Are America's Best Days Behind Her?

[el_bryanto]

Or it, if you prefer.

Bryant

[saltpoint]

1. We're a pretty young nation. Most of the rest of the world is older

and more self-realized.

Good things are ahead correspondent to how much we are willing to be learners and pilgrims peace-makers as opposed to a dominant world power.

[Yupster]

25. People say this all the time, but

it's really not true.

Look at a world map in 1781 and count how many nations there were.

Now look at the hundred plus nations today.

We are one of the very oldest nations of the world. We came before Palau and the Philippines, but that's not all. We also came before Mexico and Canada, and Peru and Nicaragua and Cuba, and Australia and New Guinea, and Zimbabwe and Liberia, and India and Bangladesh, and even Germany and Italy.

There are very few nations that came before us and are still around today.

[el_bryanto]

28. I think people confuse nations and civilizations

But even then your point is well taken. Certainly the argument only works if you adopt a Eurocentric view of the world.

Bryant

[saltpoint]

39. "...and are still around today" is a pretty loaded passage in your post.

I reiterate that we are a young nation -- a very young one.

Cultures which inform and define other nations are very, very old by contrast.

[Yupster]

42. If you include the Aztecs, Ainu and Austrailopithicines

then we would indeed be a young nation in comparison.

If you compare us to nations actually on the map, we are one of the very oldest.

[saltpoint]

44. I don't believe that the distinction between 1) a current standing nation,

measured by years like a yardstick and 2) a cultural entity comprised of aggregate ideas is the point, anymore than I believe "America" stops at El Paso going south. Those are arbitary limitations imposed on the older landscape, among which "the United States" is an infant.

A little over 200 years or so versus the long flow of ideas that prevailed when the founders took ink to paper. We behave like prepubescents in the world community. Way too much bully-on-the-playground swagger and over-confidence. It hasn't served us very well, witness terrorist acts against our citizens in faraway venues and in lower Manhattan.

When people in Europe break for lunch time they can have a sandwich and fruit and cup of coffee while sitting on ruins many thousands of years old. Long years settle differently in a culture than short years. Empires tend to come and go but each generation needs an hour or so for lunch and an apple and sandwich. It is fair to say that some apples and sandwiches are older than others.

The Far Right opposes meaningful health care reform with the same ferocity (and likely the same ideological starting point) that it ignores indigenous American culture. Denying access to health care reform has quite a bit of the same energy as bulldozing habitat or starving Apache villages to force Apache warriors to surrender to an army which could not otherwise bring them to heel. Al Gore, unfortunately, is but a singular soul doing battle from the perspective of the long view, but in addition to being outnumbered, he's appealing a longer view to an often recalcitrant playground bully. Even so, more people are beginning to understand global interconnectedness now than at any previous time in the history of the Colonies/States.

We heard progressives mock Bush's Iraq invasion and preoccupation with slogans like "What are those Iraqis doing sitting on OUR oil?!" And thank the gods progressives did that mocking. It was good energy to direct at a deserving target. Empire makes juicy history but it tends to be manifest in a prepubescent petulance, which is given to deceit and territorialism. There are no "daggers aimed at the heart of Germany, only human beings, breaking for lunch and talking over a ham & cheese and an apple.

We're young because we too often act brattish. We can do a lot better, and some of us are trying. The farther back we look, Churchill wrote, the farther ahead we can see.

[Taitertots]

2. Definitely not

All the bad things that are happening are just going to be the impetus for change that everyone knows is both needed and happening whether they like it or not.

[Captain Hilts]

3. I like to think the US is gender neutral and not female or male. nt

[el_bryanto]

5. that's why i said "or it" if you prefer.

I prefer to think of it is a her, but I understand not everybody agrees with me on that.

Bryant

[Captain Hilts]

7. I can understand that, but as someone who studies foreign policy I've noticed...

that conservatives are far more likely to refer to countries as 'she's.

The US is whatever we, as individuals, want it to be.

[el_bryanto]

8. I think in my case it's historical; I do a lot of reading in the 1920s and 1930s

When calling America an it would have been pretty rare.

I can see arguments to be made on both sides - are there any nations that call themselves "he?"

Bryant

[Captain Hilts]

9. Interesting!

What's your fancy in that time frame?

I read about the 1930s a LOT.

[el_bryanto]

12. Well i did my thesis on the Communist party in the 30s and 40s

Currently I'm reading a lot in the 1920s, in part because I am running a game (I'm an evil roleplayer) set in 1927. Just read Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern which I really enjoyed, about pretty much what it says. But it's really wide ranging, covering both the reality and the image of the flapper, and it's pretty persuasive in the thesis of the Flapper being an important transitional figure from Victorian morals to the more modern age.

Bryant

[RaleighNCDUer]

16. There was 'the Fatherland', of course.

I think the feminine is more appropriate for a state which nurtures and requires nuruturing.

"stand beside HER, and guide HER..."

But I myself generally think of it as 'it'.

[el_bryanto]

18. D'oh - yeah that's a pretty glaring one.

[lunatica]

4. That depends on what you mean by 'best days'

Progressives believe that it's worst days are behind it, and that with some real concerted and conscious effort the best days are ahead.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

6. Yes, I can understand this. Hopefully, we are more enlightened.

[ellenfl]

34. universal health care, gender and race equality, equal

opportunity for all, conservation of all resources and healing our planet . . . nah, we haven't reached our best days yet. we have seen lots of bad days that we were told were our good days but we have not come near american utopia, yet. of course, past and current robber barons/power brokers would disagree.

ellen fl

[LeftinOH]

10. Define "Best".

[pocoloco]

11. Have you checked with Merle?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe_aJnQPPi8

[kjackson227]

13. I'm voting "maybe not" because it depends on us Americans.

We must become a more informed and vigilante voter in order to vote politicians in who truly have the American people's interests at heart, and vote those out who only care about lining their personal pockets and carrying out the agendas of their lobbyist backers.

[L0oniX]

14. It's over dude n/t

[harun]

37. LOL, I just hope the nation that eventually eats us has good Health

Care coverage, like ... well basically every other country on Earth.

[Ikonoklast]

15. Lack of definiton of terms.

In what way?

Financially?
Socially?
Militarily?
Diplomatically?

This is a time of crisis, but I believe we have a great opportunity as a nation to fundamentally change the direction we have been heading for close to the last thirty years.

But the military-industrial complex will resist this with all the political power they can muster, as they are the benefactors of the vast majority of the money spent by our government, to the detriment of most social programs.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

17. If it is able to give up empire and become a "second rate" power, the best is yet to come.

So, it depends on how gracefully it gives up it's withering empire.

Alas, I'm not feeling optimistic on it's ability to face the obvious.

[el_bryanto]

19. If we become a second rate power, who will be the first rate one?

Or do you envision a future without a first rate power?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

29. China, probably.

They are the current dynamo economically. But, I think they're, at least, hesitant about becoming the biggest kid on the block because of the attendant drawbacks.

However, out of necessity, they are expanding their influence around the world to secure resources. Particularly in Africa.

They are being very careful to avoid becoming dependent on de facto colonies as we, and other empires, did which entailed having to "defend" them to protect "our vital national interests".

There is, also, the possibility that they could join with Japan or India in economic partnerships for mutual benefit that would transform the "East" into a sort of de facto superpower that could dictate what other nations do by simply withholding funding. Which in, some ways, it's already doing.

As I see it, America's "glory days" (however, inglorious they actually were) are ending simply because can't dominate or even compete in the global economy.

Ironically, we still believe that "power comes from the barrel of a gun", while the Chinese know that it comes from the power of an overflowing treasury.

[el_bryanto]

30. Do you think that China will handle their position more responsibly than we have? nt

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

32. I'm with Lord Acton when it comes to power.

China, like the United States and every other empire, shows little compunction in throwing people under the bus when it's attainment or retention of power is threatened.

I think the Chinese have a somewhat better appreciation of history but will be unable to avoid becoming dependent on their colonies for survival and will resort to violence and subjugation to maintain it. Again, in the name of "our vital national interests".

[DailyGrind51]

20. Europe is not wedded to the doctrine of rapacious individualism.

America has far too many who really believe that hard work will result in wealth and fall for the big lie that it's the "have littles" not the "have mores" that are sapping our economy dry.

[ecstatic]

21. Best days for who?

:shrug: I guess it depends on who you ask. :eyes:

[ensho]

22. because of climate change the whole worlds best days are gone

nt

[BlooInBloo]

23. Truly a poll for the ahistorical.

[el_bryanto]

26. In what sense?

Obviously America has never had a golden age. We can talk about say the 20s or the 50s as being high water marks, but women and minorities had things really rough in those years.

Bryant

[texanshatingbush]

31. But America DID have a Gilded Age......

....which set in motion the giddiness which led to the Great Depression.

[el_bryanto]

33. yeah but the gilded age and the roaring 20s

were pretty lousy times for a lot of people. Particularly minorities and women.

Bryant

[Selatius]

43. It depends on how one defines "golden age."

If one looks at the history of the Roman Empire, we can find points where Roman economic and military power was greatest, yet even in those times, not everybody had it great, especially slaves and women and religious minorities known as Christians. When one talks of America's golden age, is he talking about the period where the US had the greatest level of influence in world affairs before the damage inflicted by excessive wars and rampant corruption in government? Is he talking about the period where America existed prior to the establishment of corporate personhood? Or perhaps the era of the New Deal under Franklin Roosevelt? "Golden Age" depends on the parameters given.

As far as the more pedestrian rubric of sheer economic and military power, the US has seen better days. The two are indelibly linked. Without a powerful economy, there will be insufficient tax revenue to maintain a powerful army. Eventually, the over 700 military garrisons scattered throughout the world will have to be pared down.

[scheming daemons]

24. Take this same poll over at FR, and the results would be similar

They think the election of Obama is the beginning of the end.



Me? I think the election of Obama is the beginning of a new beginning.

[Echo In Light]

27. Tip-toe totalitarianism yields results eventually too brazen to trivialize via propaganda

[Kievan Rus]

35. They most certainly are

All of our manufacturing jobs have been sent overseas in order to satisfy our insatiable need for cheap crap and materialistic consumerism. Since so many people want cheap crap instead of good, quality craftsmanship, jobs get sent overseas to people who will work for a nickel an hour.

Any gander at a job website or the employment section of a newspaper, and you'll find that most of the stuff is "customer service." There's just simply no good-paying manufacturing jobs here anymore.

[otohara]

36. Selfish and Divided

poor vs rich
us vs them
corporations
lazy
planet in peril
affordable health care for some
republicans vs democrats

I just don't think this country is capable or willing to pull off anything big - I remember my mom telling me what it was like during the depression and WWII - she and other women - working on war planes, pulling together as a nation - doing what ever it took to win a war and turn this country and Europe around.

[el_bryanto]

38. Very depressing results. n/t

[marmar]

40. America is like an aging movie star.....

..... still puts on the makeup, unable to accept that the marquee days have passed.

[G_j]

41. other

depends on what you mean by best,