Rodrigo Urdaneta
Aug 9, 2017 · 2 min read

Believing and arguing that you are the Best Country Ever and at the same time denying Umair’s stance that Americans see themselves as an essentially non-flawed country is really just a matter of semantics, a carefully chosen perspective to avoid ceding him the point.

I agree with many of the things you see as great in America, in particular the scientific and technological developments, and the fact that as a country it has produced many outstanding individuals is without question. But you cannot pick apart someone else’s argument by saying they generalize numbers from small counties to all of America and then say, without a hint of a doubt in your own generalization, that what makes America great is everyone’s bravery and determination and so on. Indicators, even if they are “progressive” (you appear to fear/hate the word, and hence consider invalid anything that stems from a progressive point of view. Maybe I’m mistaken) are effective measures of quality of living, wether you like them or not.

All in all, I think you make good points about Umair’s thesis being over-generalizing; but as long as you don’t realize and accept that one of the core principles of modern America (its foreign policies, based on an exceptionalist premise which leads to the feeling that America’s always right, everyone else is always wrong and so America has the moral, almost religious mandate to do whatever they want, wherever they want, with no consequences) is what many Americans and most other countries see as a fatal flaw in the American system, you will never fully understand what Umair is saying.

And really, dismissing the killing of others because “they started it”, because they’re “evil”, because they’re, well, others, according to what you unilaterally decided was the starting point of the conflict and what good and evil was, what the correct we was, is as American-Foreign-Policy, America-Is-The-Greatest-Of-Greatest-Ever a point of view as it gets.

Rodrigo Urdaneta

Written by

Postproducer of images, sounds and ideas. To read, to write, to think, to talk: good ol’ hobbies.