this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
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I feel like it's unamerican in regards to the values our country espouses, even though it completely and utterly fails to uphold them.
The purpose of a system is what it does
"American values" are just a smokescreen, they aren't failed, more they serve their purpose of obfuscation well.
Nah man, Americans have values. Freedom, perseverance, independence, self expression. It's just that we have utterly failed to uphold those values in our actions. Even in the beginning, talking about slavery being terrible but still allowing it for political reasons right at the founding.
Those values only really served as a way for the ruling class that founded America to justify itself. They weren't genuine.
I'm talking about the shared cultural values of the society we have today, views shared by most Americans. Most Americans like free speech. Most Americans like liberty. Et cetera and so on. These are things that are part of our culture. You aren't any less of a person for recognizing that these are values that are held by this culture.
I am also saying that despite culturally sharing in these values, our society also fails to actually support them in very big ways.
And I am telling you that the cultural aspects came from a desire from the ruling class to support freedom for Capitalists to do what they want, and morally justify it. That's why these values never seem to actually be supported, just gestured towards.
"Espouses but fails to uphold" sounds more like negligence to me. Negligence would be allowing fascism through inaction (like democrat administration). But the US does far worse than that (funding genocide and propping up fascism elsewhere)
Nah, I liked how I phrased it. We've been failing to uphold our ideals since the beginning, even Thomas Jefferson was a hypocrite who hated slavery but sure as hell did a lot of it.
Jefferson didn't hate slavery, he even pledged support for France against Haiti's slave rebellion.