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I think we all know by now that everything prageru says is mental gymnastics ragebait.
The USA is just as bloody as its parent, the UK, and they’re both as bad as other nations with an Imperial past. I don’t see any one as “worse” than the others.
I don’t know all of world history, there’s always more to learn, but every empire I’ve researched devolves into this at some point.
But, even small countries like Belgium manage to wreak havoc.
This is why government needs to be limited, in my opinion. Governments are killing machines, and the bigger they get, the easier it is. Just like people, governments require rules to limit them or its madness. I think the USA, Russia, and China all have the same problem, they’re too big for their own good.
No, the USA is the most destructive nation yet on this planet. No one even comes close even from ancient history (think Rome or Mongols). If you don’t know this already you are probably just ignorant or in denial.
I do. Because the US didn’t take a hint and is still doing their bullshit Imperialism today, and have turned America into some sort of cult to be worshipped.
The USA is just as bloody as its parent, the UK, and they’re both as bad as other nations with an Imperial past.
Or, you know, damn near every single empire or powerful ruler throughout all of human history. The Greek golden age was only possible thanks to slaves working the fields, Rome was similar in this regard.
Eastern nations weren’t any better, read up on ancient Chinese culture and all the fucked up shit they did.
Same goes for India, hell they’re still trying to end child marriage but still represent like 20-25% of all child marriages in the world.
People love to dog on America, and I’ll be happy to point out all the historical examples, but the truth is this is more a symptom of the human condition and less about a nation. Look at the other countries on earth and you’ll find plenty of evidence that evil isn’t isolated to one nation, people, culture or time period.
It’s universally a human thing.
At least some of them have largely left it in the past
At one point, the American people fought for their freedom from what they considered an oppressive and tyrannical authority: the English Crown. The American flag, in that context, came to represent resistance to arbitrary authority and the idea that government ultimately derives its legitimacy from the people.
And the Founding Fathers were not, as Prager would have you believe, a monolithic group of devout, orthodox Christians. Many were heavily influenced by the Enlightenment, Deism, rationalism, and religious skepticism. Some rejected core doctrines of Christianity outright. Calling them atheist would be historically inaccurate, but portraying them as a uniformly God-fearing Christian movement is equally misleading.
The irony is that when some Americans look at that same flag today, they see it as a symbol of the very kind of powerful, oppressive authority that the American Revolution was fought against. The difference is that ordinary people today don’t have the same practical means of challenging their government that the revolutionaries ultimately resorted to.
So if anyone needs to do a little more historical research, Prager might want to start with the people who actually founded the country.
What you have detailed is a myth or propaganda about the US, not what actually happened. There was no fight for freedom unless you believe freedom equals massive amounts of innocents dying for the wealthy.
The irony is that when some Americans look at that same flag today, they see it as a symbol of the very kind of powerful, oppressive authority that the American Revolution was fought against.
And, unfortunately, a lot of people around the world look at it that way too.
At one point, the American people fought for their freedom from what they considered an oppressive and tyrannical authority: the English Crown.
Some did. Some were merely opportunists who didn’t want the government getting in their way. Most of the US founding fathers were smugglers and land speculators. They didn’t like that the US had ended the French and Indian war by promising that in exchange for peace, their colony would stop expanding westwards. That pissed off the founders who had bought land to the west and wanted a return on their investments.
Other American people were just fine with the arrangement with the crown. They didn’t want a brand new government, they thought things were fine as they were. These people were either killed or driven off their land by the rebels who wanted a new government, and were forced to head to England or up into Canada.
Just look at the other places that didn’t consider the British monarch to be an oppressive tyrant: Canada, Australia, NZ, etc. Did they suffer under the grinding boot of the king and lead miserable lives as a result? Were they forced to hand all their wealth over to England? Hardly. Within a few decades the British gave their local governments more power. Now they all merely have the king as a figurehead and are fully controlled by the people.
Meanwhile, the rebel colonists in the US went only a couple of decades before descending into a civil war. Plus, there’s the war of 1812 which, in large part, was due to these people who famously hated tyrants and oppression ignoring treaties and killing off natives so that they could expand westward.
It seems to me that if you look past all the propaganda that is part of the US school system, the British king being a “tyrant” was more of a convenient excuse rather than the actual legitimate reason for the rebellion.
Just look at the other places that didn’t consider the British monarch to be an oppressive tyrant: Canada, Australia, NZ, etc. Did they suffer under the grinding boot of the king and lead miserable lives as a result? Were they forced to hand all their wealth over to England?
While I completely understand and mostly agree with your point, speaking as a Canadian millions of people suffered under the grinding boot of the king and were forced to give up not only their wealth, but also their languages and cultures. The genocide of the indigenous peoples in Canada is an atrocious part of our history, and the last Residential School wasn’t closed down until the 1990s.
Part of the American independence movement was backlash against the result of the “French and Indian Wars”, in which the British agreed to limit their westward expansion.
Sure, the British (and early Canadians) did some horrible things to people they saw as less worthy than themselves. But, in this case, the “oppressive tyrant” was less brutal towards the Indigenous than the American colonists wanted. The monarch actively held the colonists back from what they wanted to do, and that’s why what happened to the Indigenous people in the US is generally much worse than what happened to them in Canada.
The residential schools were awful, but the mindset that led to them was “these savages can be civilized as long as we remove them from the terrible influences as children and have good, catholic nuns break them of their savage ways and make them into good British subjects”. Meanwhile, the US solution was “these savages have good land, let’s drive them off that land and take that land for ourselves”.
From the viewpoint of someone in the 21st century, both of these are awful. But, from the viewpoint of the 19th century, one is definitely a more worthy undertaking.
What I find interesting is that all of this was happening after a civil war more bloody per capita than the First World War, the trial and execution of a king, a period of rather repressive republican rule, a restoration of the monarchy, and yet another revolution/coup which established monarchs couldn’t rule without Parliament’s consent. Part of the reason Britain wasn’t revolutionary later on like France was because multiple revolutions had already happened in the 17th century. The Americans were by the point of the revolution arguing George III was an absolutist and a tyrant, but that form of monarchy had already had its back broken in an English and later British context by the time the American colonies were being settled in large numbers (with some exceptions). It was an accusation much more apt towards say the French king at the time who in fact supported the Americans, and we all know how that eventually went for the Ancien Regime.
The colonist’s grievance was actually more with Parliament for the most part, they actively wanted the king to intercede on their behalf. George III wasn’t willing to do that being a constitutional monarch, which ironically got him labelled a tyrant.
The English crown was limiting their ability to oppress others you mean.
It was as noble as the Confederacy, to say, not at all.
For Canada, even though everyone was against it, the BNA act also allowed us to throw out old treaties and give us terms more appealing to the ruling class.
If the commenter didn’t have the Chinese flag in their name the message would sound a lot less hypocritical.
Cuba (Spanish Empire) and Palestine (Ottoman Empire and more) also have a horrific history.
I mean, cuba and Palestine have their own crimes without reaching for the empires, but nothing compared to the great leap forward.
It’s not a “reach”. That’s who the people are (and were). Cubans are mostly Spanish, Palestinians are mostly Arabs, that is their history.
History is history. We are discussing history, no? Do a people get a clean slate when they write a constitution or charter?
(if you’re going to compare another nation’s history to US history, it’s appropriate to start that history at the same point for all of the nations being compared: 250 years US history, compare to last 250 years of Cuban history, so Spain is 100% relevant, and 250 years of Palestinian history (Ottoman Empire).
It the same government and the same constitution, nothing changed between the 60s and now.
Imperialism bad, except when from an approved country.
You could say it’s a literal red flag indicating the post came from inside a tank.
I’m Canadian. I love that I am Canadian. I love my country and think it’s one of the best countries in the world to live and be a part of.
I’m also very well aware of the atrocities my country has done, and still does. My brother is Anishinaabe and I spent a lot of time as a white kid steeped in Indigenous Canadian culture because of him and his family. I wore my orange shirt yesterday because as I don’t have the time I once had to attend and participate in local indigenous events, the very least I can do is raise awareness and be an ally.
You can absolutely take pride in where you live. It’s understanding the negative things associated with that and accepting them and learning from them, trying to prevent those atrocities from ever happening again.
Unlike, you know, that country to the south of us. Waving it loud and proud while your pedophile president drops bombs on school children halfway across the world probably isn’t the best look for a nation.
You’re actually touching on something that is a perceptible phenomenon in the US in that MAGA and conservatives as a whole have seemingly coopted the US flag for reasons related to what you said. They wave it around, drape themselves in it, call themselves “true” patriots and “real” Americans. Meanwhile, anyone not doing it isn’t too proud of what the flag represents at the moment.
The flag doesn’t offend me. It’s just a piece of colored cloth. It’s the people doing those horrible acts that offend me. Especially the ones using the flag as a justification.
The flag doesn’t offend me. The dickless chuds who wave it around 24/7 and have to wear it on at least 1 article of clothing at every moment in time claiming that what equates to less than a mild inconvenience or otherwise does NOT impact their lives at all is a fundamental infringement upon their personal freedoms while blindly supporting the an authoritative govt stripping away freedoms from. 25% of the country…
…that’s what does
The ones waving the flag the hardest.
My favourite version of this joke:
My favorite is Chinese history where they go:
“Ling Long incident: no one recalls how it began or what happened,150 million dead, half of china destroyed. Famine for 10 years.”
And it’s just a minor footnote written down by maybe one court scribe.
It’s possible for a nation to set some valuable examples while still being a bad actor.
That’s America.
That’s many countries off and on throughout their histories. The thing about America is that it has so much wealth and power and with great power comes blah blah blah, right? Our good actions tend to do a lot of good, and our bad actions tend to have far reaching consequences. And right now our bad actions are outweighing the good and they’re such comically bad actions that they really stand out. We’re really going out of our way to be the baddies.
What all these tweet-historians ignore is that the wickedness they’re criticizing is not unique to the USA, or even the Western world. Its also not a purely Imperialistic trait as it existed long before Roman Imperialism and it exists in the Eastern world as well.
China, India, the middle east… they all have histories filled with cruelty and evil acts that rival anything the USA has. In some ways, like when that Chinese army was trapped and had no food so the emperor offered his concubines as food and the soldiers gleefully obliged, are horrors American history lacks.
Remember; cruelty is a human trait, not an American one (or one isolated to one nation, people, culture or time period.)
The flag is absolutely fine.
The people who like to wave it around in the shattered remains of schools in other countries are assholes though. Although in fairness they do kill a lot of their own school kids as well so perhaps that’s just the American way
As a flag it’s not very appealing tbh, too many small details as well.
Yeah there’s a lot of better looking flags if we’re being honest. I’m a little jelly of some of them.
When somebody ends an argument by angrily telling you to go read a book, and you do, the book usually confirms they’re wrong.
You can tell you won the argument when the other person starts shouting over you, starts attacking your intelligence or character and storms out.
“Its in the bible” “Go read a dictionary” “The Quran literally says…” “Yeah but the comics say…” “Yeah but in the manga…”
Youre absolutely correct, these people have no idea what theyre talking about.
What’s wrong with “Yeah but in the manga/comics”? Those don’t seem to fit with the others.
They seem more along the lines of “Agh, the movies don’t even mention the Barrow Downs!”
Theyre wrong about what happens in them.
I love doing that. When someone tells me I’m wrong and I need to do some research and then I come back with peer reviewed research papers confirming my side.
Yes, I’m that level of petty about our tiny disagreement.
Your “research” was supposed to be in the echo chamber websites they frequent!
Yeah and if you show them credible sources they’ll be like “WRONG. See?” and then link to a bunch of propaganda sites…
Because people who try to shut arguments down with this project that they can’t imagine a scenario where they would actually read a book. It’s the same energy as those that invoke the Bible, i.e. never read it themselves, assume it says what their feelies feel
Which book have you had recommended at you?
Not OP, but the bible’s a big one.
Well, depends on the font size and paper thickness.
I mean, if you’re fine with genocide, with war crimes, mass killing, unethical experimentation with people, racism, homophobia, transphobia, bigotry, religious fanaticism and probably a bunch of other “cool” things I’m forgetting, sure. The US must look really cool to you.
Right now, the US look good only if you see them with the lens of someone who lived 3000 years ago when all those things were somewhat fine.
But for sane humans, that flag symbolizes so many wrong and evil things that might as well be next to the other worst flags of human history.
Most other rich and powerful countries have done/are doing all those same things too. It’s absolutely right to identify and fight against those abuses, but America is certainly not alone in acting like a psychopath, some could argue that it’s not even the worst historically (though they’re pretty close to the top of the pile right now)
I’m in Europe.
Amongst all countries here, we really, trully, did shit to everbody in the World, even did it to each other.
Unlike America, we’re not actually proud of it, the public opinion around here are generally against doing it now (though the elites are still fucking sociopaths) and we’re actually trying to stop doing it which is why there is a lot less warmongering here than in the US and hence much smaller military budgets even though Europe is right next to the imperialist nutters in Russia.
Also as somebody else pointed out, there is nowhere near the same level of flag shagging in most of Europe as there is in the US.
The only exception to most of this is Britain, and even they are somehow mid-way between the US and the rest of Europe rather than at the level of the US.
Yeah, the biggest difference between how an European and an American look at their countries history is that the European goes “we did some fucked up shit we shouldn’t have.” while the American goes “we did nothing wrong, except slavery but we modernized it so it’s fine”.
Unlike America, we’re not actually proud of it
The majority, one would hope.
but people forget.
There was marine le pen, there was the Canadian Freedom Convoy. There are parties like AfD. it amazes me that these things can exist, but perhaps it shouldn’t. You may be well educated and empathetic but I guarantee many of your peers may not see the world the same way you do. There are people among you who understand this well enough and will take advantage.
the first step to becoming the devil is to be unable to imagine oneself sinking to the level of those they hate. please stay vigilant, it can happen to anybody
The Far-Right in Europe are having to portray people coming over her as bad for people living here to get support.
There is little or no public support in most of Europe, even amongst the Far-Right, for projecting European power abroad by attacking foreign countries.
Also you don’t hear the Far-Right in Europe celebrating colonialism and demanding to go back to that. The few times some tried it just fell flat and they shut up about it (and as a side note, curiously the same happened when they tried American-style mixing of Religion with Politics)
Even the support for white supremacism abroad (in the form of Israel) is happening against the desires of the European public opinion and is definitelly not overtly about “our fellow whites” (and for those with any doubt that Isreal is a white supremacist nation, just go read how they treat black Jews over there according even to newspapers like the Haaretz)
Whilst the direction of travel in politics is the same in Europe and the US, the public opinion Europe is decades “behind” the American mindset in areas such as supremacism and warmongering.
From what I can tell the people who are actually obsessed with our flag here are a minority, then there’s the football hooligans and the racists (some overlap). Pretty much everyone else doesn’t really use flags.
When was the last time you saw a French flag on a mug or a pair of shorts? Or a Dutch flag, or even a Spanish flag?
The flag in Britain gets pushed into a lot of areas to were the flags of other European countries don’t get pushed to.
My own impression (having lived for over a decade in Britain) is that the flag in Britain gets shown a lot more outside formal occasions than the national flags in other European countries. This also dovetails with the nationalistic push in the discourse of mainstream politicians and even how British news vs International news are reported in Britain (trying to make it sound like in international events everybody is paying attention and following what British politicians say or reporting on some meaningless blunder in some small provincial place elsewhere in Europe in a “look at those silly foreigners, this would never happen here” tone that implies “we’re much better than that”).
And don’t get me started on how, almost a century later, at least every 5 years there’s yet another film about WWII coming out from Britain.
The push for Nationalism and for the belief in National Greatness is much higher and widespread in Britain that anywhere else in Europe I lived in (which, by the way, includes Germany), something which is partly behind Brexit and the shit show it became because British Politicians went to negotiate the Exit Treaty with a “they’ll give us everything we want because we’re so important”.
The whole thing in Britain with the Empire and WWII reminds me how during the time of the Fascist dictator Salazar in my native Portugal there was an almost constant remembering and celebrating the past glories of the country (even though the Age Of Maritime Discoveries was 5 centuries past) which is not at all the case nowadays under Democracy.
As for the far-right and football hooligans in Britain, they’re so extreme in their flag shagging that the ones in England will not only do it with the British flag, they’ll even do it with the St. George’s.
It’s not alone in the acts they’re doing, but I’d argue they are alone in the weird feeling of the citizens about the flag itself. The kind of patriotism found in the US people is rarely found anywhere else.
Pretty much grabbed a list of “shit you shouldn’t do to other people” and treated it as a TODO list.
Okay but AMERICAN™ innovation and uhh wealth or something
There are a million possible topics, too many to lost but if you find yourself needing a place to start…
Black Wall Street (and any of the destruction of predominantly black neighborhoods being torn down/flooded/etc.), Wounded Knee, Trail of Tears, internment camps
The list is indeed far longer than we can count, and that’s just domestic :’)
Don’t forget about Seneca Village, or what is today known as “Central Park”…
I never looked around, never second-guessed, then I read some Howard Zinn now I’m always depressed.
TBF Howard Zinn has a rather pessimistic view of class struggle in the US and that is reflected in his book, at least in my opinion. In emphasizing that radical movements have always been crushed, deflected, or co-opted by the political elites he implies the inevitability of such outcomes and often misses some of the ways that those movements still succeeded in radically altering the class arrangement, and the experiences of those who lived quietly in the crossfire of these historical struggles are erased through omission. A lot of that is an understandable limitation of an attempt at an all-encompassing historical account though.
You should listen to some Public Enemy and Reagan Youth.
I don’t always agree with Chuck D but I’ll always listen to what the man has to say.
This coming from someone with what looks like the Chinese flag in their name is… interesting.
To be fair, current China hasn’t existed as much time to accrue the same amount of crimes yet, even if they are certainly trying.
I’m guessing they’re not big readers at PragerU…
Prager U continuing to be shitty beyond belief. Whats new.
