Most things about US history are taught in a significantly distorted way in American public schools. It’s only if students major in history in college and begin their own research into the primary sources of the time that they see a realistic depiction of America’s past. A few points:
- America’s history is objectively one of a collection of European colonies of religious extremists who were pushed out of Europe because they were destabilizing their home countries and starting violent revolts. A European Taliban of its day. This is taught as a quest for religious liberty in America…
American colonists from different extremists backgrounds routinely murdered and persecuted each other, and many offered bounties on the scalps of natives. - This collection of colonies pursued policies of extermination of native people. Apologists blame disease, but it’s not a coincidence that Spanish, Portuguese, and French speaking parts of the Americas are overwhelmingly mestizo, and English speaking parts are lily white.
Remember that none of these other powers were anything short of horrible to native people, and carried all of the same diseases. Yet the “English Taliban” was a special kind of monster in its day.
Even when the USA conquered huge parts of Mexico, as another poster (Jimmy Yang) pointed out, they carried out officially sanctioned genocides of native American populations that had persisted through Spanish colonization. - America is held up as a model of diversity, integration, and multi-culturalism that other nations should follow. The irony is somehow never realized. The condition of America’s native nations is the strongest argument against diversity, integration, and multi-culturalism that exists in history.
- America is a global empire with a vast sphere of influence. Something we call vassal states in history, and that future historians will call vassal states looking back, but that we don’t call that in the present because of politics.
It generally takes the shape of a military alliance in exchange for influence.
This was more pronounced in the past in Latin America, especially with banana republics and Panama. - America is a collection of former colonies that had its own colonies (ex. Philippines and Cuba) in the past and still has some now. Puerto Rico being a prime example. We have new names for it now, but it’s an overseas colony in every real sense.
Every now and then the USA adopts one of its colonies into its primary body (see Hawaii). - The history of the USA is a highly militarily aggressive expansionist state. See Manifest Destiny. The idea that it was some sort of shining light of tolerance and understanding is complete fiction.
- The USA was founded as an aristocracy of wealthy, white, male, protestant landowners with no significant democratic ambitions. The founding fathers despised democracy and did not trust common people’s judgment at all, which is why almost nobody had the right to vote when the country was founded. The history was essentially completely reinterpreted in hindsight in order to justify new changes later on.
Here we see that it took until 1924 (after the enfranchisement of women) before even a quarter of the population had a say in presidential elections, and that under the original design intended by the American founders, only about 1% of the population had a say in government! 1%!
- The USA was not the primary force of the Allies in WWII. WWII was mostly a war between the USSR and Germany. The rest was a sideshow swirling around that center of conflict. America did not save Europe from Germany. Stalin did. Just look at the casualty figures to get an idea. The dark green is the USA’s contribution. Not quite how it gets taught in US history class or in Hollywood is it?
- America commits a lot of war crimes. All the time. It gets around it by never actually signing the conventions and treaties that set international law regarding human rights. Though they actively lobby to create them in the first place and push other countries to obey them.
This double standard is what is referred to as “American Exceptionalism”
Also:
America Has Been At War 93% of the Time – 222 Out of 239 Years – Since 1776
America is a warmongering nation that keeps complaining that other countries like Iran (who hasn’t attacked another country in over 200 years), are dangerous and aggressive.
There is way more but I’m tired of writing for now.
Read other answers by Jens Böttiger on Quora:
- Why is it called a world war when African countries never participated?
- Are there many Germans who resent losing so much land to Poland after World War 2? Are there some in Germany who would like to get it back?
- How is it possible that Germany survived losing two major world wars without collapsing or losing any of its territory?
from Quora http://ift.tt/2dfSQm6
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