I won’t try to persuade you to love our country, but I will say that our holidays are some of the best ways we represent ourselves overseas. When I lived in Prague, there was a neighborhood near us where a lot of Americans lived, and every year they hosted trick-or-treating. Czechs came by the hundreds from all over Prague for this event. It was even featured in Czech media.
Here in Switzerland, where I live now, Thanksgiving is not a thing (and American friends have told me that a small turkey costs more than $100), but somehow the idea of sharing a feast and remembering to feel grateful has become part of the culture this time of year. I can’t help thinking that we Americans, with our lovely Thanksgiving traditions, have had something to do with it.
As someone with dual citizenship who happily chooses every day to live in the US, I truly do not understand staying here when one feels this way: “It’s well-established that I’m not a fan of the United States.”
I understand acknowledging that the country -- like any -- has its problems and faults, and wanting to be a vocal part of addressing those. I don’t understand a statement that appears to say that on net, one isn’t a fan of the country they choose to call home. That’s easily remedied, as this is not the USSR or North Korea.
It's not such an easy thing to leave your home. Family and friends and culture and ties places and things. And just because you think a country, on net, is bad, doesn't mean you have any motivation to leave it. Life is about a lot more than liking the government that rules you.
How about to maybe be happier? It’s not about proving anything to anyone else. It’s no small thing to endeavor to be happy in a place you’re “not a fan of”.
That's what I'm saying -- living thousands of miles from my loved ones would make me very unhappy. The cost outweighs the benefits of living in the country you like best.
I don't think very many people are having their day ruined by US foreign policy, even if they disagree with it. I don't think Freddie, or myself, walk around depressed because of our interventions, we just think they're terrible and should stop. If I moved to Sweden, would the US be any better? Or would I still see what they do every day and say "that's wrong". In that sense, nothing would change. The US does what it does when I'm there or not, there's nothing solved by moving.
I think immigrants bring the perspective that the US government is hardly unique when it comes to international aggression. What accounts for it? That the US or its government are uniquely evil? Or that people in general, of any nationality, just suck and that when given the opportunity will gleefully embrace a doctrine of might makes right at any time that they happen to be on top?
Once you understand that you can skip past the irrelevant aspects of government policy and focus on other factors. Americans are a lot more open and generous than many other nationalities, they are definitely more optimistic, the standard of living is very high and the diversity of cultures and cuisines is very attractive.
I am someone who did leave the country I grew up in, so I do know a little something about that. If someone is unhappy with their government to the point that in some ways they make writing about it a significant part of their life’s work, it seems to me that the distaste for their home really does matter to them -- maybe enough to uproot.
I think that many of those who did the same thing I did have a greater appreciation for what is good about this country than those who have not experienced life elsewhere. Not being glib at all, I truly believe that it might benefit those who are “not a fan” of their own country to spend some time living elsewhere -- not vacationing, but living. Being subject to the laws and rule of another government. If they find a better match, perhaps they’ve found a great new home! If not, perhaps they can look at their own home country with a bit more perspective and perhaps find that they CAN be “a fan” of it.
I'll pretend for a moment that this isn't just a tedious trolling exercise - I mean this is literally just a Tea Party "love it or leave it" sign in the guise of a comment - if everyone sufficiently critical of their country has to leave, then no country will ever improve. Hatred of the evil that your country has done is the only true revolutionary urge. And I've noticed that you haven't said a single word about those rivers of blood, probably because you know there's no defence. Let's invite an Iraqi child born with his heart outside of his body because of the amount of toxic chemicals we put into the atmosphere of his country how he feels.
The flip side appears to be that by living here and paying taxes, one is duty-bound to support every policy in this country and its local governments, past, present and future, no matter how murderous, boneheaded or misguided.
Not everyone who dares to disagree with you is a troll, Freddie. And I have never been a member of the Tea Party. So let’s hopefully put that aside and proceed in good faith if we’re going to have a discussion.
I am often struck by the fact that immigrants to this country, on average, seem to appreciate it more than nativeborn Americans. I think that there’s something to that. I think that it’s because in many cases, they’ve experienced some things that they deem to be worse in their life elsewhere. Significant things.
Saying this is nothing akin to excusing this country’s significant wrongs. I never questioned your choice to be critical of your country, nor the validity of your hatred for some aspects of this country. I genuinely do not understand why somebody who is “not a fan of the United States“ does not try at some point to live elsewhere – to seek out something that is ostensibly better - to perhaps put their criticism of their own country in some context.
As someone who chooses to live here - who left a country that I had significant problems with - I have a hard time identifying with staying put despite such strong negative feelings. My curiosity around why people who feel as you do – as strongly as you do – choose not explore life elsewhere is genuine.
'I genuinely do not understand why somebody who is “not a fan of the United States“ does not try at some point to live elsewhere...'
What's hard to understand about this? Are you under the impression that one cannot dislike the behavior of the government under which they live, and simultaneously hold a vast myriad of reasons to stay where they are?
Even granting you the premise that not being a fan of your country could be a reason to leave, there are virtually infinite other considerations that would play into that decision.
I say this as someone who was born in the US, served 10 years in the military, lived in half a dozen different countries after separating, and decided to come home, despite my intense criticism for my government's policies at home and abroad.
I strongly disapprove of much of what America has done regarding foreign intervention, but leaving would never cross my mind. My family and my friends are far more important to me than not living under this government. In fact, the US is a very nice place to live for its own citizens, so there's not much reason to move when you're evaluating it from a "would my life be better somewhere else" perspective.
I think our country has done an awful lot of horrible unnecessary things on an international level, but why would that ever convince me to move? I'm not on some hardened moral crusade that demands I put my moral position above all other concerns in my life. I'm on the planet once, and I'm not going to let the moral mistakes of the government I live under dictate what is one of the most important choices I can make, especially when it is a rather nice government to those at home in comparison to most countries.
It's difficult to take you at face value when you say that your curiosity is genuine as you ignore or sidestep numerous fairly obvious answers you've been given throughout this thread and even in the original essay itself. I.e. --that ties to family and friends can be stronger than distaste for governance, that a sense of moral responsibility to preserve and improve a place and culture to which you have a deep connection can compel you to remain despite sharp criticisms, or that the actions you need to take to overcome material/economic/political barriers to immigration to a preferable country can zero out the potential net happiness gains that living there might otherwise confer.
I've lived and worked abroad. I returned to the states because the pain of being absent for the death of a loved one was more than I could handle. Many people simply don't need to leave to know this. I wish I had. And while I certainly returned with more context for my criticisms, they have become more vehement as a result, not less.
>I genuinely do not understand why somebody who is “not a fan of the United States“ does not try at some point to live elsewhere
Other people do not share identical values, interior lives, and happiness calculus with you. That you don't understand this even when they explain some of their thinking is your own failure of imagination and purported curiosity.
I was born in Canada and lived half of my life there, in the UK, and in Australia where antiamericanism is at their cultural core. In spite of this, I have chosen to become an American. Like almost all immigrants I know, I love this country.
We all know that we can love individuals inspite of deep knowledge of their faults. Why isn't it as widely accepted that you can love a country in spite of its faults.
"Rivers of blood" is a tad melodramatic, but I'll defend them nonetheless. Orwell said “Those who ‘abjure’ violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.” You may not like the way the omelet has been made, but you seem more than happy to eat your fill. Indeed, I don’t see anyone refusing their place at the American table at suppertime, I just see people writing shitty reviews.
I think there is a very strong argument that America would be just as prosperous and nice a place to live without many of our violent interventions into foreign countries. That's the point. I don't think most people abhor WW2, but there's a long list of interventions into smaller nations where there was truly very little at stake for us, where the average american's life would hardly be different had we not done anything. We can't see what these alternate histories look like, it can't be proven, but I think there's an awful strong argument for it.
Hmmm....nut picking in extremis is not well-grounded argumentation.
For example, one could compare the number of US-caused, external-heart newborns to the number of Iraqi citizens killed by homegrown Iraqi authoritarians and conclude that more Iraqi newborns are better off today than they were during the Baathist regime.
Signed: an immigrant whose socialist homeland I left due to being “not a fan”. That homeland was, incidentally, liberated from actual fascism by those terrible Americans in 1945 when my father was a child. (Freddie’s inability, sorry, his unwillingness to respectfully engage with the arguments made here in the comments by ABC’s, Americans By Choice, baffles me.)
So it’s only worth doing if easy? A motivated individual can certainly obtain visas to live and work for a period of time in many other countries. We’re certainly not trapped here.
I think you miss the difference between having major criticisms of the behavior of your country, and having a life that you love within that country. These things can live in harmony, if an uneasy harmony.
It's not an easy thing to leave your home, yet over the last 400 years, hundreds of millions of people have done so in order to come here, to this country that Freddie hates. With the exception of Native Americans and descendants of enslaved people, our ancestors chose to do something exceptionally hard because they believed that their children and grandchildren would have a better life here, and overwhelmingly, they were right.
It's hard to reconcile "America is terrible" with the number of people who would choose to leave their homes to live here if they could today and the number who have made that choice throughout history. I wouldn't be alive if my ancestors hadn't made that choice, so yes, I cringe at the small-mindedness of the "America sucks" mindset.
In my opinion, the issue is that people conflate how nice it is to live in America, with whether the US is a bad actor on the international level. The complaints I have are mostly with US foreign policy, which is not going to deter people from moving here. America is, on the scale of world governments, a very nice place to live in, and it treats its citizens mostly pretty well along with having many prosperous opportunities to work. But it sure does do a lot of shitty things to other countries.
Exactly HOW do you want to make your country better? As one example military conquest has an ancient history: Rome, Genghis Khan, etc. Is that an American problem or just a human one? If it's the latter the problem is probably intractable so why not enjoy your life and move somewhere that you enjoy?
There's a weird thing here where people seem to think that if you don't like the American government that you don't enjoy living in America. There is no actual relation between those things in my experience. I disapprove of a lot of what the American government does, but my life is very nice. I like my social circle, my job, my city. The fact that the American government does shitty things doesn't get my down all day every day, it's just another thing in my big and complex life with many different competing issues and values and events. It doesn't dominate my enjoyment of all of existence, and so is no reason to move.
I don't think anybody would argue that it's the American government people are referencing with "love it or leave it" compared to the country itself. That is supposedly a conservative sentiment but we just saw a bunch of conservatives who would have preferred a different government descend on Washington D.C. and steal Nancy Pelosi's podium. At a guess they would consider themselves patriots and pro-American.
My view point: give Norway or Sweden the power and military of the US and watch them start nuking wedding parties from orbit because the groom picked up coffee for the local Taliban branch once. "Power corrupts" is a human problem rather than one specifically related to the American character.
As a fellow-dual citizen who has lived and worked abroad, and traveled to 76 countries, I too choose the USA. Someone once said that if you know only one country, then you really don't know any country at all. Perspective is missing in most US citizen America-haters.
I don't have an excuse for Noam Chomsky who should know better and doesn't.....beyond naive Utopianism.
I actually do get it. On some level, it's obvious to everyone with a brain that the present-day United States is one of the best countries in history from a moral standpoint. But that makes it (one of) the best of a bad lot, since most countries' governments are pretty vile, and it would be easy for the US to do a lot better than it does, and it's kind of absurd that it doesn't do better. So I don't really have a problem if people want to say that the United States is evil, beyond the pale, etc, because it's hyperbole coming from a big grain of truth.
I do think a lot of what this amounts to is people thinking the difference between the US and other countries has more to do with moral values than it really does. The reason the CIA has done so much more harm on the world stage than whatever the Swedish intelligence agency is called, is because the US is a more powerful country than Sweden and has taken on more responsibilities globally. If Sweden were the hegemon, Legacy of Ashes would say pretty much the same thing except it would be about Sweden.
Patriotism -- aka stanning the state -- is a bit of an odd concept to me. Countries on a whole are a bit fake; they're just the means of people who live close to each other needing some means of governing themselves. Borders are usually drawn, redrawn, and defended by violence and states themselves are largely defined by a monopoly on the 'legitimate' use of violence.
Canada, where I live, is particularly fake -- it was basically governed by fur traders for 200 years and became an actual country by those companies deciding they needed to string together a bunch of unrelated towns with a railroad (and yet...passenger rail travel in Canada sucks so bad). Today, it is governed by three telecom/oil/mining companies in a trenchcoat. Literally, the mayor of our largest city is paid $100k a year by Rogers, our largest telco, which also owns our sole MLB & NBA teams as well as a hockey, soccer, and football team.
So I would say I'm 'not a fan' of Canada because it seems a bit ridiculous to 'be a fan' of...all that. Caping for a state whose interests are largely controlled by billionaires and the Laurentian elite is not for me.
I do love my home. It's where my family and friends all live. I feel like I more or less fit in to the predominant culture. The climate here suits me. I am emotionally attached to this place. But a large part of that is an accident of birth; I think I could probably be pretty happy being born and raised in many other places in the world. And given climate change and the inevitable conflicts that will arise from people fleeing their now uninhabitable homelands, it is probably a pretty good bet to stay here, what with access to fresh water, being fairly north, room to spread out, and being bordered by three seas and the US.
Lots of people do choose to leave their homes to live in Canada -- my family being one of them. There's a long history of Chinese people coming to Canada for the economic opportunities, but it's a bit of a stretch to attribute that to the Canadian state; it's just that this corner of the world happened to have a lot of natural resources available to extract and countries willing to ship in cheap disposable labour.
Happy Thanksgiving Freddie! I love the holiday too,. I have my own pantheon of American heroes that I celebrate at every opportunity, most of them labor organizers, all of them as American as it gets. Cheers, everyone! I'm grateful for this Substack and all of you.
I share your love for Thanksgiving, even if I can acknowledge its relationship to the colonization and subjugation of the native population. Ultimately, I view Thanksgiving as that, an opportunity for family and friends to gather and be thankful for that which I have.
It's not about celebrating the Pilgrims or any of that puritanical (and genocidal) bullshit. It's an inclusive, non-denomination holiday that anyone can celebrate. Should you be thankful year round? Yes, and most people are, but that doesn't diminish the importance of the holiday. It's not about celebrating the history of America, it's a harvest festival before winter grips us all.
Happy thanksgiving! This piece is perfect. May your Turkey be moist, your football teams entertain, and your drunk uncle piss everyone off. Here’s to hoping we live to see a better world.
Excellent question. And one has to have lived there for some time -- actually been subject to the laws and rule of a different government -- to truly answer. Vacationing does not count. :)
Concur. For example, I lived for some period in Saudi Arabia. This gave me a very strong dataset for what it is like to live in a country that makes no apology for its rejection of a free and open society.
If I were starting a list, it would not include the country behind atrocities in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Honduras, Haiti, Congo, Somalia, Chile, Argentina, Guatemala, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Brazil, El Salvador, Ghana, Indonesia, Libya, Myanmar, and on, and on, and on, a river of blood.
If you insist, whatever sins and crimes may otherwise be laid at its feet, Uruguay cannot be credibly accused of being "the country behind atrocities in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Honduras, Haiti, Congo, Somalia, Chile, Argentina, Guatemala, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Brazil, El Salvador, Ghana, Indonesia, Libya, Myanmar, and on, and on, and on, a river of blood."
Not because I have any particular brief for that country, just happened to be the first example to spring to mind.
That doesn’t mean any of them are liked by Freddie. It’s possible, but uknown. OP asked ”does there exist a country you like?” and FdB just reiterated that he doesn’t like the US. The question remains unanswered.
No matter where or when you are, you have to build with the materials available. That's just as true morally as materially, if not as obvious. And no people or place on earth is without its atrocities or betrayals
Agreed that thanksgiving rocks. As for not liking the USA, I think it’s easier to understand with the context that you don’t think nations should exist at all. That seems weird and utopian to me but it’s less annoying than people who act like Finland represents some ideal model that the US is just too racist/capitalist to achieve.
You might be a feral cat, who feels no emotions whatsoever at seeing a piece of brightly decorated cloth, but who finds some local customs useful, some praiseworthy, others detestable.
As a parent, I'm going to have to defend trunk-or-treat, specifically as an *addition* rather than a replacement for trick-or-treating. My local elementary school held one with a big party afterwards, a week BEFORE Halloween so that everyone could attend it and still go trick-or-treating on the holiday itself.
Counterpoint: no need to hate your country. It is flawed, like any other. It has done great good in the world as well as great harm. "What we did in Albania" gets marked in the ledger next to "what we did to defeat the Nazis in Germany in the first place". I don't think I disagree with any of your criticisms of the country and what has been done in its name, I just don't think it erases - or even outweighs - everything else.
This country is an amazing, fucked-up, beautiful, ugly, truly special and utterly solipsistic place that is worthy of celebration and also celebrates itself too damn much. It's us, in all our ragged glory. Can it be improved upon? I hope so. Could I in a million years bring myself to hate it? No.
My impression is that in most humans' models of morality, good and evil, there is a "one bad apple spoils the bunch" view which is that past a certain level of evil, no amount of good will outweigh or counterbalance it. Like if your great-uncle Jim donated millions of dollars to charity and built the largest network of homeless shelters and job training programs in the country, but then you find out he was secretly a child molester. At that point, no matter what, most people would see great-uncle Jim as a bad person.
(To use a less extreme example of this phenomenon, many people who receive a hundred social media comments, 99 of which are positive, will mostly focus on the one comment that flames them and thinks they suck, regardless of the other comments.)
This isn't to say that this is necessarily a bad phenomenon, or that we *should* consider Uncle Jim a good person in this example. And also, for the record, I'm on the side of not throwing the America baby out with the bathwater.
But as long as we are all operating on good faith and trying to understand each other's motivations, it is probably worth acknowledging the psychological and moral underpinnings of the "America sucks and fuck Thanksgiving no matter what" mentality, rather than dismissing them as drama-stirring troglodytes (as I have done in the past).
You can acknowledge it and at the same time point out that it's the world view of a child. Adults understand nuance, that the world isn't black and white and that compromise is just an essential component of the human condition. Children want knights in shining armor.
I suppose the devil's advocate response would be a barrage of expletives and personal insults for daring to equivocate "nuance" and "compromise" with things like Freddie's Iraqi children chemical weapons example in another thread above.
For the record, I personally fully agree with you though.
I always want to ask, in this kind of discussion, for an example of a better country.
That aside, despite being a mostly conservative, tradition minded, deeply religious person -- so downtown U!S!A! or one would think -- as the years go by I’m less and less “patriotic.” I do revere the principles we were founded on and have tried, imperfectly, to achieve. I do think hey at least we try/tried to have a free and open society which most countries unapologetically don’t even pretend to do. I do not revere what this country has become, and I resist efforts to manipulate me based on social pressure around tribal identifiers.
Presumably a country with less inequality, a stronger social safety net, and no recent history of committing atrocities in other countries. So, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway.
True, Danes and Swedes and Finns live in peaceful, prosperous, egalitarian societies thanks to the shield of protection provided by more powerful countries, especially the U.S. So in that sense, you're right.
But I say there's a meaningful difference between "We must be willing and able to defend our country with force if need be" and "We must violently interfere in other countries' affairs, send the CIA to help assassinate democratically elected heads of state, because otherwise something-something-domino theory-mumble-mumble." I am not a pacifist, and sometimes war is the least bad option (e.g., Ukraine), but the U.S. has gone far beyond "this is how much violence we must commit to keep ourselves and our allies secure." Did the assassination of Patrice Lumumba make the world a better place in any way?
Someone else in the thread observed that people are the same, and if they have the power to do something, they will. I mean, the Dutch - not meaningfully different in culture or genetics than their Nordic neighbors - got up to a fair amount of colonial shenanigans once they had the resources to do so.
Does it matter if a country didn’t do Bad Things because they didn’t have the ability? Does it make them purer somehow?
Sweden wasn't just neutral in WW2. It actively assisted Germany, supplying steel and iron ore and even transporting German troops to assist in the Russian invasion, in order to be able to maintain its "neutrality." That lasted right up until 1944 when it no longer feared German invasion and then switched sides and allowed the Allies to use their airbases. If you squint really hard you might be able to call that being respectful of other countries' sovereignty, but most people see it for what it is - understandable cowardice.
Is it obvious to you that post WW2 US interventions have been, on balance, bad? It's certainly possible, but it isn't obvious to me. The cost of doing good things, like preserving a comparatively liberal, democratic Greece, ensuring that 50MMM South Koreans have a future or preventing tens of thousands of Bosnian deaths by ethnic cleansing, almost assuredly means sometimes getting it wrong. You also have to consider the unknown deterrent benefits of U.S. action. How many state-to-state conflicts didn't occur because provocateurs were concerned by U.S. precedence in the the first Gulf War? I doubt anyone really knows. For practical reasons, having mostly to do with economics and unpredictable end results, I have largely been a critic of most of the wars and proxy wars the U.S. has engaged in during my lifetime, but it's less than clear to me the rest of the world isn't better off for them.
This seems to be the primary example people use. The Great Scandinavian counties. I was just there… very white… very culturally homogenous… very pragmatic people that solve problems… very, very, very strong capitalist. They have the population of Wisconsin or Pennsylvania. The are very well off mostly because of their abundant natural resources… mostly oil… and their commitment to capitalism. They don’t spend on their own national defense… instead they sponge off the US for their protection where they can spend on social benefits. But they also pay for it in taxes… not just the wealthy… but everyone. Everyone that works pays a larger percentage of their take-home pay to the government to provide their services like health care. But again, they don’t allow floods of foreigners in and they are maybe better places to live because of that culturally homogeneity. They get along better and can make big decisions easier because of it. The US with its 340 million and floods of first and second generation immigrants cannot overlay the Scandinavian model.
And it is cold as hell in those countries and few of the Americans I know that laud these countries as the model they like would move there. And people I know that have moved there, most of them are tying to find a way back to the US. Especially after the COVID authoritarians in those countries (except for Sweden) destroyed two plus years of their lives for no good reasons.
Norway is a petro state, but Sweden and Denmark are not countries primarily reliant on natural resources. Sweden and Norway have some of the highest levels of immigration in the EU - and it's not just non-disruptive Polish economic migrants. They have taken in significant numbers of Turks, Syrians and Iraqis. Not sure when this myth of Scandinavian homogeneity is going to die. Finland (which is not really Scandinavian), has some of the lowest levels of immigration. Denmark is average.
Compared to the US, Scandinavian immigration is twaddle and only recent. Just check the demographic charts. 80-90% culturally homogenous. Compared to the US where the majority of the population are recent immigrants from other countries. European counties have solid thousand year old cultures to rely on to bind their people. US liberals reject the existence of any American culture and with so many people from other cultures, we have no binding basis to all for easy collaborative decision making. We are a nation divided because we have rejected the thing that is Americanism. None of the Scandinavian countries have that problem yet.
You are right that a lot of it is fairly recent, but Sweden's foreign born population is 20% of the total population, as compared to 14% in the U.S. And I would suggest to you that, as a general matter, Sweden's immigrants are a lot more foreign to Swedes than the U.S.' immigrants are to the U.S. In 2010, Sweden's foreign born population was about the same as the U.S. today.
Well nearly 45% of California's population of 38 million are non-English speaking. 21.6% of the US are non-English speaking. All of the non-English speaking are culturally different from American culture. And then there are many that do speak English that are first and second generation immigrants still clutching their culture. So the 14% you quoted does not get to the point about cultural homogeneity. As I mentioned, the European countries have 3000 years old cultures. The US is a mess of conflict and politicking and tribalism. The reason it held together so well is the Constitution and access to middle class prosperity. These were the common threads of a culture that has been dismantled by the elites, and the Democrats have put it on hyper-drive. MAGA is to return back to it to prevent the country from melting into tribal-cultural war. Anybody with any intellectual honesty will admit that they like visiting those white, cultural homogeneous countries because the people are calm and accepting. It has nothing to do with their "free" health care.
Is there any country in the world where, given power, the citizens won't revert to people being people? If you're going to accept that human beings are largely similar I don't see how that doesn't lead to the inescapable conclusion that any country's citizens if they were given the power of the United States wouldn't behave in largely the same fashion.
I agree, it’s our overwhelming power that allows our human failings to burn brightest. The question is which system would handle complete power better than ours? For me, a system that allows freedom of self criticism as Freddie describes would be the best. And ironically, or paradoxically the freedoms we enjoy are the same reason we are so powerful.
1.) Because while Freddie hates America, judging by this article, he also hates people who hate America (or at least those who hate it in overly simplistic, embarrassing, and counterproductive ways), and the enemy of my enemy is my friend's second cousin twice removed.
2.) Just because you hate someone doesn't mean you can't learn something from them.
3.) Related to #1, Freddie doesn't always hate everyone I hate, but when he does, it's worth it.
One should never hate other people. It is also a good idea to not hate the country you live in. Hate is not a productive nor healthy emotion. Better to purge it and turn into some commitment to work to change things for the better. Hate should be turned into irritation that becomes a catalyst to action. The world is full of dime-a-dozen critics filled with hate.
A great tweet I saw years ago: "We will end the war on Christmas when Christmas stops invading other seasons"
I won’t try to persuade you to love our country, but I will say that our holidays are some of the best ways we represent ourselves overseas. When I lived in Prague, there was a neighborhood near us where a lot of Americans lived, and every year they hosted trick-or-treating. Czechs came by the hundreds from all over Prague for this event. It was even featured in Czech media.
Here in Switzerland, where I live now, Thanksgiving is not a thing (and American friends have told me that a small turkey costs more than $100), but somehow the idea of sharing a feast and remembering to feel grateful has become part of the culture this time of year. I can’t help thinking that we Americans, with our lovely Thanksgiving traditions, have had something to do with it.
I think this gets at the heart of things.
Holidays are just excuses for people to be together. You can hate the symbolism of the holiday and still enjoy your day off with friends and family.
As someone with dual citizenship who happily chooses every day to live in the US, I truly do not understand staying here when one feels this way: “It’s well-established that I’m not a fan of the United States.”
I understand acknowledging that the country -- like any -- has its problems and faults, and wanting to be a vocal part of addressing those. I don’t understand a statement that appears to say that on net, one isn’t a fan of the country they choose to call home. That’s easily remedied, as this is not the USSR or North Korea.
It's not such an easy thing to leave your home. Family and friends and culture and ties places and things. And just because you think a country, on net, is bad, doesn't mean you have any motivation to leave it. Life is about a lot more than liking the government that rules you.
Right. I don't expect anyone to move thousands of miles from family just to prove they hate America.
How about to maybe be happier? It’s not about proving anything to anyone else. It’s no small thing to endeavor to be happy in a place you’re “not a fan of”.
That's what I'm saying -- living thousands of miles from my loved ones would make me very unhappy. The cost outweighs the benefits of living in the country you like best.
I don't think very many people are having their day ruined by US foreign policy, even if they disagree with it. I don't think Freddie, or myself, walk around depressed because of our interventions, we just think they're terrible and should stop. If I moved to Sweden, would the US be any better? Or would I still see what they do every day and say "that's wrong". In that sense, nothing would change. The US does what it does when I'm there or not, there's nothing solved by moving.
I think immigrants bring the perspective that the US government is hardly unique when it comes to international aggression. What accounts for it? That the US or its government are uniquely evil? Or that people in general, of any nationality, just suck and that when given the opportunity will gleefully embrace a doctrine of might makes right at any time that they happen to be on top?
Once you understand that you can skip past the irrelevant aspects of government policy and focus on other factors. Americans are a lot more open and generous than many other nationalities, they are definitely more optimistic, the standard of living is very high and the diversity of cultures and cuisines is very attractive.
I am someone who did leave the country I grew up in, so I do know a little something about that. If someone is unhappy with their government to the point that in some ways they make writing about it a significant part of their life’s work, it seems to me that the distaste for their home really does matter to them -- maybe enough to uproot.
I think that many of those who did the same thing I did have a greater appreciation for what is good about this country than those who have not experienced life elsewhere. Not being glib at all, I truly believe that it might benefit those who are “not a fan” of their own country to spend some time living elsewhere -- not vacationing, but living. Being subject to the laws and rule of another government. If they find a better match, perhaps they’ve found a great new home! If not, perhaps they can look at their own home country with a bit more perspective and perhaps find that they CAN be “a fan” of it.
I'll pretend for a moment that this isn't just a tedious trolling exercise - I mean this is literally just a Tea Party "love it or leave it" sign in the guise of a comment - if everyone sufficiently critical of their country has to leave, then no country will ever improve. Hatred of the evil that your country has done is the only true revolutionary urge. And I've noticed that you haven't said a single word about those rivers of blood, probably because you know there's no defence. Let's invite an Iraqi child born with his heart outside of his body because of the amount of toxic chemicals we put into the atmosphere of his country how he feels.
The flip side appears to be that by living here and paying taxes, one is duty-bound to support every policy in this country and its local governments, past, present and future, no matter how murderous, boneheaded or misguided.
Fuck that for a game of soldiers.
That’s a straw man. Re-reading should elucidate that no such argument is being made.
I am taking "love it or leave it" to its logical conclusion. If I don't love everything about it, am I obligated to leave?
Not everyone who dares to disagree with you is a troll, Freddie. And I have never been a member of the Tea Party. So let’s hopefully put that aside and proceed in good faith if we’re going to have a discussion.
I am often struck by the fact that immigrants to this country, on average, seem to appreciate it more than nativeborn Americans. I think that there’s something to that. I think that it’s because in many cases, they’ve experienced some things that they deem to be worse in their life elsewhere. Significant things.
Saying this is nothing akin to excusing this country’s significant wrongs. I never questioned your choice to be critical of your country, nor the validity of your hatred for some aspects of this country. I genuinely do not understand why somebody who is “not a fan of the United States“ does not try at some point to live elsewhere – to seek out something that is ostensibly better - to perhaps put their criticism of their own country in some context.
As someone who chooses to live here - who left a country that I had significant problems with - I have a hard time identifying with staying put despite such strong negative feelings. My curiosity around why people who feel as you do – as strongly as you do – choose not explore life elsewhere is genuine.
"I am often struck by the fact that immigrants to this country, on average, seem to appreciate it more than nativeborn Americans."
That's a self-selecting sample.
That said, I have lived abroad and in the US.
'I genuinely do not understand why somebody who is “not a fan of the United States“ does not try at some point to live elsewhere...'
What's hard to understand about this? Are you under the impression that one cannot dislike the behavior of the government under which they live, and simultaneously hold a vast myriad of reasons to stay where they are?
Even granting you the premise that not being a fan of your country could be a reason to leave, there are virtually infinite other considerations that would play into that decision.
I say this as someone who was born in the US, served 10 years in the military, lived in half a dozen different countries after separating, and decided to come home, despite my intense criticism for my government's policies at home and abroad.
I strongly disapprove of much of what America has done regarding foreign intervention, but leaving would never cross my mind. My family and my friends are far more important to me than not living under this government. In fact, the US is a very nice place to live for its own citizens, so there's not much reason to move when you're evaluating it from a "would my life be better somewhere else" perspective.
I think our country has done an awful lot of horrible unnecessary things on an international level, but why would that ever convince me to move? I'm not on some hardened moral crusade that demands I put my moral position above all other concerns in my life. I'm on the planet once, and I'm not going to let the moral mistakes of the government I live under dictate what is one of the most important choices I can make, especially when it is a rather nice government to those at home in comparison to most countries.
It's difficult to take you at face value when you say that your curiosity is genuine as you ignore or sidestep numerous fairly obvious answers you've been given throughout this thread and even in the original essay itself. I.e. --that ties to family and friends can be stronger than distaste for governance, that a sense of moral responsibility to preserve and improve a place and culture to which you have a deep connection can compel you to remain despite sharp criticisms, or that the actions you need to take to overcome material/economic/political barriers to immigration to a preferable country can zero out the potential net happiness gains that living there might otherwise confer.
I've lived and worked abroad. I returned to the states because the pain of being absent for the death of a loved one was more than I could handle. Many people simply don't need to leave to know this. I wish I had. And while I certainly returned with more context for my criticisms, they have become more vehement as a result, not less.
>I genuinely do not understand why somebody who is “not a fan of the United States“ does not try at some point to live elsewhere
Other people do not share identical values, interior lives, and happiness calculus with you. That you don't understand this even when they explain some of their thinking is your own failure of imagination and purported curiosity.
I was born in Canada and lived half of my life there, in the UK, and in Australia where antiamericanism is at their cultural core. In spite of this, I have chosen to become an American. Like almost all immigrants I know, I love this country.
We all know that we can love individuals inspite of deep knowledge of their faults. Why isn't it as widely accepted that you can love a country in spite of its faults.
"Rivers of blood" is a tad melodramatic, but I'll defend them nonetheless. Orwell said “Those who ‘abjure’ violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.” You may not like the way the omelet has been made, but you seem more than happy to eat your fill. Indeed, I don’t see anyone refusing their place at the American table at suppertime, I just see people writing shitty reviews.
I think there is a very strong argument that America would be just as prosperous and nice a place to live without many of our violent interventions into foreign countries. That's the point. I don't think most people abhor WW2, but there's a long list of interventions into smaller nations where there was truly very little at stake for us, where the average american's life would hardly be different had we not done anything. We can't see what these alternate histories look like, it can't be proven, but I think there's an awful strong argument for it.
Hmmm....nut picking in extremis is not well-grounded argumentation.
For example, one could compare the number of US-caused, external-heart newborns to the number of Iraqi citizens killed by homegrown Iraqi authoritarians and conclude that more Iraqi newborns are better off today than they were during the Baathist regime.
I have no idea what an "external heart newborn" is, but I'd have to see your numbers, and how they were derived.
Not your best response, Freddie.
Perfectly said, thanks Carolyn.
Signed: an immigrant whose socialist homeland I left due to being “not a fan”. That homeland was, incidentally, liberated from actual fascism by those terrible Americans in 1945 when my father was a child. (Freddie’s inability, sorry, his unwillingness to respectfully engage with the arguments made here in the comments by ABC’s, Americans By Choice, baffles me.)
There's also immigration laws. You can't just hop on a plane to Europe and say I live here now.
So it’s only worth doing if easy? A motivated individual can certainly obtain visas to live and work for a period of time in many other countries. We’re certainly not trapped here.
I think you miss the difference between having major criticisms of the behavior of your country, and having a life that you love within that country. These things can live in harmony, if an uneasy harmony.
^basically the gist of Freddie's post
A process that takes a long time can still be started, yes?
Many people are excluded from immigrating many places.
It's not an easy thing to leave your home, yet over the last 400 years, hundreds of millions of people have done so in order to come here, to this country that Freddie hates. With the exception of Native Americans and descendants of enslaved people, our ancestors chose to do something exceptionally hard because they believed that their children and grandchildren would have a better life here, and overwhelmingly, they were right.
It's hard to reconcile "America is terrible" with the number of people who would choose to leave their homes to live here if they could today and the number who have made that choice throughout history. I wouldn't be alive if my ancestors hadn't made that choice, so yes, I cringe at the small-mindedness of the "America sucks" mindset.
If one were feeling spicy, one might call that particular mindset you refer to in the last paragraph a tad privileged.
In my opinion, the issue is that people conflate how nice it is to live in America, with whether the US is a bad actor on the international level. The complaints I have are mostly with US foreign policy, which is not going to deter people from moving here. America is, on the scale of world governments, a very nice place to live in, and it treats its citizens mostly pretty well along with having many prosperous opportunities to work. But it sure does do a lot of shitty things to other countries.
"If you don't like it here, leave!" - Why not stay and work to make your home better?
Exactly HOW do you want to make your country better? As one example military conquest has an ancient history: Rome, Genghis Khan, etc. Is that an American problem or just a human one? If it's the latter the problem is probably intractable so why not enjoy your life and move somewhere that you enjoy?
There's a weird thing here where people seem to think that if you don't like the American government that you don't enjoy living in America. There is no actual relation between those things in my experience. I disapprove of a lot of what the American government does, but my life is very nice. I like my social circle, my job, my city. The fact that the American government does shitty things doesn't get my down all day every day, it's just another thing in my big and complex life with many different competing issues and values and events. It doesn't dominate my enjoyment of all of existence, and so is no reason to move.
I don't think anybody would argue that it's the American government people are referencing with "love it or leave it" compared to the country itself. That is supposedly a conservative sentiment but we just saw a bunch of conservatives who would have preferred a different government descend on Washington D.C. and steal Nancy Pelosi's podium. At a guess they would consider themselves patriots and pro-American.
My view point: give Norway or Sweden the power and military of the US and watch them start nuking wedding parties from orbit because the groom picked up coffee for the local Taliban branch once. "Power corrupts" is a human problem rather than one specifically related to the American character.
As a fellow-dual citizen who has lived and worked abroad, and traveled to 76 countries, I too choose the USA. Someone once said that if you know only one country, then you really don't know any country at all. Perspective is missing in most US citizen America-haters.
I don't have an excuse for Noam Chomsky who should know better and doesn't.....beyond naive Utopianism.
I actually do get it. On some level, it's obvious to everyone with a brain that the present-day United States is one of the best countries in history from a moral standpoint. But that makes it (one of) the best of a bad lot, since most countries' governments are pretty vile, and it would be easy for the US to do a lot better than it does, and it's kind of absurd that it doesn't do better. So I don't really have a problem if people want to say that the United States is evil, beyond the pale, etc, because it's hyperbole coming from a big grain of truth.
I do think a lot of what this amounts to is people thinking the difference between the US and other countries has more to do with moral values than it really does. The reason the CIA has done so much more harm on the world stage than whatever the Swedish intelligence agency is called, is because the US is a more powerful country than Sweden and has taken on more responsibilities globally. If Sweden were the hegemon, Legacy of Ashes would say pretty much the same thing except it would be about Sweden.
Patriotism -- aka stanning the state -- is a bit of an odd concept to me. Countries on a whole are a bit fake; they're just the means of people who live close to each other needing some means of governing themselves. Borders are usually drawn, redrawn, and defended by violence and states themselves are largely defined by a monopoly on the 'legitimate' use of violence.
Canada, where I live, is particularly fake -- it was basically governed by fur traders for 200 years and became an actual country by those companies deciding they needed to string together a bunch of unrelated towns with a railroad (and yet...passenger rail travel in Canada sucks so bad). Today, it is governed by three telecom/oil/mining companies in a trenchcoat. Literally, the mayor of our largest city is paid $100k a year by Rogers, our largest telco, which also owns our sole MLB & NBA teams as well as a hockey, soccer, and football team.
So I would say I'm 'not a fan' of Canada because it seems a bit ridiculous to 'be a fan' of...all that. Caping for a state whose interests are largely controlled by billionaires and the Laurentian elite is not for me.
I do love my home. It's where my family and friends all live. I feel like I more or less fit in to the predominant culture. The climate here suits me. I am emotionally attached to this place. But a large part of that is an accident of birth; I think I could probably be pretty happy being born and raised in many other places in the world. And given climate change and the inevitable conflicts that will arise from people fleeing their now uninhabitable homelands, it is probably a pretty good bet to stay here, what with access to fresh water, being fairly north, room to spread out, and being bordered by three seas and the US.
Lots of people do choose to leave their homes to live in Canada -- my family being one of them. There's a long history of Chinese people coming to Canada for the economic opportunities, but it's a bit of a stretch to attribute that to the Canadian state; it's just that this corner of the world happened to have a lot of natural resources available to extract and countries willing to ship in cheap disposable labour.
Happy Thanksgiving Freddie! I love the holiday too,. I have my own pantheon of American heroes that I celebrate at every opportunity, most of them labor organizers, all of them as American as it gets. Cheers, everyone! I'm grateful for this Substack and all of you.
I share your love for Thanksgiving, even if I can acknowledge its relationship to the colonization and subjugation of the native population. Ultimately, I view Thanksgiving as that, an opportunity for family and friends to gather and be thankful for that which I have.
It's not about celebrating the Pilgrims or any of that puritanical (and genocidal) bullshit. It's an inclusive, non-denomination holiday that anyone can celebrate. Should you be thankful year round? Yes, and most people are, but that doesn't diminish the importance of the holiday. It's not about celebrating the history of America, it's a harvest festival before winter grips us all.
Except for everybody who can afford to decamp to the southern hemisphere.
Happy thanksgiving! This piece is perfect. May your Turkey be moist, your football teams entertain, and your drunk uncle piss everyone off. Here’s to hoping we live to see a better world.
Is there a country you are a fan of?
Excellent question. And one has to have lived there for some time -- actually been subject to the laws and rule of a different government -- to truly answer. Vacationing does not count. :)
So true.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/us-immigration-by-country
Concur. For example, I lived for some period in Saudi Arabia. This gave me a very strong dataset for what it is like to live in a country that makes no apology for its rejection of a free and open society.
If I were starting a list, it would not include the country behind atrocities in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Honduras, Haiti, Congo, Somalia, Chile, Argentina, Guatemala, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Brazil, El Salvador, Ghana, Indonesia, Libya, Myanmar, and on, and on, and on, a river of blood.
With respect, the question isn’t what would you exclude; it’s what would you include.
Several countries can qualify for not making the list above.
Depends on how on "on, and on, and on" goes
Then it should be trivial to name one, no?
If you insist, whatever sins and crimes may otherwise be laid at its feet, Uruguay cannot be credibly accused of being "the country behind atrocities in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Honduras, Haiti, Congo, Somalia, Chile, Argentina, Guatemala, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Brazil, El Salvador, Ghana, Indonesia, Libya, Myanmar, and on, and on, and on, a river of blood."
Not because I have any particular brief for that country, just happened to be the first example to spring to mind.
I don't know, they did produce, and continue to venerate, Luis Suárez.
That doesn’t mean any of them are liked by Freddie. It’s possible, but uknown. OP asked ”does there exist a country you like?” and FdB just reiterated that he doesn’t like the US. The question remains unanswered.
No matter where or when you are, you have to build with the materials available. That's just as true morally as materially, if not as obvious. And no people or place on earth is without its atrocities or betrayals
“I’m an internationalist and hope that someday the fiction that is the nation-state is terminated.” -Freddie
Agreed that thanksgiving rocks. As for not liking the USA, I think it’s easier to understand with the context that you don’t think nations should exist at all. That seems weird and utopian to me but it’s less annoying than people who act like Finland represents some ideal model that the US is just too racist/capitalist to achieve.
You might be a feral cat, who feels no emotions whatsoever at seeing a piece of brightly decorated cloth, but who finds some local customs useful, some praiseworthy, others detestable.
Sentimentality is dangerous in the wild.
After reading this essay, I can say proudly that I agree with the author on one important point: I, too, love rooting against the Dallas Cowboys.
As a parent, I'm going to have to defend trunk-or-treat, specifically as an *addition* rather than a replacement for trick-or-treating. My local elementary school held one with a big party afterwards, a week BEFORE Halloween so that everyone could attend it and still go trick-or-treating on the holiday itself.
Counterpoint: no need to hate your country. It is flawed, like any other. It has done great good in the world as well as great harm. "What we did in Albania" gets marked in the ledger next to "what we did to defeat the Nazis in Germany in the first place". I don't think I disagree with any of your criticisms of the country and what has been done in its name, I just don't think it erases - or even outweighs - everything else.
This country is an amazing, fucked-up, beautiful, ugly, truly special and utterly solipsistic place that is worthy of celebration and also celebrates itself too damn much. It's us, in all our ragged glory. Can it be improved upon? I hope so. Could I in a million years bring myself to hate it? No.
Happy Thanksgiving to you all. Pass the stuffing.
My impression is that in most humans' models of morality, good and evil, there is a "one bad apple spoils the bunch" view which is that past a certain level of evil, no amount of good will outweigh or counterbalance it. Like if your great-uncle Jim donated millions of dollars to charity and built the largest network of homeless shelters and job training programs in the country, but then you find out he was secretly a child molester. At that point, no matter what, most people would see great-uncle Jim as a bad person.
(To use a less extreme example of this phenomenon, many people who receive a hundred social media comments, 99 of which are positive, will mostly focus on the one comment that flames them and thinks they suck, regardless of the other comments.)
This isn't to say that this is necessarily a bad phenomenon, or that we *should* consider Uncle Jim a good person in this example. And also, for the record, I'm on the side of not throwing the America baby out with the bathwater.
But as long as we are all operating on good faith and trying to understand each other's motivations, it is probably worth acknowledging the psychological and moral underpinnings of the "America sucks and fuck Thanksgiving no matter what" mentality, rather than dismissing them as drama-stirring troglodytes (as I have done in the past).
You can acknowledge it and at the same time point out that it's the world view of a child. Adults understand nuance, that the world isn't black and white and that compromise is just an essential component of the human condition. Children want knights in shining armor.
I suppose the devil's advocate response would be a barrage of expletives and personal insults for daring to equivocate "nuance" and "compromise" with things like Freddie's Iraqi children chemical weapons example in another thread above.
For the record, I personally fully agree with you though.
Perfectly stated.
Love this. Thank you! And Happy Turkey to you and yours as well. 🦃
I always want to ask, in this kind of discussion, for an example of a better country.
That aside, despite being a mostly conservative, tradition minded, deeply religious person -- so downtown U!S!A! or one would think -- as the years go by I’m less and less “patriotic.” I do revere the principles we were founded on and have tried, imperfectly, to achieve. I do think hey at least we try/tried to have a free and open society which most countries unapologetically don’t even pretend to do. I do not revere what this country has become, and I resist efforts to manipulate me based on social pressure around tribal identifiers.
Presumably a country with less inequality, a stronger social safety net, and no recent history of committing atrocities in other countries. So, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway.
That Orwell quote above is coming for your list:
"Those who ‘abjure’ violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.”
I mean, yes and no.
True, Danes and Swedes and Finns live in peaceful, prosperous, egalitarian societies thanks to the shield of protection provided by more powerful countries, especially the U.S. So in that sense, you're right.
But I say there's a meaningful difference between "We must be willing and able to defend our country with force if need be" and "We must violently interfere in other countries' affairs, send the CIA to help assassinate democratically elected heads of state, because otherwise something-something-domino theory-mumble-mumble." I am not a pacifist, and sometimes war is the least bad option (e.g., Ukraine), but the U.S. has gone far beyond "this is how much violence we must commit to keep ourselves and our allies secure." Did the assassination of Patrice Lumumba make the world a better place in any way?
Someone else in the thread observed that people are the same, and if they have the power to do something, they will. I mean, the Dutch - not meaningfully different in culture or genetics than their Nordic neighbors - got up to a fair amount of colonial shenanigans once they had the resources to do so.
Does it matter if a country didn’t do Bad Things because they didn’t have the ability? Does it make them purer somehow?
Sweden wasn't just neutral in WW2. It actively assisted Germany, supplying steel and iron ore and even transporting German troops to assist in the Russian invasion, in order to be able to maintain its "neutrality." That lasted right up until 1944 when it no longer feared German invasion and then switched sides and allowed the Allies to use their airbases. If you squint really hard you might be able to call that being respectful of other countries' sovereignty, but most people see it for what it is - understandable cowardice.
Is it obvious to you that post WW2 US interventions have been, on balance, bad? It's certainly possible, but it isn't obvious to me. The cost of doing good things, like preserving a comparatively liberal, democratic Greece, ensuring that 50MMM South Koreans have a future or preventing tens of thousands of Bosnian deaths by ethnic cleansing, almost assuredly means sometimes getting it wrong. You also have to consider the unknown deterrent benefits of U.S. action. How many state-to-state conflicts didn't occur because provocateurs were concerned by U.S. precedence in the the first Gulf War? I doubt anyone really knows. For practical reasons, having mostly to do with economics and unpredictable end results, I have largely been a critic of most of the wars and proxy wars the U.S. has engaged in during my lifetime, but it's less than clear to me the rest of the world isn't better off for them.
This seems to be the primary example people use. The Great Scandinavian counties. I was just there… very white… very culturally homogenous… very pragmatic people that solve problems… very, very, very strong capitalist. They have the population of Wisconsin or Pennsylvania. The are very well off mostly because of their abundant natural resources… mostly oil… and their commitment to capitalism. They don’t spend on their own national defense… instead they sponge off the US for their protection where they can spend on social benefits. But they also pay for it in taxes… not just the wealthy… but everyone. Everyone that works pays a larger percentage of their take-home pay to the government to provide their services like health care. But again, they don’t allow floods of foreigners in and they are maybe better places to live because of that culturally homogeneity. They get along better and can make big decisions easier because of it. The US with its 340 million and floods of first and second generation immigrants cannot overlay the Scandinavian model.
And it is cold as hell in those countries and few of the Americans I know that laud these countries as the model they like would move there. And people I know that have moved there, most of them are tying to find a way back to the US. Especially after the COVID authoritarians in those countries (except for Sweden) destroyed two plus years of their lives for no good reasons.
Norway is a petro state, but Sweden and Denmark are not countries primarily reliant on natural resources. Sweden and Norway have some of the highest levels of immigration in the EU - and it's not just non-disruptive Polish economic migrants. They have taken in significant numbers of Turks, Syrians and Iraqis. Not sure when this myth of Scandinavian homogeneity is going to die. Finland (which is not really Scandinavian), has some of the lowest levels of immigration. Denmark is average.
Compared to the US, Scandinavian immigration is twaddle and only recent. Just check the demographic charts. 80-90% culturally homogenous. Compared to the US where the majority of the population are recent immigrants from other countries. European counties have solid thousand year old cultures to rely on to bind their people. US liberals reject the existence of any American culture and with so many people from other cultures, we have no binding basis to all for easy collaborative decision making. We are a nation divided because we have rejected the thing that is Americanism. None of the Scandinavian countries have that problem yet.
You are right that a lot of it is fairly recent, but Sweden's foreign born population is 20% of the total population, as compared to 14% in the U.S. And I would suggest to you that, as a general matter, Sweden's immigrants are a lot more foreign to Swedes than the U.S.' immigrants are to the U.S. In 2010, Sweden's foreign born population was about the same as the U.S. today.
Well nearly 45% of California's population of 38 million are non-English speaking. 21.6% of the US are non-English speaking. All of the non-English speaking are culturally different from American culture. And then there are many that do speak English that are first and second generation immigrants still clutching their culture. So the 14% you quoted does not get to the point about cultural homogeneity. As I mentioned, the European countries have 3000 years old cultures. The US is a mess of conflict and politicking and tribalism. The reason it held together so well is the Constitution and access to middle class prosperity. These were the common threads of a culture that has been dismantled by the elites, and the Democrats have put it on hyper-drive. MAGA is to return back to it to prevent the country from melting into tribal-cultural war. Anybody with any intellectual honesty will admit that they like visiting those white, cultural homogeneous countries because the people are calm and accepting. It has nothing to do with their "free" health care.
Is there any country in the world where, given power, the citizens won't revert to people being people? If you're going to accept that human beings are largely similar I don't see how that doesn't lead to the inescapable conclusion that any country's citizens if they were given the power of the United States wouldn't behave in largely the same fashion.
I agree, it’s our overwhelming power that allows our human failings to burn brightest. The question is which system would handle complete power better than ours? For me, a system that allows freedom of self criticism as Freddie describes would be the best. And ironically, or paradoxically the freedoms we enjoy are the same reason we are so powerful.
Or, worse.
The only thing I hate more than America is people who hate America.
Happy Thanksgiving Freddie.
1.) Because while Freddie hates America, judging by this article, he also hates people who hate America (or at least those who hate it in overly simplistic, embarrassing, and counterproductive ways), and the enemy of my enemy is my friend's second cousin twice removed.
2.) Just because you hate someone doesn't mean you can't learn something from them.
3.) Related to #1, Freddie doesn't always hate everyone I hate, but when he does, it's worth it.
One should never hate other people. It is also a good idea to not hate the country you live in. Hate is not a productive nor healthy emotion. Better to purge it and turn into some commitment to work to change things for the better. Hate should be turned into irritation that becomes a catalyst to action. The world is full of dime-a-dozen critics filled with hate.
Quoth Angels in America: "I live in America, I don't have to love it."