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Ugly American Becomes Stupid American
Also, The Last American
Once, there was the Ugly American, which evolved into the Stupid American. This is also the Last American because the nationality that came to be ugly in the mid-20th Century has become stupid in the 21st Century, and while the ugly can survive, the stupid do not.
The peak of America was the post-WWII industrial success built on Roosevelt’s socialist principles in response to the Great Depression and trade unionism, which made industrial production that overwhelmed Germany and Japan. Much of this was luck, as public management coincided with exploiting North America’s needed resources and labor.
That is not how it was taught to us who grew up in the Great American Century. What we were taught were distortions, not outright lies, that shifted the success to the American GI (not the Russian soldier) who won the war and American capitalism (and not the American unionized worker), which equipped the armies. By the war’s end, half of the world’s wartime industrial production was in the United States. [Source]
The reality was well hidden, and Hollywood productions made American heroes, some of whom were actual veterans, such as Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Kirk Douglas, and Charlton Heston. The Russians won the European War, and the Chinese…