, and with no viable new world to run away to, this means that Americans will have to come to terms with things that Europeans (and probably Asians) have already had to. It has to bite the bullet and orient around making society work in the new, more crowded norm and explicitly accept necessities such as either socialism, feudalism, or instituting clubbing out of existence every generation the excessively wealthy (with conditions and proper judgment, hopefully, in order to be fair about it — until maybe, hopefully, we can beat the tendency of “I did it all by myself and don’t owe nobody nothing” and the abuses of inheritance out of the human animal altogether. !!! One can hope…). But, along the way to doing so, we’ll have to go through the paces of dealing with and getting past angry, privileged, dismayed outrage and misdirected blame. We’ve already seen this happen. We call it “Nazi Germany”. Nazi Germany (and Imperial Japan) had to learn its lesson. But America has not. And now that the situation is changing, we’re seeing it happen more and more in American culture and attitudes. Maladaptive nationalists and creature-comfort Mammon worshippers of so-called “American Capitalism” are unable to come to terms with the realities of that change. So they do anything but the proper introspective adjustments to their expectations. They cast blame anywhere and everywhere else except themselves. They seek to gain and hold more and more power by whatever means to maintain their picture of how they thought the world was in order to continue to be “great” as America. In so doing, they make America anything but great according to the ideals they love to proclaim. And, thus, sadly, make all their ideals nothing but pure propaganda — worthless words to get people riled up to join this army or that of a given feudal lord, or to continue participating in needlessly enriching even further this or that lord of capital (because they already “own” it all, and we’re not allowed to steal anymore the way we did originally to make America great, and now we are only allowed to suck their dicks to perhaps have a little golden rain deigned to be trickled down upon us for our “service” … I mean, we just have to buck up and be ultra super clever, hardworking, and innovative now to wrench it away from them if we want a share; because that’s what’s proper and lawful, of course).
I’m happy to have seen this thread elsewhere, too. It makes me happy to know that others get it. But, there will unfortunately always be those rabid “go team!” personalities who can’t concede any shortcomings or flaws, lest vulnerabilities be exposed; lest they have to do any introspection into areas of needed improvement; lest they admit that their team is anything less than perfection and the center of the universe and the prophesied purpose of all existence; lest they must admit that their society and traditions aren’t the greatest answer to all problems for all time; lest they be “faithless” and not rabidly adhere to the Faith. Go nationalism! Go egotism! Go fearful, timid, animal-based traditionalism!
This leads to at least 2 further inevitabilities.
1) We must accept the inevitability of predators and other kinds of shortcut-takers. This includes watching out for those who snidely proclaim the ideals, but only to “win” the “game”, or just to be contrary and disruptive. Being honest with their intentions of course ruins the game! So we must have propaganda.
2) One must accept competing on these terms and maintaining that competitiveness. That doesn’t mean that maintaining as much integrity as possible with proclaimed ideals is mutually exclusive. But it takes a lot of cleverness and insight and diligence, and is therefore difficult to materialize. So, be ready for the work.
Be ready to recognize and deal with the fact that nature doesn’t punish shortcut takers and predators. It doesn’t care. Life wins where life wins. If we want ideals, like “freedom” and “individual rights”, then we as humans and as society must enforce and uphold them, and shun and punish the violation of them, and work always to reinvigorate the diligence in doing so.
Being a predator in an isolated park with easy targets for a time is what made America great. But, to continue being great — according to proclaimed ideals of individual rights and capitalism — now comes the time of real work and growth from submission to the humiliation of painful, internal truths.
In the new post-colonial, globalized world, where the oceans matter less and where there’s no new worthwhile land to easily steal to “raise ourselves up”, where the other societies are now on something like a parity technology-wise, we have to come to terms with the fact that we are one more mouth to feed, competing for resources and land that are already all owned by someone. It doesn’t cut the mustard to “believe” in American Exceptionalism and Superiority. There’s no “unowned” land to run away to and make your new, grand experiment. You have to actually put in the hard work, be truly competitive, and be truly clever and inventive and progressive now to earn your porridge.