United States | News & Politics

gotta be honest, I hate America. I was born here, raised here, paid taxes for 20-something years. I'm a born and bred corn-fed American boy. I understand why people shout "death to America". i understand why people call it the Great Satan. the death and destruction this country has wrought across the globe is immeasurable. from chemical weapons in Vietnam, eradication campaigns in the Korean war, two destructive invasions of Iraq, reinforcing the opium trade all across the world but specifically in Afghanistan, the list goes on.

if you don't want to count foreign atrocities, just look to the homeland. generations of slavery, and "post-slavery" discrimination have destroyed generations of people. every homeless person in every city is a person failed by their own government, left to rot on the streets because they've been deemed worthless, many of them disabled veterans who themselves believed they were fighting for something better. this country has failed them, abandoned them. I don't know how anyone could be proud of that.

The America most people grew up in was shit too. People are angry now only because it's turned its tyranny inwards on its own privileged people who have until this point not been severely impacted by its actions. The america my mom was born into didn't even let black people vote.

I dunno. I don't love the America of the 90s that was impoverishing the entire Eastern Bloc and like, invading Iraq and stuff. Or the one that opened a torture prison in Cuba in the 00s, invaded Iraq again, and terrified people across the world with an unaccountable drone war through the Obama years (to say nothing of Libya and the militarization of police).

You loved that America? The drone war/war on terror one?

The nation state of America has been a nexus of reactionary violence from its moment of birth as a genocidal settler colonial empire to a foundational pillar of the transatlantic slave trade to its codified and then de facto apartheid which persists to this day. It has taken every opportunity to wield its power whether economically or militarily to squash every single instance of self-determination by the proletariat of the world that would threaten its systems of extractive oppression and violence, not blinking twice when engaging in the wholesale murder of civilian populations

So yeah don't put me in your tent. Maybe liberals still love America but you are grossly misinformed, misguided, and heavily propagandized

I dont love any nation because thats a fucking weird thing to do

I love an America I grew up in.

I understand this feeling, and I do think it's a valid way to feel. I don't doubt that you had a happy childhood and early adulthood in the America you remember. However, I think that your explanation - that America changed fundamentally - is not the correct one. America, as other users have pointed out in their comments, has always been a vile state. You can see where it's going now because you're a politically aware adult. If you had been one in the times you remember from your childhood, you probably would have seen it then as well. It's not America that's changing fundamentally (it is changing, just not fundamentally), it's you.

No we hate America.

America is the home base of global capitalism and the global violence it exports, including both military and economic violence. America is why you see childrens' deaths livestreamed from Gaza, it is why there is genocide there, and it is why if you try to fight back against that genocide you are put on lists, harassed, and worse. Repeat ad nauseum for virtually every war and mass dispossession. When nations try to free themselves from this, even while maintaining capitalism, they are targeted for vilification and destruction by the US through its myriad apparatises.

For example, Venezuela has been targeted with media vilification, military threats and coups attempts, and broad civilian-targeted sanctions because they nationalized segments of their oil industry to use to fund projects for their people and to diversify their economy. Capitalist relations remained. With the US doing its best to destroy the Venezuelan economy, any failures are highlighted as a failure of "socialism". With the US doing its best to promote opposition political factions and murder current leadership, efforts to oppose this immediately receive bad faith accusations of dictatorship while unelected opposition figures get to control Venezuela's foreign reserves. Tens of thousands of Venezuelans die every yeae from this US-impossd regime and it all comes from simply attempting to use one's own resources to benefit one's own people rather than serve the balance sheet of bankers in New York.

If you want justice, you must hate America. If you don't hate America, you make excuses for injustice or even contribute to it, like our ex-military friend in the comments that can't do any amount of self-criticism over dedicating much of their life to the death and deprivation machine for domination of other peoples.

I hate this argument because you're just two different versions of national supremacists.

On one side, you have the red magas that believe american supremacy can be re-achieved by kicking out everyone that isn't white and being mask off in its exploitation of the world.

On the other side you have the blue magas that believe american supremacy can be re-achieved by being as mask-on as possible about freedom and all the usual liberal bullshit that america spews but doesn't actually practice. This lot are just liars, using ideals and moralism as a mask for the exploitation reaped upon the world.

Both are dogshit, both are nationalists, both are motivated by american supremacy, and when both are gone the world will be a far brighter place.

I’ve been thinking about this amped up conservative rhetoric that liberals and leftists hate America. We all know that’s BS.

I'm American and a proud America hater. It's bad enough we're a shithole but we can't even keep our shit contained to our borders, we go around terrorizing the world, spreading war and exploitation and fascism to every corner of it. What is there to be "proud" of in that? When we put a stop to that shit, that will be something I can be proud of.

You gotta clean your house before you start talking about being "proud" of it. It's like you're inviting guests over and there's dried dog turds all over the carpet and you're being like, "I'm really proud of what I've done with the place, don't you like it?" That's insane. The only reason to not be on your knees apologizing and begging for forgiveness is because actually getting rid of the dog shit is more important. And once we've done that, once we've actually cleaned up our act and made something of ourselves, then maybe we can build something worth taking pride in. But this shit? Absolutely not.

I disagree. Feeling a strong emotion for a nation is a perfectly reasonable and human thing to do. Not that I’m trying to change your mind… just saying I don’t feel that way. :)

I’m an anarchist who’s only lived in VERY blue places (including angry blue places, like Oakland). I imagine if I’d had a lot of exposure to that kind of environment, I’d have some pretty different feelings about the definition of patriotism too.

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