America is the greatest country in the world, and I'll shove my red white and blue boot up the ass of anybody who claims otherwise just because one random company isn't what it used to be.
Ironically, that is exactly the attitude that lies behind the widespread failures and plummeting standards in the USA. Arrogance, entitlement, and unreasoning belief in your unconditional superiority to all other humans - based on what? Why is America "the greatest country in the world"? Just because you say so? Because of its wonderful constitution, which has been ignored whenever it became inconvenient right from Day One?
Right from the foundation of the republic - and actually long before - it was dominated by ruthless, predatory men who sought wealth and power and cared nothing for law, religion, or their fellow humans. By 1776 large swathes of land had already been conned out of unsuspecting or uncaring European governments. After 1776 the process went into overdrive. (For a plethora of details, see Gustavus Myers' "History of the Great American Fortunes" and Fredinand Lundberg's "The Rich and the Super-Rich", both of which should be required reading for all American children especially). Men like Astor, Vanderbilt, Gould, Sage and Morgan were about as far from being virtuous citizens as it is possible to imagine. As Myers remarks, American society has always been an undisguised kleptocracy – perhaps the worst form of government known to man. At one point he admits,
“Through all of these pages have we searched afar with infinitesimal scrutiny for a fortune acquired by honest means. Nor have the methods been measured by the test of a code of advanced ethics, but solely by the laws as they stood in the respective times. At no time has the discovery of an ‘honest fortune’ rewarded our determined quest. Often we thought that we had come across such a specimen, only to find distressing disappointment; through all fortunes, large and small, runs the same heavy streak of fraud and theft, the little trader, with his misrepresentation and swindling, differing from the great frauds in degree only”.
Before 1941, the consequences of that ruthlessness were transparently obvious: violent repression of workers, cynical cheating in politics, and finally the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression. Then WW2 gave the American ruling class exactly what they wanted: the destruction of all serious competition abroad. Paradoxically, for 20 years or so ordinary Americans flourished, as jobs were plentiful and pay fairly good. Then, as the idea of American supremacy took hold, employers bit down hard; today average Americans earn no more in real terms than they did in 1970.
By rights the USA should be a paradise by now - for everyone. Almost as good as Hollywood and TV portray it as being. After all, the USA and Canada were established on a virgin continent, its resources untouched by industry or even civilisation. North America had an enormous economic advantage over the rest of the world. Unfortunately, it fell under the control of a small group of selfish, cynical, unscrupulous businessmen and bankers who squeezed out everyone else and kept the profits for themselves. Today their attempt to extend their control to the rest of the world is in the process of failing.
