I agree. The US is great, not perfect. It’s also not the greatEST, not now, and certainly not of all time. It’s not a utopia, and never has been. It doesn’t need to be to be great, though.
I voted that the US is and has been great. I also think it is constantly improving.
voted liberal, never great, still isn’t.
My criterion for “great” is, more or less, both “internally good” and “a force for good in the world” and in my view America is neither. With its high rates of race-biased incarceration and overall inequality and degree of plutocracy, it doesn’t currently qualify as internally good at all. Of course, with slavery and its treatment of Native Americans, this isn’t any better historically. As for “a force for good in the world”? Don’t make me laugh. “Not too often a force of outright evil” would be way more accurate.
Topples governments with impunity
Has highest military budget by far
Hundreds of bases.
Two party system.
Police corruption run amuck
Locks up the greatest pct of its population (more than Russia, China, Cuba.)
Privatized prisons and use of nigh-slave labor
Bombs funerals
Bombs rescue workers.
Assasinates its own citizens (Obama kill list)
And it’s populace is more concerned with Melania Trump than any of these issues.
Well, yeah, but she’s a babe, and there are naked pictures of her available. Of course she’s more important.
Why do you hate America?
I’ve lived in East Asia for 27 years and you can say the exact same things about Japan or even Taiwan.
Great country, despite all the problems we know need fixing.
North America was a rich fertile undamaged continent, with an abundance of exploitable resources and an ideal climate. America was great before industrialized man got here. It has been in steady decline, but “It’s taking longer than we thought” and some greatness can still be found, but most of the low hanging fruit has been picked, and much of it left to rot in the fields.
I think there’s an argument to be made that America is not as great as it once was, and I find it hard to be as optimistic about the future as I was as a child (although some of that may be due to growing up, not so much changes in the reality around me-- on the other hand, I grew up during the Cold War, so reality has changed).
But I don’t think that that means that America isn’t Great today.
I can’t vote, because my choice isn’t there.
Has America done some remarkably great things? Yes, of course.
Does America stand for some very worthy values? Definitely?
Do we always live up to them? No.
Has every citizen always been able to partake fairly in the country’s economic growth and prosperty? No.
Have women, ethnic/religious/cultural minorities always been fairly treated? Definitely not.
Are we making progress in that direction? Yes.
Do we still have a long, long way to go? Absolutely yes.
For the moral scale argument, I don’t think morality and power play well together. For example, the Belgians had the Congo Free State, which resulted in the deaths of millions of Africans. If Lichtenstein were a globe spanning hegemonic power they would do lots of brutish things to maintain their access to resources and destroy or manipulate burgeoning rivals and so on. It’s a sickness in human psychology, or perhaps a feature of our systems of power that need to expand to maintain and justify themselves.
Sorry to hijack or nitpick BUT …
Once upon a time, opinion fell on a bell-shaped curve and most Americans were centrist. That a poll like this is either-or these days is a reminder of how deep polarization has become. That’s a bad thing.
I voted this way too. I will sound like a bleeding heart, but any country that’s this wealthy, where babies and kids don’t have enough to eat is not a great country.
I voted I’m a conservative and America is not longer great. Greatness started under Reagan after he brought the country back from being humilated in Vietnam and Iran and standing up to the communist thugs and even winning the cold war and ending the threat of nuclear annihilation, but before his economic policies started to decimate the middle class, something only Trump and Sanders since then have seemed to care about. Now we’re back into the 1970s where we’re trying to be nice to enemies of the US like Cuba and we get humiliated in Benghazi without any kind of meaningful response and start looking like pansies again on the world stage.
Oh, sure. This is why you talk about Florida sending a rocket to the moon. If it’s good, it’s a triumph for America; if it’s bad, it’s “huh, more race riots in Missouri”.
I’m a liberal, and I chose, “America wasn’t great, but it is now.” However, my feeling is more like, there were times when it was great, and there were times it wasn’t. Does that make sense?
(Fucking time limits!)
Basically, I think in general, America is good, and I love my country, but there are things wrong with it, and I’d like it to be better.
Since I’m neither liberal nor conservative I can’t really vote in this poll. However, taking ‘great’ to mean ‘one of the most dominant super powers, able to project it’s power globally’, I’d say we are still a great nation and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Even if some country or group of country also gains this trait the US will still be great as long as it is still a global super power…and, frankly, I don’t see any other countries on the horizon overtaking us or even looking likely to become a global super power any time soon.
“Florida” doesn’t send rockets to the moon. The NATIONAL Aeronautics and Space Administration does.
A couple points:
a) The United States had a history before 1981
b) Trump doesn’t care about anything besides Trump. And you can’t blame the “Liberal Media”. He’s been trying to convince people of that as much as possible on his own.
c) You conveniently forgot to mention the “second and third Vietnam” Bush started in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has done far more to undermine the “greatness” of the USA than opening relations with some tiny island “enemy” or a terrorist attack that killed 4 people.
I would question the “greatness” of the USA under Reagan. This was a time of rampant materialism and excess. There was constant uncertainty about nuclear war with the Soviet Union and terrorism (Beirut, Pan Am Flight 103). The US was thought to be losing economic competitiveness (particularly with Japan).
If anything, things were greater under Clinton. It was a time of peace and prosperity as the world’s only superpower. We were leading rapid technological advancements.
But, then the Republicans lost their mind, started focusing on impeaching the President over blowjobs and started putting forth dumber and dumber candidates every election. And now here we are.
America was way better before than what it is now.
Only one person had to work and now two people working and they struggle to get by.
Before you could by a house and now it is becoming more pipe dream.
Before you turn age 18 and leave home and buy house or rent. Now we got 30 old’s and 40 old’s living with their Mom or Dad and will probably never own a home.
Things where made in US and now most things are made out side the US.
Things where so cheap and now things are so costly.
This is almost entirely backwards or just spun. Things were MUCH more expensive in the past for both food and every day items. Yes, in the past one bread winner worked, but then people had much lower expectations for goods and services in the past than they do today. A small house with a lot of kids crammed into a few rooms or even sleeping with their folks, a very limited amount of amenities by today’s standards (no air conditioning, probably limited heat, no or limited electricity, no or limited entertainment, etc etc), and very few if any luxuries like, oh, going out to dinner or seeing a movie. You could do that today if you wanted to live that way…in my own case my wife doesn’t have to work if I wanted to cut way back on my standard of living and get rid of a lot of thing goods and services we all take for granted.
And, of course, if you were a minority back in the good old days then I’m thinking you would not be so sanguine about how America was better before than today…flawed as things are today they are much, MUCH better than in the past wrt minorities of any stripe, color, religious pursuasion or sexual orientation.