How and/or where do US citizens learn that the USA is the best country in the world etc?

In My Humble Opinion
41

Arguably one learns it by looking at facts (and yes, early indoctrination). Third largest country by population in the world, vast natural resources, incredible human diversity, largest GDP in the world (#2 is China which is lower by 30%), largest immigrant population (next in line is Germany, which is lower by 60%), and so on. Sure, there is always room for improvement. The founders wrote in principles of human equality, despite being slaveowners, I imagine in the same way a smoker thinks from time to time about quitting. And within a century slavery was indeed abolished here. Point being, I think highly subjective terms like ‘best’ allow one to consider potential for greatness. Much about the USA, on personal as well as national levels, is that there is room for ambitious aspirations to actually materialize.

Now, that said, imagine if the USA were the best car you could think of–powerful, safe, reliable, whatever–but it is driven by selfish drunks prone to road rage. On paper, and often engraved in granite walls, there appears little room for improvement. But humans being humans, the machinery is not allowed to function as designed. And so it becomes sort of a hoopty.

42

Or that a lot of the German troops on the beaches of Normandy were conscripts and walking wounded.

43

I graduated from high school in 1981 and even back then , I had a year of what was called “area studies” in which each quarter focused on a differnt part of the world. True, American history took a whole year, but I’m guessing that education in most countries emphasizes their own history.

Well, you can’t really say they’re sheltered from the health care system - something like 60% of people under 65 have health insurance through an employer, either their own, their parent’s or their spouse’s. It’s more accurate to say that they are unconcerned with other people’s experiences - that’s how you get people saying medical care isn’t rationed in the US - because they don’t consider rationing based on money to be rationing. Although of course it is. But Americans have a certain tendency to act like other countries’ systems are worse because they have to wait for non-emergency visits or procedures and forget that for some Americans the wait will be infinity for something that isn’t an emergency right now.

Which in my opinion, is a lot of where “the USA is the best country” comes from. Most Americans don’t care about other people and will only consider the US not to be the best when something affects them direectly.

BTW, I think “affordable medical care” was more than 30 years ago - I don’t recall medical care being affordable without insurance in the last 40 years.

44

Right on!

Every time I watch The News, I think, “Did I accidentally drop acid?”

45

This is true, but one thing I remember is getting light civics quite often: how America came to have the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, how wonderful the Amendment process is, the three branches of government and how great that is, etc. I never actually had a civics class, but it came up in US history.

Meanwhile, we learned some world history, but nothing about how (say) the Westminster system of government actually works. Just that they had a king in the 18th century, and that was bad, and we don’t.
When I moved to Canada, I discovered that (1) the system here is quite distinct from how things are in the USA, and (2) Canadians universally knew a ton about how the US system worked, while I was completely ignorant of how the Canadian system worked.

You obviously can’t go into detail about everywhere, but people from smaller and / or less geographically isolated nations perforce learn a lot of things that Americans have the privilege to just ignore.

I think a lot of the answer to the question is that isolation: the vast majority of Americans either never leave the country, or do so in such a way that they don’t really experience much of a different way of life. They don’t learn languages or consume foreign media in such a way as to really get a real sense that life without being American is a viable proposition. They know it, obviously, but it just doesn’t come up often enough to shake their inherent complacent (and mostly benign) ethnocentrism.

46

Which country do YOU think is “the best country in the world”?

I have always assumed that everyone in the world thinks that their home country is “the best country in the world.”

PS: I love Canada. I have visited many times since I was in high school. My brother lives in Vancouver.

47

Healthcare is never free. Some one is paying.

These things cost money. Either out-of-pocket, private insurance, Medicare or Medicaid or your NHS.

Free at point of care means you pay higher taxes to get that. If you are not paying taxes someone else is.

48

I dont think any one said that. Having the most powerful military means just that.

Are you forgetting the Pacific front? Not to mention, both Stalin and Khrushchev said they would have lost without US Lend-Lease.

And- General George S. Patton Jr. "No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."

Yep

Absolutely.

We forget that. Yes, true, if you take ALL the money spent on healthcare in the US and compared it to a UHC system, the UHC would likely be cheaper.

49

Have you actually spent much time in Europe? It’s completely normal for shops to be run by immigrants. The little Chinese run corner shop which stays open really late is common enough to be a cliche in Spain.

In terms of percentage of the population, many European countries actually have a higher immigrant population than the USA.

50

I actually don’t think that any country is “the best country in the world”. I and my wife have travelled enough to know that, between the likes of Canada and a host of different European countries, they’re all good in their own right.

I can look at Canada and see that, yes, health care is “free” (eg paid by taxes) but there are often wait times. I can also see a myriad of other things that aren’t necessarily great but, for the most part, aren’t bad.

I also fully recognize, as a retired Canadian naval officer, that, obnoxious and toxic as Trump is, he is also right that we also, to some extent, free-loaded defence-wise (and I suspect that most Canadian military senior ranks and officers will agree with that). But, I also believe that we are very open-minded to the diversity that exists here and, regardless of the wait times, that, after crashing my bicycle a year ago, I was able to ride up to the hospital, lock my bike, check in to emergency, and walk out with stitches in my arm, and then rode home - without ever worrying about money.

A year later I crashed my bike again (a bad year for bike crashes) about 10 km from home, called 911 and ten minutes later an ambulance came by, brought me into the ambulance to confirm that I wasn’t concussed or missing teeth, cleaned me up, and then I rode home. Again without worrying about money.

And here’s one thing - if I get into a dispute over a parking space or something similarly banal, I am very confident that a firearm won’t appear. Yes, we’ve had some school shootings and mass murders (the Toronto incel and his van come to mind), but we can count those things on one hand over the last 50 years.

51

Like I said upthread, I find the idea of best country childish and uniquely American. It’s a bizarre way to look at the world.

52

In my case, in the 1990s, it wasn’t Americans saying it, it was local Taiwanese around me saying they wished they lived in the USA or were US citizens. Of course, though, 30 years ago, America’s standing in the world was much better than it is today.

53

Hardly. India, Australia, and others think the same. Some Scandinavian citizens also, but not as solidly as the US, India, and Australia. Even Saudi’s tend to think that. UK, France to a lesser extent. Not unique at all.

54

I think that the “America is the Only Free Country” meme works best with people who would be terrified to live anywhere where they might need to know a few words of another language, and/or hear anything but English spoken, or hear any music but “country!”

55

The point is, if I were engaged in a game of top trumps, I wouldn’t be trying to think of ad hoc reasons for why another country’s brag doesn’t count, as you did WRT nukes.

The thread is about best country and you’ve been defending the notion that that should include military size. You weren’t the one that initially made the claim but you have been supporting it.

56

Cites?

57

Is this intended to be sarcasm?

58

Nope, I usually use an emoticon if so.

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When I was a kid, my family subscribed to National Geographic - ALWAYS a fight between us kids to be the first to see it in the way home from the post office, so my parents got us a subscription to the Nat. Geo. World mag, which was cause of many a fight, but this time not involving parents…

I was astounded one day upon reading the statistics of kids my age, around 8, who could not identify Vietnam on a map (printed in the mag). Sure, that war had been over for about a decade, longer than I had been alive, but kids my age in the USA were reported as having the worst geographical knowledge of all countries surveyed.

At that time it was routine for me to know Ulaanbaatar is the capital of Mongolia and exactly where Vietnam was located; amongst my peers I would not have stood out.

Even now I could tell you, say, Azerbaijan (a fairly inconsequential nation) is bounded by the Caspian Sea, Russia, Turkey (Türkiye*), Armenia and Iran… (missing one, I think) and that kind of fact was absolutely normal for my peers. Plus I can tell you all 5 of those nation’s capitals.

And that is just geography.

American exceptionalism is, well, an exception, and not a good one.

* i had to look up the new (or old) spelling