this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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I agree that America's origin story is filled with blood lust and greed. You don't come up with a concept like manifest destiny without a fuck you, everything is mine attitude.
The reality is they're never going to see that set of circumstances ever again. You don't get to be the world's preeminent super power and sit at the sidelines of a world war.
One can wonder if that unique set of circumstances (some of it based on pure luck) will ever happen again. That is, the new deal + rapid industrializing to become the world's leading weapons manufacturer + geographical isolation from a world war without being a primary target. If it does happen, it would be for another country.
The US profited immensely off of their allies by selling weapons and that doesnt even account for the massive brain drain of intellectuals / scientists moving to the US for safety during the war.
Yep, I agree with all of that. You can't really even blame the US for most of it. Not joining the first and second world wars sooner? Makes sense. It's a war on an entirely different continent. Why not stay out as long as possible. Scientists, engineers and artists fleeing to the US for safety? Makes perfect sense. It's great that (for the most part) the US welcomed them in. Selling arms to allies? That's perfectly reasonable, I'm sure the allies appreciated it. In fact, with the Lend Lease act, a lot of the equipment was effectively donated.
What you can blame the US for is not acknowledging this as a huge stroke of luck, and having some humility about it. If the US taught kids in schools that the US was extremely lucky in both world wars, joining near the end of the first and a long way after the start of the second, that would be reasonable. Instead most people who go through the US education system come out of it thinking that WWII started in late 1941. Teaching that the US won WWII? No, the USSR won WWII, the rest of the allies did their part, but the most brutal fighting was on the eastern front, and it was the Russians who plowed their way to Berlin. The US economy after WWII was great because of ingenuity and capitalism? Sure, those were factors, but don'tcha think the whole "we're the only major country to get out of WWII undamaged" is a bigger factor?