re: The USA is the greatest nation on the fricking planet...

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The USA is the greatest nation on the fricking planet...

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Absolute truth. I know we bitch and scream at each other on here a lot but we should never lose site of the fact that we're all in this together. The fact that we can so strongly disagree yet come together in times of need is something we all need to remember.

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Norway
Netherlands
Portugal
Australia
Maybe France

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Norway:
Pop- 5.2 mill

Netherlands:
Pop- 17 mill

Portugal:
Pop- 10.3 mill

Australia:
Pop- 23.8 mill

Maybe France
Pop- 66.8 mill

That's fine those are all good choices, except for maybe France like you said. But my point was more people more problems, you absorb them all. China and Russia are as first world technologically as it gets and they are on no ones list

Those countries you list also enjoy the benefit of their relatively event free (not France) lifestyle because there is a US out there funding the highest budget and most effective military the world has ever seen.

The second we are gone those countries will do a complete 180 attempting to be able to defend their way of life from the menace that is the world. They would either have to unite, like the "United States" (those countries are essentially states) and absorb the problems and differences of the rest, or become a satellite of Russia/China or become flat broke funding their isolation from the sheer numbers of developing nations/cultures.



ETA: #1, 2, and 3 are pretty much

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a homogenous population the size of Houston

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Those governing bodies/setups would do no better with hundreds of millions and our diversity.
This has nothing to do with a superiority of a certain culture, just that diversity of culture is a unique challenge no matter who is the majority. Look anywhere in the world.

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Vietnam?
Who were the oppressors?

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weren't we there at the behest of the South Vietnamese?

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And the corporate rule over our legislators WILL be our downfall if we don't get money out of politics.

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Illegal immigration will be our downfall, which corporations have just as much of a hand in as SJWs

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Parts of yeah, but go look at rural china and let us know how first world as it gets it actually is.

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Which is why the US is unique. The size, diversity, and opportunity we have here is very hard to pull off. And smaller countries with western values only enjoy the benefits without the burdens because we are here.

But being technologically capable as Russia and China are the world would be no less controlled by foreign interests if the US completely vanished over night.

China would dominate their region. Japan, South Korea, and Australia would be in for an immediate shock, capitalism and their western rights would dissapear.

Europe would have to become everything they hate about the US to balance the Russian threat, including enormous military budgeting, or they would be enveloped by the iron curtain.

Canada would be in for a culture shock losing their moral high ground without the buffer that is the US. Canadas 30+ million would be changed forever if they did not become exactly what they criticize the US for.

But despite all this self loathing we see here, the US still offers the highest quality of life and as much opportunity as exists on planet earth.

I agree we are the greatest nation.

How can we make it better?
How can it get worse?

Trump needs to stck with the agenda and get over Russia, Comey, and the swamp. Work with a few Dems in red states.

Who really cares about approval numbers when you have the House and the Senate.

Yeah I've learned not to discuss our problems with people from other nations. It's a one-up game of "who has the most open corruption" that I always lose. Hard to tell a Brazilian about Clinton Cash when PetroBras's bribery department (yes, they had a whole department) kept meticulous records of payments to every, EVERY, elected official and recently got exposed, with many actual jail sentences.

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Yeah, but they're not exactly democratically run countries.

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Democracy gets harder the bigger you get. It's easy with 5-15 million people that share similar geography/lifestyles.

It's harder with hundreds of millions spanning thousands of miles. A Latino in Miami and a hipster in Seattle are voting for each other's leadership (2700 miles).
Imagine an Egyptian and a guy from Belarus voting on a mutual rule of law. And some say the US isn't a special place...

But we agree democracy > the alternative. And without the power and influence of these 50 United States that are so closely intertwined (whether they like or not at times), democracy globally would be at risk.

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The USA is the greatest nation on the fricking planet

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No. It is one of the worst.


Libya



Libya



Shock and awe in Baghdad


"King called the US government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today", as well as the leading exponent of "the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long" (is there any surprise this has been whitewashed from his legacy?). He emphasized that his condemnations extended far beyond the conflict in Southeast Asia: "the war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit." He insisted that no significant social problem - wealth inequality, gun violence, racial strife - could be resolved while the US remains "a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift" - a recipe, he said, for certain "spiritual death". For that reason, he argued, "it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war." That's because:
"If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over."

Working against US imperialism was, he said, "the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions." For King, opposing US violence in the world was not optional but obligatory: "We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy . . . ." The entire speech is indescribably compelling and its applicability to contemporary US behavior obvious. I urge everyone who hasn't already done so to take the time to read it."

LINK

People in this country shouldn't mistake what is being done in our name. It is pretty crappy. It is a lot worse now than when Dr. King spoke in 1968.

Own it, people.

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Most of the world wishes they had the freedom to question much less criticize their government.

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If you had any real effect on public opinion you'd be found dead in your bathroom or in a small plane crash right away.

Inquiry on Wellstone Crash Finds Oddities About Pilot

By MATTHEW L. WALDFEB. 22, 2003

Safety officials looking into the charter-plane crash that killed Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota and seven other people in October have found a trail of oddities in the past of the pilot, as well as a vivid glimpse of preflight anxiety, but as yet no clear cause of the accident.

According to documents released today by the National Transportation Safety Board, Mr. Wellstone often sought the services of the pilot, Richard E. Conry, because Mr. Conry was sensitive to the senator's fear of flying.

Senator Wellstone, a 58-year-old Democrat seeking election to a third term, was on a campaign flight when he was killed along with his wife, a daughter, three aides, the pilot and the co-pilot on a cold, wet Minnesota afternoon. There were no survivors, and the plane, a Beech King Air, did not carry a flight data recorder or a cockpit voice recorder.

The safety board's investigation is not yet complete; reports on the plane's airworthiness and maintenance have yet to be released.

But according to the documents issued today, investigators conducting interviews after the crash found that as the passengers awaited boarding at an airport in St. Paul on Oct. 25, Mr. Wellstone was characteristically anxious about the flight, all the more so because of the weather...Investigators also found that some details in the pilot's logbooks appeared to have been falsified. For instance, Mr. Conry told his employers at the charter company that he had worked for American Eagle, the commuter affiliate of American Airlines, as a co-pilot on an ATR-72, with 514 hours of flight time. But investigators said that in a separate logbook he maintained during his brief time at that airline, he noted only 14.4 hours of flight training and 5.7 hours of passenger flights."

LINK