• ZebulonP
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    1 month ago

    Idk why you’re being downvoted. The wealthy sold a lie to the masses that they too can come here and be free, with indentured servitude. So the wealthy could have their little feifdoms.

    • balsoft@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      I’m not from the US but my understanding is that the way US history is taught in schools and sometimes even colleges is heavily whitewashed and romanticized. Pupils are also repeatedly taught “allegiance … to the republic, one nation under god” (how dystopian). It is very difficult to accept that your entire understanding (and thus love) of the country you live in is at best heavily doctored and at worst just a total sham perpetrated by the elites.

      How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!

    • Godric
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      1 month ago

      My ancestor: starved peasant with no rights, running from omnicidal invaders

      Me: comfy knowledge professional

      Yeah no, that’s dumb, the promise of a better life for one’s descendants was objectively fulfilled.

      • kestrel7_7
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        1 month ago

        This is another foundational myth of the USA. Most of the people who moved from Europe to the USA were relatively privileged, particularly early on. Most of the people on the Mayflower were what we would now call middle class. Educated professionals and skilled tradesmen from England. The Puritans who didn’t have money just couldn’t afford to get out of England.

        There weren’t large amounts of poor immigrants until the 19th century, and the USA was deeply discriminatory against them when they came.

        Also, I think many black folks and indigenous people did not experience “an objectively better life for their descendants.”

        • Godric
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          1 month ago

          As nice at it has been for the OG WASPs, still, coming to America as a poor peasant worked out way better than living in a village that was razed to the ground. Immigrating to America to have a better life for you and your family isn’t a myth, it’s the lived experience for hundreds of millions of people. You don’t have to make millions to have a decent life.

          • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            1 month ago

            Immigrating to America to have a better life for you and your family isn’t a myth, it’s the lived experience for hundreds of millions of people

            So is being deported for being brown, experiencing daily racism, and being frozen out of better paying jobs and positions.

            Is ‘immigrants are successful in America’ really the story that is reflected in the lived experience of immigrants right now in America? Is it the most important story to tell during this political moment? Because where I live immigrants have had to stop attending school and work out of fear of being snatched up off the street.

          • culprit@lemmy.ml
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            1 month ago

            village that was razed to the ground

            By the US military or CIA funded death squads in the vast majority of cases.

      • freagle@lemmy.ml
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        1 month ago

        And yet the people who stayed in Europe are doing far and away better than the people who left to come to the US to participate in the fascist genocide of indigenous people living here and the fascist enslavement of indigenous people they paid kidnappers for

        • Godric
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          1 month ago

          Single payer healthcare is a great comfort to the branches of my family who stayed, slaughtered by Russian and German guns. Europe is a continent just as soaked in blood and genocide as any other.

          • freagle@lemmy.ml
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            1 month ago

            You’re so right! All the poor people who stayed behind were slaughtered in Europe but the poor people who left got to live good lives in the USA!

            You’re ridiculous

            • Godric
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              1 month ago

              You’re so right! All the poor people who stayed behind were slaughtered in Europe but the poor people who left got to live good lives in the USA!

              That is the story of my family. You’re deliberately the dullest knife in today’s drawer.

              • freagle@lemmy.ml
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                1 month ago

                My individual story is representative of all of reality.

                Bye

                • Godric
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                  1 month ago

                  I ignore ideologically inconvenient facts, and get angry when people mention them.

                  Avoid cities in America, they’re half-filled with people whose families fled poverty, repression, and totalitarianism, it might be overwhelming!

                  • Nonconfrontational@lemmy.ml
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                    1 month ago

                    they’re half-filled with people whose families fled poverty, repression, and totalitarianism

                    And the other half are people who have experienced or are experiencing poverty, repression, and totalitarianism in the past and currently.

      • balsoft@lemmy.ml
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        1 month ago

        Convenient to ignore the fact that many descendants of those who stayed behind in Europe are currently also living a much better life than their ancestors, potentially even better than yours due to a robust social safety net, better public transportation and urbanism, free or very cheap higher education, and universal healthcare.

        Human development, industrialization and imperial plunder improves quality of life in the empire, more news at 11.

        • Godric
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          1 month ago

          The family branches that stayed were slaughtered by Soviets and Nazis, so they aren’t around to compare. But, you tell me the trains are nice, so it washes out?

          Please, more “news” at 11!

          • balsoft@lemmy.ml
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            1 month ago

            So, what you’re ultimately saying is that the only benefit of the USA is being geographically far away from germany and thus its population not having to fight the nazis? That checks out. Good luck with not being killed and/or drowned in medical debt after a car accident

            • Godric
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              1 month ago

              No, what I’m saying is paying for insurance sure beats mass graves, gulags, gas chambers. You are dumber than rocks if you think Europe has been all sunshine and smiles.

              Give literacy a chance, my ancestors managed after moving to America, I’m sure you can, too!

              • balsoft@lemmy.ml
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                1 month ago

                You are dumber than rocks if you think that your family’s survival has anything to do with the US government, economic structure, way of life, or culture, which is what we are discussing here. Your family was basically saved by an ocean and the Red Army, both of which are completely unrelated to the promises of the “better life”. Afterwards they simultaneously were exploited by capitalists and helped perpetuate the most evil contemporary empire which you are also currently defending.

                • Godric
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                  1 month ago

                  My family was murdered by the Red Army. Why is it when I encounter a reality-ignoring ideologue, it’s always a .ml?

                  • balsoft@lemmy.ml
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                    1 month ago

                    I don’t know your family history, nor will I claim there weren’t any innocent people killed by the Red Army. However, the reason the US branch of your family did not have to fight in WW2 is categorically because of the Red Army defeating nazis and not because of any actions by the US government or elites.

                    Re-read the discussion. It is not about where geographically a white person was less likely to be shot in the 1940s, it is about what it means to be “american”. And practically speaking to be “american” is to simultaneously be exploited by capitalists while also perpetuating aggressive war and exploitation on other people, going back all the way to the founding of the country. The promise of better life at different points in time was either fulfilled at other’s expense or just a lie.

                  • freagle@lemmy.ml
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                    1 month ago

                    Because you define reality purely on the basis of whether or not the narrative paints your victimization as true good and those that victimized as pure evil. You have no concept of reality, only a story in which you and yours are righteous. You can’t even fathom a reality where your family was victimized and yet the people who victimized them were on the right side of history

              • Tomorrow_Farewell@lemmy.ml
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                1 month ago

                Give literacy a chance

                Calls “GULag” “gulags”

                Also, again, weird how you ignore the mass graves that the US put people in.

          • Tomorrow_Farewell@lemmy.ml
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            1 month ago

            What parts of your family were “slaughtered” by the USSR? Way too often when people complain about socialist polities taking action against their families, it turns out that those families were plantation owners and the like, so claims like these shouldn’t be taken at face value.

            Also, it’s weird how you don’t mind the US being founded on literal genocide and slavery. You do realise that it involved actually slaughtering families as part of campaigns that German and Zionist nazis explicitly took inspiration from, right?