Atmos Duality said:
dathwampeer said:
Well that should really be 'ALLIED FORCES FUCK YEAH!'
Contrary to popular belief. Americans didn't descend from the heavens with light shooting from their rectums and single handedly save life as we know it.
I'd say America's most 'FCUK YEAH!' point in history was probably the war of independence.
I agree with the WW2 statement.
As for the War of Independence, it was pretty much about a group of rich white guys wanting total control of the colonies for political reasons. They didn't seriously start giving a shit about personal freedoms until the threat of farmer rebellions reared their ugly head.
I don't suppose that they realized how powerful their future country would become; the Constitution is written in such a way that it could be abolished/rewritten if government got out of control (the twist: today, the reverse is more true. The government is on hand to keep its citizens from going out of control).
That suggests to me that they assumed the country would be carved up like a Thanksgiving Turkey decades after their death.
All of this "We are the greatest" chest-thumping is annoying, as is the absurd notion that most Americans are huge Patriots.
To whoever still has this stupid idea in their head, I'd like to point out that most of those chest-thumpers who get media attention are often affiliated with a political action group (and the media often throws whatever they think will be entertaining over useful. 100% of the time. Count on it.)
Also, considering less than half of Americans turn out for voting, I somehow doubt most of them are those hardcore patriot who salute the American flag every morning.
Well, that's simply how current politics (especially overseas) want to spin things, and the US in it's crusade for political correctness participates in the reinventionism.
Understand that right now the US and Europe are rivals as much as allies, with the EU wanting to pretty much becoming the dominant economic force, with the European Common Market replacing Wall Street as the center of global finance. It's hard to be aggressively anti-American when your being taught you owe your very existance to the US.
The basic truth of the matter is that there is a lot of BS involved in World War II, namely in terms of it being a "good" war where the US and allies fought and won morally. In reality we were bigger bastards than the other guys. We probably killed more Civilians and did more bombing than Hitler and his guys ever did. You don't break a massive international movement and reduce it to a fringe prescence easily.
It's important to note that a lot of the "good guys" involved in the war were actually on the side of the Nazis before US intervention. A big point made by many (which The French Hate) is that France more or less welcomed them. There were patriots which fought (and surrendered) and a resistance, but it's nothing like the Hollywood version. Understand that a lot of the nations Hitler Conquered more or less switched sides due to agreeing with him. Germany did not have the manpower to occupy these nations anything like you see in the movies, especially not against massive, constant insurgency.
France for example was "liberated" more or less by switching sides again. Pretty much when the US got involved, it realized that whether or not The Germans stopped us in the end, they were going to get steamrolled. There was fighting, but the French themselves pretty much switched sides twice. This is why so many people bust on them, and why there is so much bad blood and anti-French sentiment. You RARELY hear this perspective on things, and instead a focus on a French Resistance which never existed on that signifigant a scale.
Nations like Romania were considered to be under "Nazi Occupation" yet welcomed the Nazis since they were all excited about the "Re-Romanianization" of property from the Jews. Even today you'll find that groups like Gypsies are unpopular, they were hardly lining up saying "OMG, we must stop the Nazis from killing the Gypsies". You might guess how things actually played out.
The basic truth of World War II is that Hitler came 2" from winning the war. At the time the US was a massive industrial power, with a huge navy. We maintained a strict isolationist policy (which you don't hear a lot about, but it's mentioned in good history classes). Despite being hit by the violence, our attitude was pretty much to stay out of "World War II" and Hitler more or less realized that it would be ridiculous to fight the US and other nations at the same time. He felt he needed everything he could get to throw at us. He saw that a lot more clearly than he did with Russia (which frankly he lost because he was engaged on too many fronts due to our intervention).
What happened was Hitler's allies, The Japanese (another military power at the time he saw clearly as a group he didn't want to engage without all his ducks in a row) were scared to death of the US Navy, and also had axes to grind with the US due to things like Perry forcing them out of isolation. They attacked Pearl Harbour in what was a very well implemented sneak attack, but perhaps the biggest act of strategic idiocy the world has ever seen because it brought the US into the war.
Understand that in the US there was a lot of pro-nazi sentiment as well. It was a MASSIVE international movement. Hitler was an international man of the year for crying out loud. There is no underplaying his charisma. When the need for war became obvious the US Implemented war powers, and tight information control and propaganda to demonize Hitler, and quash Isolationist and "peace at any price" sentiments.
At the time the US intervened, the only real European power that was left standing in any real shape was Britan. Contrary to how things are portrayed today, the UK was *NOT* about to eject the Nazis and go on to make a fight out of it. They were pretty much locked down and getting their major cities bombed daily. The British were tenacious, no denying that, but they were very much engaged in what amounted to a last stand. They simply had more guts and martial prowess than anyone else.
The US hitting the beaches was what actually turned this into a war, created any serious "allies", and so on.
Of course a more fair criticism of the US is that we did NOT do this out of any massive philanthropic sentiment. We were very much content to just let Europe go down in flames before Pearl Harbour. We got involved because we were attacked on a signifigant enough level that we could not ignore it, and realized that isolationism wasn't going to work.
The actual patriotic BS involved is that we screamed "The Nazis are evil! They are mass murdering Jews, Gypsies, and Homosexuals! We must stop them", got up on our white horse, and when charging to the aid of our friends in Europe. It was actually extremely pragmatic.
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When it comes to American "chest thumping", understand that the rest of the world never likes the dominant world power. We're simply the only ones who really spend much time listening to it and making changes based on international complaints.
America's current attitude of tolerance, probably makes us one of the least patriotic countries out there. We have trouble due to our own self imposed morality and philsophy with maintaining the integrity of our own borders.
When people want to portray Americans as mindlessly jingoistic (including other Americans) look carefully at the issues with Mexico and how big a deal it's become, not to mention movies like say "Machete".
I think right now it's more or less a left wing technique to try and portray anything as being pragmatically pro-American as being jingoistic and ridiculous because of various moral issues, and the "peace at any price" movement. It gives the wrong impression, and our internal politics tend to give undue weight to what people are saying outside of the country.
Basically, the simple fact that people in the US debate some issues, and make a big deal out of them, sort of disproves some of the biggest criticisms of America. That doesn't prevent those stereotypes from being exploited as useful political tools.
Right now it seems that any patriotic, or unmitigated pro-American attitudes are considered to be "chest thumping" which is kind of absurd. Truthfully a lot of the situations where people are criticized seem to be fairly middle of the road, but the other side presenting them as nationalistic buffoons DOES get support with certain groups.
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As far as The Revolutionary War goes, it was pretty much about what the history books say. Granted nothing is ever clean or black and white (like World War II), and the rich elite of the US did plan to benefit from the revolution, however the reason why it was viable was because there was general support among the population, those people would never have rallied under the "elite" or fought like they did otherwise.
The big issue behind The Revolutionary War was as they put it "No Taxation Without Representation". This is to say that Britan was collecting some rather high taxes from the colonies, and a ton of resources to fight it's various wars. I don't think we Americans had much problem with the taxes themselves, I mean they WERE covering the military that was keepingus safe, and that military did things like prevent us from being exterminated by The French during "The French and Indian War" (which a lot of people tend to forget). The issue was that despite having a lot of people, a lot of money, and a ton of resources, The Brits were not willing to let us have a say in any of the policies being made, or how we ourselves were going to be governed. There were a lot of politics involved, but basically we were being treated as a deep well to be reached into for whatever they wanted, while having policies set from accross the world by people who had no idea what was going on down here.
There are of course other sides to the entire thing. The amount of power the American Colonies could wield in the British goverment would be substantial, and threaten the power of politicians already in place. Not to mention the simple issue that there were colonial laws in place, and at the time giving the American colonies that kind of representation would have set precedents for other colonies to demand the same things. It would have caused some definate problems within the goverment at a time when things were hardly stable due to the wars being fought.
A popular theme in certain "alternative history" fiction is what might have happened if the American colonies WERE given the representation that was demanded. If the king had basically said "your right, send your envoys, we'll give you what you want". This meaning The British empire would never have lost the troops it did fighting The Revolutionary War, continued to gather the taxes and resources it lost from America, and similar things. It also incidently means that France never would have gotten involved under a sort of "enemy of my enemy" mentality and relations allowing certain land purchuses (under the assumption that they would conquer us later when Britan fell) never would have happened.
The point is that it's about perspective, neither side was right or wrong in any absolute sense. That does not change that the Revolution was fought over some very legitimate points. It's just with the other things going on at the time, the other side ALSO had some legitimate points.
The bottom line it's crazy to expect people to swallow paying 10x the going rate for tea or whatever in order to support wars activities that you have no say on, despite large numbers of people, and massive resources being dipped into for that purpose. Truthfully with representation I don't think Americans would have continued to oppose such things once we got a say.
