I’m no jingoist, but if one were to tout some country as GREATEST — whatever that means — how could you pick any country besides the U.S.A.?
It’s not the happiest, but it’s high on that list. It’s not the most prosperous, but it’s high on that list. It’s economy is larger than the rest of the G-8 added together. It’s ranked #22 in non-corruption, almost as high as France or Japan. The American dollar is the world’s currency. The U.S. has the best universities, the best military, the best scientists. It’s still the world leader in computer, financial and entertainment industries. Overall, it has had fairly good governance until recently.
If not the U.S., then who? China? Denmark???
Sure the U.S. is sadly lagging in some important ways — it would be an impossible goalpost to say the “greatest” country has to be #1 in every category — so calling the U.S. “greatest” should be as much in challenge as in pride.
For many decades, America was the unquestioned beacon of hope; people all around the world would agree that the U.S. is “greatest.” In the last few years, American prestige has fallen markedly. :o Its reign may come to an end, but as of now it can still fairly be called “greatest.”
America isn’t the greatest country on Earth. But PITTSBURGH is the greatest CITY on Earth, and it’s in America. That’s gotta count for something?
To be fair, that chant IS generally associated with sports. Ain’t no way you can watch the 1980 Olympics footage without getting the urge to yell along.
Leaffan, dude, you know I love you to bits, but surely you know we’re not all a bunch of loud-mouthed rednecks screaming “'MERICA FUCK YEAH!!!” Just like not all Canadians* are jingoistic fucksticks like Don Cherry.
Seriously though, I don’t think there IS such a thing as “greatest country on Earth”. But I’m happy here in my country, and I don’t think it’s a sin to say, “Hey, I do love America, even though we have problems that definitely need to be solved.” It’s because I love my country that I hate Trump so much.
*You did give us Mario Lemieux. We owe you for that.
Everything you write is true, of course, so I’ll just add that the aspects of America which are great are generally orthogonal to our flawed aspects. That is to say, Silicon Valley would still exist if America had true single-payer health care. Hollywood would still exist if we had decent public transit. And so on. In fact, these places would do even better if we had better backstops in place for those that aren’t as lucky. America could afford this stuff even if it were more expensive (which it isn’t).
America has all my stuff in it, so it’s better than other countries that don’t have my stuff in them, because I wouldn’t want to be in a country without my stuff. Among other thing’s it’d probably get pretty cold and I’d be arrested for indecent exposure.
So by that metric America is the best country. Other metrics, well…
Yeah, but which country can you say is legitimately “greater” than the USA?
China is comparable in GDP and has a larger population, but they are a lot more totalitarian and lack the cultural diversity of the USA.
Similarly, countries like Japan, India, Brazil, Mexico and Russia have their plusses, but none of them really have the global influence of the USA.
Britain kind of lost their place with the whole Brexit thing and it’s difficult to think of any European country being “great” outside of the context of the EU.
There are a lot of really nice countries like Switzerland or the Netherlands, but they are also very small and culturally homogenous. Kind of like evaluating the USA from, I don’t know, only looking at the Hamptons.
So while the USA may not be the top country in terms of most of all the metrics we use to evaluate countries, when compared to other countries, I don’t think there is another one of similar population with the combined economic, cultural, and political influence of the USA.
What the hell does that mean? We not at war with Afghanistan, and they are not more powerful than us militarily. He said the US is an unmatched superpower. Are you suggesting that Afghanistan challenges the status of the US as the #1 military super power in the world?
Well, Puerto Rico is in US jurisdiction so we do make a claim on the best coffee (or at least we will again once the farms recover)
Well, it IS the country where both Bill Clinton and I have wielded our mighty power and it was great… er… wait, um… THAT is not what he meant? Never mind.
