1) What do you think America is an example of...? Let me guess, a shining city on a hill? LOL. This I'm really anxious to hear! LOL. This is going to be rich. Tell me, what is America an example of? A soft totalitarian, mass-surveillance police state, with a first world GDP but a third world gini coefficient, led by a tin-pot carnival barker? Or is it a wonderfully diverse, multiracial utopia marked by the free & peaceful coexistence of disparate peoples who hug each other on the subway? You can't have it both ways. You may know more than me about some of the issues on Eupedia, but you're in my territory now. It isn't going to end well for you in this debate. America is a disaster. It is in a state culturally & civilizationally where I don't even want to speculate about the future. We are a very troubled society, though you wouldn't know that if you watched the evening news. You'd think everything was just dandy.
2) Sub-Saharan Africans have been on the North American continent for half a millennium. They are not assimilated on the group level by any stretch of the imagination. They have different cultural norms, vastly different crimes rates, different musical, cultural & artistic forms, etc. etc. etc. This is not an assimilated population. Certain groups of Americans did not & do not assimilate to Western European norms. It's more accurate to say that Americans assimilated to the norms of various immigrant groups, and governmental power, stability & control has maintained order where culture has been unable to.
3) America doesn't have a culture. Anymore. America is essentially an economy & nothing more.
4) If you take exception to certain of my claims, please address my claims, & avoid vague generalities like the comment above. It's "twaddle" you say? What exactly is twaddle? Pray tell.
I know more than you about everything, including history and America. Part of that may be because I wasn't stuck my whole life living behind the Iron Curtain where my access to international scholarship ended with the scholarship of the 1930s, part of it is because I've lived in both Europe and America, and part of it is undoubtedly because I've spent some time actually studying history and even just
talking to people. Have you ever actually talked to the people of your own community who lived through World War II? I have, all my life, and I know that you are absolutely clueless about what Europe was like then. Go to one of the memorial celebrations to our dead from German atrocities that can be found in every town in my area, go to the memorial at Marzabotto and tell them what a paradise of cultural unity Europe was. Do you have any idea how absurd you sound?
Also, what is this nonsense about how we can't know the living standards in Europe in the past because we weren't alive? Are you kidding? Do we throw out archaeology and history now, and what they can teach us about lifestyles in the past? Spend half an hour reading some documentary history of the 19th century. Most people were malnourished, living in primitive conditions, barely educated. You want to go back even further? Read about what life was like for French peasants, the majority of the population, in the 18th century, or Scottish crofters, or go back to feudalism, when people lived like animals in hovels. Too lazy or don't like reading? Find some ninety year olds and ask what life was like then. There was nothing like the forty hour work week buddy, no meat every day, no warm house and indoor plumbing, no nice clothes, and electronics for idle hours. My God, my ninety four year old great aunt passed not long ago, and a more clear eyed, realistic person I've never known and one of her constant mantras was how lucky I was not to have been born into that world.
You have no idea what living in America is like. Do I like our current president? No, I don't. For the first time in my adult life I didn't vote for a presidential candidate because I couldn't stand either of them. Who cares? Presidents come and presidents go, but America survives, and that's because of its Constitution and its values. Is it utopia? Is it paradise? Is it perfect? No, it isn't. It has its problems, including lingering racism and the problem of our inner cities, and the problems facing blue collar workers, which I assure you I know more about than you do, but I've lived in both Europe and the U.S., and I've traveled all over the world, and there's no place like it for people with brains and the desire and ability to work hard and to fulfill their potential. We have so much that we throw it away, unfortunately. Our people on welfare live better than most of the world's population. Is it a perfect situation? No, it isn't, but it isn't what you describe. I'm sure you don't want to credit it, but Americans are, as a whole, incredibly open-hearted, generous, tolerant people who just ask that you come here legally, respect their norms, don't take lower wages that will put them out of work, and
want to be an American and love the country. That's all it takes. My American-ness has never come into question, even though I'm a naturalized citizen. This couldn't have happened anywhere in Europe. Their sense of patriotism, of being a group apart, is stronger than anything I see in Europe, at least among those who haven't been brainwashed at university. Those idiots who moan and groan about all of America's problems have never lived anywhere else or they haven't lived here. Sometimes, on returning from some hell hole, I want to make like the Pope and get down and kiss the ground.
And yes, great progress has been made in terms of racial relations. Ethnic tensions virtually don't exist. The kind of stupid European tribal battles that are fought every day on this forum would be incomprehensible and laughable here. That's part of why I have so little patience with it. There is so little anti-semitism that people go into convulsions over a little spray painting. My children have Asian and Hispanic and black friends and don't think anything of it. It's just the way it is. Even in my own case, of the small group of friends in my life whom I consider sisters, to whom I would have entrusted my children, one was Jewish, one Jamaican, one Italian, one German/Czech. That's the way life is here. You can't fathom it because you've never experienced it.
Now, there's an end to it. I see no point in trying to rationally discuss history or world affairs with people resolutely bent on
not seeing reality and only seeing the world through the distorted lens of ideology or mental illness.
America the Beautiful...an aspiration, not an achievement