why does america have to be great

Post Reply New Topic

Well....back to the original subject.

Most campaign slogans are rather vague in meaning, but "make America great...again" is probably the most meaningless ever because it implies that America somehow at sometime stopped being "great" which it never did.

Except it isnt meaningless -if by "great" he is only talking about our infrastructure. If by "great again" he means "lets create jobs by revamping and updating our infrastructure so we dont hafta keep being ashamed of how behind we are compared to every other country...including many third world countries" then I am behind Trump on that! Trouble is that his own GOP is against that.

Most of the rest of what is under the rubric of "make America Great Again" is just Trump promising to do what Obama was already doing: deporting more illegals than ever, defeating ISIS, and the better parts of Obamacare.

The stuff that Trump promises that predecessors didnt do are things that Trump will never actually follow through on because they are too unfeasible: like that 1000 mile wall. He will just end up saying somethign like "the wall" was just a symbol/metaphor for what I plan to do (which will may end up being something like making a special military zone along the southern border with stepped up survailence - a fifty mile strip along southern border with more drones and troops and whatever- but no literal actual wall).

I betcha that if anything it'll just be a flimsy barbed wire fence with lots of gaps in it.

"Make America Great Again" is just a euphemism for "Make America White Again."

^^^QFT

the thing is, the very notion of "third-world" versus "first-world" makes no sense. there's no pre-established set of countries that are timelessly developed or doing well or a pre-established set of countries that are timelessly underdeveloped or doing badly. things change. and think about it: if you're supposed to split the world into two groups, then in what universe would it make sense to group, say, south america and sub-suharan africa together? it's self-evident that it's not in this universe. if one or several "third-world" countries are better than some "first-world" ones in any matter of national development that really matters, then it's because, chances are... it's not a "third-world" country anymore, if it ever was one

it's an outdated conceptualization of the world from the cold war era, which actually wasn't supposed to mean what it means today (it meant "countries that aren't clearly aligned with either the u.s. or the ussr". technically, finland and sweden were "third-world countries". and, technically, south africa and papua new guinea were "first-world countries"). and what it means today is... totally meaningless. it's only a way for you to feel ashamed of your country not only for what's going wrong there but also for what's going well elsewhere, just like it was a way for me to grow up sort of believing that "everything is better elsewhere" (which is especially not true nowadays, but was never actually true)

can we agree to call our systems/infrastructure "substandard" then?

well, i'm not saying it's as good as it should be... and i guess it probably isn't. the united states is the wealthiest country in the world. so if that's not actually reflected somehow in the standard of living of the population as a whole, then something is seriously wrong

by dint of how wealthy a nation we are, something IS SERIOUSLY WRONG when we jail a higher % of our population than any other nation, when we spend more on healthcare than any other nation yet still have 10s of millions unable to afford our grossly overpriced health care.

yep. those are things that really matter, and, unless you live in a truly poor country, are simply not proportional to national wealth (even though they should be)

and so relatively few yanks seem to give a damn. it's like they see those faults as salient features to be celebrated.

When I grew up I got the message that America was better than everyone else (I basically got the impression that no other country was even good enough to live in and it stuck with me) That was how I was indoctrinated both by my parents and by school education.

As I've gotten older I realize more and more that America isn't perfect. I wish America was more good-natured and less "dominant and powerful."

I don't want us to be great, just good. we're not there yet. we just took a big step backward in that respect.

I think it is kind of a nice thing that citizens of a country are proud of the current state or at least heading towards that kind of position, it would indicate that the people in charge are representing the people well I guess. I do think it is important to remember though, that the way people see their own country is not the way others elsewhere in the world view it. If there are people who think their country is great/the best etc then you can guarantee that that is not the view held by others around the world.

^^don't expect many here to grok that.

grok?

grok
[ɡräk]

VERB
US
informal
understand (something) intuitively or by empathy: "because of all the commercials, children grok things immediately"
empathize or communicate sympathetically; establish a rapport.