America: The Good Guys or the Bad Guys?

This is a thread where we discuss if America, the North American democracy, is a good or a bad thing.

I think, looking through all of history, we could probably state that America has done more good than bad.

The Good:
Creating the largest representative democracy, fighting a war with ourselves to end slavery, providing Civil Rights (while not fast enough honestly) at a higher rate than many other countries, historically being a melting pot accepting all races, creeds, religions (until recently). We took far too long to join in WWII, but we certainly turned the tide of that war. Overseeing a peaceful end to the USSR, (which of course is simplfying things, but avoiding nuclear holocaust is a pretty good thing),forefront of medical research and vaccinations,jazz,The wire

The Bad:
Vietnam, Native American massacre,Guantanamo Bay,waterboarding,Kevin James,EDM

Any other thoughts? This came up because I was finding it genuinely difficult to find good things the US has done since 1970.

There have to be more right? Some of the good things have been bad too though. And some of the seemingly bad stuff ended up OK!

I would like to note that this is meant to be semi-serious, and I am being a bit flip about it, but I think it would be good to list the good and the bad as a whole

Let’s not leave out tons of scientific progress that has made people’s lives better around the world.

I believe I covered this above! :)

Sorry I missed that part. But it’s a lot broader than medical stuff (even if the medical area has big significance on its own). The green revolution, computing technology and so on. Really lots of areas have made a big difference.

Also, yes, we fought a war to end slavery, but we had to fight a war about it, and were one of the last major nations to do so.

There are stories we tell ourselves about ourselves…and then there are the things we’ve actually done. America is aspirationally a melting pot society, but historically, not really one in practice.

The more I think about it recently, the history of America is one of white supremacy. The major difference is that we had enough people of other colors around for it to be noticeable.

So, you are saying America is bad then?

As it usually goes, America did good things and bad things. I don’t think it’s a matter of “being the good guys” or “being the bad guys”; it’s a matter of realizing both the good and the bad things it did and figure out where to go from there.

I reject the premise of the question, because I don’t think world history is a Bioware game where we fall neatly on a Paragon/Renegade scale.

Which I guess means that I shouldn’t really be in this thread, so I’ll step out. Sorry.

I guess I am hoping this can be that discussion?

Not at all, I don’t think this is a black/white issue either. And I genuinely wanted to create a thread where we talked about the good and bad of America. I hope that you stay to share things, I apologize for being a bit flip here, and I hope I didn’t scare you away.

Like, I don’t think we could ever answer this question. I never knew about the Chinese exclusion act thing, which falls on the “bad” side. I started googling after the NK thread discussion I had, and I was genuinely surprised at the results. A ridiculous sycophantic rant by Dinesh D’Souza, and a Buzzfeed list of “OMG CIVIL RIGHTS” with sick quotes from twitter influencers.

I think that it is important to discuss these things in a civil way, the discourse in our country has become so black and white about things, that “X thing” was the worst thing ever to happen and “B person” should forever be condemned for that. And that the X-ocrats and the B-publicans have never been right about anything, depending on which side you are on, is just plain wrong, when you look at history.

I’ll play the Guatemalan card again and note that our various escapades in Central America over the decades have been uniformly terrible for the region, and that our ongoing war on drugs helps fuel the horrific cartel violence that is consuming whole nations down there.

Purely from the perspective of my ancestry, I’d vote Chaotic Neutral at best.

The US has been a force of good from a eurocentric point of view. At least until recently.

Most of US history is in contrast and conversation with European history; after the failure of the French Revolution and the return of the ancien regimes the US became the “torch bearer” of individual freedoms these peoples were denied in their autocratic kingdoms and empires. This basically culminated with the “arsenal of Democracy” moment in WW2 when the US was unwillingly dragged in with its industrial might to help preserve the European system (Roosevelt was hamstrung by isolationist antiwar and pro-German backbiters until Pearl Harbor).

The US’s history with non-European powers and peoples has been much less benevolent.

It’s probably hard to overstate how much better off Central and South America could have been without US intervention. Even today the US’s drug policy has created massive knock on consequences throughout the continent that has cost tens of thousands of lives. The tragedy of Chile might be the most heartbreaking.

The US betrayed its own purported values with the native peoples because Money. The Cherokee and other native peoples were deported and destroyed because of the value of the land they laid claim to.

And worst of all was the “compromise” made with Southern plantation owners to gain their support to create the Constitution. The paradox of declaring the rights of man only to keep other people as slaves, because they didn’t want to lose any money.

… and that’s kind of the biggest problem with the US; this anglo-saxon common law system of property ownership has imbued in the US this idea of the sanctity of property above and beyond the common good, even at the cost of life and prosperity of others, even if common law systems have otherwise principles to recommend them. Fundamentally every dysfunction politically today comes down (imo) to Money and the unwillingness of US citizens of property to spend money on the collective commonweal. Which, to be fair, goes hand in hand with also an unwillingness to take an active role in government, which leads government to be led by corrupt mediocrities, which further discourages citizens to pay into a system which is obviously full of graft and inefficiencies on local and state levels.

And as US immigration patterns move away from European based immigration to worldwide immigration the history of the US with these peoples and nations are much more ambiguous and fractious, and pre-Globalization history seems much less relevant to new generations that did not experience the oppressive European autocracies of the past and have different values and expectations.

Maybe we should take “Goodness above replacement-level Superpower” approach.

I like this idea. What country would represent the “Mendoza line” of goodness? Is it us? Canada?

I think probably the coolest part of America is how it was founded. It is easy to forget the principles on which we founded the country, but it doesn’t get much more noble than that. Creating our own paradise of representative democracy, breaking from the shackles of theocracy.

That was a pretty cool thing.

It, however, wasn’t a cool thing when France was trying to do it, and we were like, Nah, we can’t afford to help you.

Switzerland, naturally.

Not as cool once you realize how it exterminated the native civilizations in America. As I said before, there’s good and evil in most things at the same time.

Well most of that came about well after founding, really only getting going 40+ years after the Declaration of Independance.

It was really only post war of 1812, and Louisiana Purchase, that the heavy anti native actions happened.

Now if you mean to include founding to also mean how it acquired its current borders? Then there is no arguing you are correct. I think Jon was more specifically talking 1776 though.

I believe that was post-founding, and the Spanish, French, and British were already working hard at making the Native Americans lives hell the Americas. I don’t think it would be fair to call out the founding of the country as part of that. Those decisions were made by later leaders. (Once we needed their land)

I think that the horrific destruction of the Native American culture could be considered part of America’s imperialism, which is a bad thing.

Arguably the Seven Years War was started because Washington’s brother was trying to steal native lands from the French administered territories. So it definitely began before 1776.