But please tell me which war the US won after WWII and how and where they preserved liberty, maybe just South Korea. Vietnam was a desaster.
Grenada! We sure did free Grenada from the ravages of Communism!
South Korea was an allied effort to some degree but we did well there too. Even if we didn't gain territory from the North, we certainly did push them back to their borders. Others may whine and complain, but I know for a certain fact that South Koreans are overwhelmingly happy not to be living under the Kim dynasty.
i hate america because your beer is flavourless over carbonated piss.
Our commercial beer is, yes. We have some very fine microbrews however and we're quite good at making wine.
Hating us for our beer though is like hating the UK for its use of offal in traditional cooking. Neither are ultimate expressions of national character
I'm stil young and i maybe don't know alot about the war and stuff but i have once been in America only for 1 week
with my boyfriend and what i saw there was that there were a lot of short sighted people (since you're talking about gays and stuff ) or maybe it's just the way new yorkers are
New Yorkers tend to be provincial despite living in a cosmopolitan city. Much of that is simply due to the circumstance of living in a city where nobody has time to pay attention to anything else going on around them. New York does have an enormously diverse immigrant population and loads of intellectuals to go along with their intellectual institutions, but the average New Yorker doesn't take advantage of them.
Now if you think New Yorkers are short-sighted, try visiting the rest of the country.
I believe in the tornado belt there are storm shelters, i think you would find yourself 'hiding' in basements.......
Oh stop. British shipping was taking phenomenal losses in the early stages of the war. Lend-Lease kept the UK afloat in the early days until the US could enter the war.
We could NOT enter the war in 1939. We didn't have any ability to defend ourselves. The US had a token standing army, a mothballed Atlantic navy, and was still flying biplanes! It takes time to ramp-up production, design and build new armaments, train personnel, and convince Americans (who were hotly isolationist given their experiences in WWI) to actually support going to war. One of the problems of democracy is that war is such a hot-button issue that it makes or breaks elections. Were Congress to unilaterally override American will, Americans would have overridden Congress and voted them all out and President Roosevelt too. I think you have very little idea of how opposed this country was to yet another involvement in Europe.
I will tell you that if you look back even as far as 1936, US industrialists, scholars, and the government itself were already planning for war. They knew it was coming. I have an issue of
Forbes from 1937 which outlines all the infrastructure that this country needed to build just to be able to create modern military bases. Pearl Harbor, arguably the finest natural harbor in the Pacific, was little more than a bunch of wooden piers in 1936. There were no facilities to build warships, few people who knew how to design them, no way to transport parts for those ships, and no naval bases in which to build them. Everything we had in 1936 was obsolete by German or Japanese standards. The same is true for just about everything except aircraft. By 1939 we had made progress, but not enough. It really wasn't until 1939 that the US population had started to realize that war was inevitable and only a matter of time. Even then, most Americans had no desire to enter the war for any reason. Most Americans in those days did not live in cities but were rural agrarians with independent mindsets. It did not occur to them that Germany or Japan could ever attack the US mainland, much less invade it. So long as we could secure our coasts, Mexico, and Canada, we would be safe and why should we send our sons
over there again to die for someone else's country?
We were just beginning to get out of the Depression, just beginning to get back on our feet and NOW, after years of poverty, Hoovervilles, bread lines, and, "No men wanted," we're going to war?? HELL NO!
No the world is NOT jealous of the USA.
That laughing you hear...we are laughing At you, not with you.
That's really quite rude and unfair but it does seem to be the norm and it was the same norm in 1939 when Europe considered America a backwater of uncultured immigrant farmers who were the dregs of European society. I have to ask, since Americans were acutely aware of such impressions held about them, why on earth would they want to go fight for people who thought such low things of them? Despising the people who you then criticize for not rushing to your aid when things get tough is disingenuous.
From personal experience noone in Eastern Eurpe is jealous of America. In fact we view America as culturally, morally and religiously inferior.
I am thankful that eastern Europe doesn't hate us nearly as much as western Europe does. Made my time there much easier.
I have this funny feeling it might have something to do with those of us who go around acting like the entire world has to kiss our asses until the end of time because of WWII, and the implication that we're somehow the only country on Earth who's ever done positive things for the world probably doesn't help either.
It's because we're taught in school from the very beginning that we saved the world twice. We're the greatest because we have a constitution, democracy, are a nation of immigrants, of unlimited freedoms and no social constraints (if you're white). We mythologize our recent history because we have no past history and nations need myths for cultural cohesion; something the US has greatly lacked through its entire history.
When you look at posts like the OP made in the light of the following statistics, you can see why the USA is the envy of no one except for a few third world nations.
US Healthcare ranking: #37
Preventable Deaths: #14
Life Expectancy: #14
Human Development Index: #12
Carbon Footprint per capita: #12
Murder Rate: #72
Most In Prison per Capita: #1
Child Well Being: #20
Freedom of the Press: #17
Source
You tell this to Americans and they don't believe it. They will argue that such figures are obviously from some foreign source which is hell-bent on hating and destroying America because they hate freedom and are envious (not
jealous -- Christ people! Learn your vocabulary!) of our unparalleled prosperity. America is the most avuncular nation in the world and we're beset by spiteful children who simply don't appreciate all we do for them.
We're not good at taking criticism.
True enough! A lot of them are really great people. Great fun and a brilliant sense of humour - they're good to have around.
Why thank you!
I think there are as many different European national reactions to the USA as there are nations. I really don't think there is any such thing as a European view.
Please know, Jason, that Florida is not what I would call representative of the US. :wink:
Maybe so, but I don't see any landrushes happening in Peoria.
Florida is representative of the US, just not necessarily the best parts of it. I can't imagine why Brits would buy in Florida or Peoria because they will soon discover that Florida is the very center of everything most foreigners hate about America. Does nobody do their research? Florida is archly conservative, is crammed with WalMarts, has Disney World, a lot of crime, congested and unsustainable cities filled with the most uninspired architecture, is beastly hot and humid, filled with mosquitoes, alligators, and fire ants, and then every few years everything gets flattened by hurricanes. The population is largely old people who can barely drive and keep the education system impoverished by voting against school budgets, and if you want to see right-wing Christian megachurches, you'll find them all over the place.
A few places in Florida are not like that and certainly not all Floridians are. There are pockets of sense and sensibility here and there. It has a vibrant Cuban culture and great beaches and climate for much of the year.
I'm so jealous of the UK healthcare system, long wait lines and all, thats why the FLOODS of americans go there for healthcare year in and year out.
How good of you to swallow propaganda hook-line-and-sinker. I'm sure the corporate industrialists are thrilled that their investment in keeping you ignorant and uninformed and getting you to defend them while doing so is paying returns. Don't be an ignorant tool of powerful people.
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