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Does the world see America as Exceptional?

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Re: Does the world see America as Exceptional?

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Sat 16 Jan 2016, 19:08:30

Of course there is. Nobody else has the ability to destroy any country they see fit. Military exceptionalism is plenty enough on it's own to warrant special attention.

Why so few non Americans on this thread? Tired of American exceptionalism or tired of Americans talking about their exceptionalism?
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Re: Does the world see America as Exceptional?

Unread postby Tanada » Sat 16 Jan 2016, 19:21:21

SeaGypsy wrote:Of course there is. Nobody else has the ability to destroy any country they see fit. Military exceptionalism is plenty enough on it's own to warrant special attention.

Why so few non Americans on this thread? Tired of American exceptionalism or tired of Americans talking about their exceptionalism?


Au Contrare' The UK and Russia both have enough long range submarine launched missiles and the subs to carry them to erase any country they feel like erasing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard-class_submarine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borei-class_submarine
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Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
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Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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Re: Does the world see America as Exceptional?

Unread postby SeaGypsy » Sat 16 Jan 2016, 20:27:29

OK fair point, but both rely on total destruction mode weapons to ever do such a thing. The US can do so 'conventionally'- & has done so, many times, indicating it will again.
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Re: Does the world see America as Exceptional?

Unread postby Quinny » Sun 17 Jan 2016, 00:01:37

I think the USA are exceptional in thinking that they have the right to decide what the rest of us should do and if we don't do it destroy us!

As Agent and Cid both point out the Republicrats and Democans both support the corporate establishment! It's like Labour and Tory in the UK (till recently) ;)

Some other areas that the USA seems to exceed at, I don't like the source, Infowars, but it's a good starting point!

#1 According to a brand new report that was just released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States has the fattest population in the entire industrialized world by a wide margin.

#2 That same report from the OECD also found that we are number one in child obesity. In fact, at 38 percent our rate of childhood obesity is even higher than our overall rate of obesity.
#3 According to USA Today, the obesity rate in the United States has more than doubled over the past 25 years.
#4 The Washington Post has reported that Americans spend an average of 293 minutes a day watching television, which is the most in the world by a wide margin. And as I have discussed previously, more than 90 percent of the “programming” that we absorb is created by just 6 enormously powerful media corporations.
#5 One study found that the average American spends more than 10 hours a day using some sort of electronic device.
#6 By the time an American child reaches the age of 18, that child will have seen approximately 40,000 murders on television.
#7 The average young American will spend 10,000 hours playing video games before the age of 21.
#8 Out of 22 countries studied by the Educational Testing Service, Americans were dead last in tech proficiency, dead last in numeracy and only two countries performed worse than us when it came to literacy proficiency.
#9 In more than half of all U.S. states, the highest paid public employee in the state is a football coach.
#10 The percentage of wealth owned by middle class adults is lower in North America than it is anywhere else in the world.
#11 Almost half of all Americans (47 percent) do not put a single penny out of their paychecks into savings.
#12 It turns out that Americans are very good at locking people away in prison. At 716 per 100,000 members of the population, the United States has the highest incarceration rate on the entire planet by a very wide margin.
#13 Approximately one-fourth of the entire global prison population is in the United States.
#14 In 2014, police in the United States killed 1,100 people. During that same year, police in Canada killed 14 people, police in China killed 12 people and police in Germany didn’t kill anyone at all.
#15 One recently published study found that one out of every six young Americans has stolen something during the past year.
#16 There are more car thefts in the United States than anywhere else in the world by far.
#17 According to Fox News, approximately 70 percent of married men in the United States admit to having cheated on their wives.
#18 Americans spend far more on health care than anyone else in the world, and yet we only rank 26th in life expectancy and our entire health care system has been transformed into a giant money making scam.
#19 According to a study conducted by the Mayo Clinic, nearly 70 percent of all Americans are on at least one prescription drug, and an astounding 20 percent of all Americans are on at least five prescription drugs.
#20 According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 31 percent of all food in the United States gets wasted. In case you were wondering, that amounts to approximately 133 billion pounds of food a year.
#21 In 2013, women earned 60 percent of all bachelor’s degrees that were awarded that year in the United States.
#22 A survey conducted by the Barna Group discovered that 77 percent of Christian men in America in the 18 to 30-year-old age bracket view pornography at least monthly.
#23 There are more than 4 million adult websites on the Internet, and they get more traffic than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined.
#24 70 percent of Americans do not “feel engaged or inspired at their jobs”.
#25 When LBJ’s “War on Poverty” began, less than 10 percent of all U.S. children were growing up in single parent households. Today, that number has skyrocketed to 33 percent.
#26 In 1950, less than 5 percent of all babies in America were born to unmarried parents. Today, that number is over 40 percent.
#27 According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are 20 million new cases of sexually-transmitted disease in the United States each year.
#28 Today, the United States has the highest STD infection rate in the entire industrialized world.
#29 According to a survey that was just released within the last 30 days, only 29 percent of Americans want to cut off federal funding for Planned Parenthood even after all of the shocking undercover videos that were released this year.
#30 America has the highest rate of illegal drug use on the entire planet.
#31 Doctors in the United States write more than 250 million prescriptions for antidepressants each year.
#32 One survey of 50-year-old men in the U.S. found that only 12 percent of them said that they were “very happy”.
#33 Every single year, the United States has the largest trade deficit in the entire world by a very wide margin. But most Americans still don’t seem concerned that thousands of businesses and millions of good jobs have been leaving our country.
#34 As you read this article, there are 102.6 million working age Americans that do not have a job.
#35 We are supposed to have a government “of the people, by the people, for the people”, but only 25 percent of all Americans know how long U.S. Senators are elected for (6 years), and only 20 percent of all Americans know how many U.S. senators there are in total.
#36 On average, we have been stealing more than 100 million dollars from future generations of Americans every single hour of every single day since Barack Obama entered the White House.
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Re: Does the world see America as Exceptional?

Unread postby onlooker » Sun 17 Jan 2016, 02:12:43

welcome to the land run by a corptocracy linked to a population nurtured on the American values of greed, gluttony, and laziness. Welcome to a land where our "leaders" sought to dumb us down and distract us so we would not notice and investigate their shenanigans and annulment of our inherited constitutional rights. Welcome to a land run my profiteers for profiteers and by profiteers. All those statistics amply demonstrating these assertions. Welcome to the US of A.
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Re: Does the world see America as Exceptional?

Unread postby Lore » Sun 17 Jan 2016, 12:03:15

So, we're a nation of fat, violent 4th graders? I guess that is exceptional as well. Just not in a positive way.
The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
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Re: Does the world see America as Exceptional?

Unread postby Oneaboveall » Sun 17 Jan 2016, 15:07:49

I posted this awhile back. The Captain America Statistics Song from Animation Domination High-Def:

https://youtu.be/OvbheAw6H1k

Captain America's 25th in the world in math
Captain America's 24th in the world in reading
Don't make him do math
Don't make him read books
And leave the science to Singapore and China
Captain America's behind the world in school
Captain America consumes the 2nd most electricity
Captain America consumes the world's most gasoline
So leave the lights on and hop in the car
But don't go to work cause there's nowhere to work
Captain America's 79th in employment
Captain America's 56th in infant death
Captain America's 42nd in life expectancy
If you don't want to die when you're a baby or old
then call Captain Monaco cause he's top in both
Captain America's 49th in moms dying during childbirth
Captain America's is morbidly obese
The percentage of fat that's him is 33
America's the 18th fattest in the world
If you wanna get AIDS, then you could still get AIDS
Captain America's got the 9th most AIDS...

I think you get the idea.
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How free are we today with the dominance of globalist capital and militarized security apparatus?
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Re: Does the world see America as Exceptional?

Unread postby rdberg1957 » Mon 18 Jan 2016, 13:10:05

I doubt that the world sees the US as exceptional. I don't see the US as among the most egregious of the violators of human rights, but nor do I see it as a leader any longer in the protection of those rights. The United States has perpetrated some egregious violations, most notably of Native Americans. The only way one can view the United States as exceptional is to ignore vast swaths of its history.
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Re: Does the world see America as Exceptional?

Unread postby DoomInTheUK » Tue 19 Jan 2016, 07:32:43

Well, as a non US member, I can testify that from this side of the pond we see the US as less than exceptional, and more of a tangled mess of confusion.

The US portrays a culture of cutting edge 21st century technology and then blow it with a 19th century concept of gun ownership. We got rid of our legal right/requirements to own longbows years ago. Times do change.

Universal medical care is seen as 'gun to your head socialist idea', but you're happy for the same government to take taxes to pay for an army to protect your country, and you have no say in that. So you're happy for the government to protect you from military forces, but not from natural ones (unless it's an earthquake or hurricane - then it's OK for the government to step in). I wonder if the US would allow a universal medical system to be set up if it was provided by the military?

From the outside it appears that the US is a brilliant place to live if you have money, and a nightmare if you don't. A great place to visit and marvel at, but part of you is glad to leave.

Every great idea that comes out of the US seems to get hobbled by another one that is as bad as the first is great. I've seen a 6 year old on a sugar rush be more coherent.

(This comes from a straw poll of 8 people in our office - so it's not just me).
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Re: Does the world see America as Exceptional?

Unread postby AgentR11 » Tue 19 Jan 2016, 12:59:53

Trying to avoid the gun-good/gun-bad part of the issue; but rather, lets just recall how the "United States" was created. A small number, 13, states, drafted a constitution, and an initial set of amendments about rights. OK. Easy enough. If something is wrong with it, getting a supermajority out of 13 shouldn't be too hard; the problem will be obvious enough, and the vested parties can come to a compromise.

Well.... 50 is a much larger number when you talk about that sort of consensus building. And we really are a federal republic; there are REAL political differences between Texans and New Yorkers; and most law that effects people is STATE law, not federal.

To change this reality, a fundamental change would have to be done to the constitution. But neither the congress and the president, nor the courts, have the power to alter the constitution. Not a single word can they change, no matter how much they might wish. Only the STATE's can change the constitution.

As the constitution sits now, the 2nd amendment DOES provide an individual right to own a weapon, its as fundamental as the right to free speech or religion, or the right to not have soldiers boarding in your home (without your consent, obviously you can rent a room to a soldier that wants to live off-base if you want).

The only way that can change, is if the constitution is amended to strike all or part of the 2nd. Unfortunately for your side of the argument, amending the constitution on an issue that provokes strong philosophical reactions, is essentially impossible.

So, for this issue, the US is exceptional... Exceptionally STUCK! lol.
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Re: Does the world see America as Exceptional?

Unread postby DoomInTheUK » Wed 20 Jan 2016, 05:06:38

That's one problem that a written constitution causes. Although you have certainty and clarity of the rules, you also have inflexibility if that constitution isn't easily amended. Just because the 2nd amendment gives you the right to own a weapon, is it really something that sits well with a 21st century culture? From the outside we just don't get it. It seems to cling to a wild west ideal that's long gone.

It's that inability to change that really confounds the rest of us. Your political system seems to be driven by the size of wallet, and it doesn't matter who gets in because the lobbyist groups hold the real power anyway. Try getting anything approved when the NRA doesn't like it, and you'll spend the rest of your life in the political wilderness. You're being held hostage by powerful minorities. It appears that the US has managed to created an aparthied system based on wealth rather than colour. The effect is still the same.

I can only imagine that it's totally frustrating to live with....unless you have the money/power of course!
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Re: Does the world see America as Exceptional?

Unread postby Cog » Wed 20 Jan 2016, 06:43:26

The inflexible nature of the written word in the US constitution is not a bug. Its a feature. It prevents exactly the type of government over-reach into areas that are none of their concern.

You act as thought the NRA is some small organization. It is composed of 5 million people who act in concert to protect gun rights for everyone, not just its members.

If you want to blame someone for the Second Amendment, blame the British. The ones who tried to disarm the colonists and who completed their act of terrorism at Lexington. The right of the people to be armed is for the express purpose of preventing a foreign tyranny or a domestic one. Whether its the 21st century or not, the purpose remains the same.
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Re: Does the world see America as Exceptional?

Unread postby Cog » Wed 20 Jan 2016, 08:43:03

DoomintheUK brings up an interesting point about the Constitution and how it limits the government's ability to alter laws. I will expand on that using a recent example.

Many states, either through their state legislatures or through a ballot initiative declared that gays could not marry. That is the will of the majority being expressed or democracy in action. Even the US Congress had passed a law called DOMA which defined marriage as between a man and a woman. This law prevented the federal government from recognizing same sex marriages for purposes of social security and other federal benefits.

SCOTUS struck down that law, as well as all the state laws, regarding same-sex marriage using the 14th Amendment Equal protection clause of the Constitution.

Would any progressive argue that SCOTUS should have upheld the bans on same sex marriage because a majority of states or people didn't want it?

The Bill or Rights was put into the Constitution to make sure that even if the majority, the legislature, or the mob wanted to infringe on a right, that they could not. Did the Founders ever imagine that instead of using a printing press or a parchment to express First Amendment rights, we would instead be using television or the internet to do so? Of course they didn't. In the same way, I am not bound to using a musket just because that was the technology of the day, when the Constitution was written, was a musket. The principle remains the same.

In the Heller decision, the individual right to bear arms was upheld by SCOTUS. The militia argument is destroyed. Hopefully forever.

So if you want to know why the USA is exceptional, then start with the US Constitution. It prevents(or at least makes the attempt) of the mob, the majority, or even the legislature from doing things that infringe on individual liberties.
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Re: Does the world see America as Exceptional?

Unread postby DoomInTheUK » Wed 20 Jan 2016, 09:32:56

5 million out of 320 million is still a minority. 1/60 of the population.

Defeating DOMA is a great example of why having a written constitution is a powerful idea, but that power comes with a certain rigidity. If the constitution is there to help prevent changes by the mob, legislature, or majority - how does it change if the majority decide that they no longer want part of it to apply?

These aren't necessarily complaints about the system, just observations from a distance. All forms of governance have strengths and weaknesses. It just seems that yours is appears to be slightly different from the image that is broadcast for world consumption.
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Re: Does the world see America as Exceptional?

Unread postby Cog » Wed 20 Jan 2016, 09:38:02

With a sufficient majority of the people(though the US Congress) or of the state legislatures, the US Constitution can be amended. It has happened many times throughout our history. If you are thinking we are going to get rid of the 2nd Amendment this way, good luck. Most state legislatures have their own state constitutional protections concerning the right to bear arms. Even if SCOTUS declared tomorrow that there is no individual right to bear arms, nothing would change as far as most states are concerned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_F ... ution#Text

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.
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Re: Does the world see America as Exceptional?

Unread postby DoomInTheUK » Wed 20 Jan 2016, 10:05:03

OK, thanks - that makes sense. I knew there would be a way for it to change.
I can't ever imagine the 2nd being overturned, and with more guns than people in the country I rather suspect that the horse has bolted on that one.

My ongoing poll at work is still bringing up an overwhelming response of "US - OK to visit, but wouldn't want to live there". It seems the notion that everyone wants to be like the US, is a US notion for home consumption.
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Re: Does the world see America as Exceptional?

Unread postby ralfy » Wed 20 Jan 2016, 21:19:27

Related:

"FROM WOUNDED KNEE TO SYRIA: A CENTURY OF U.S. MILITARY INTERVENTIONS"

http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossma ... tions.html
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