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Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To think that America wasn't that great in the first place?

92 replies

malificent7 · 13/09/2025 08:57

I do have lack of historical knowledge but as far as I can tell modern America was formed by white settlers commiting mass genocide of nstive Americans then importing black slaves to do their dirty work and then moaning about there being black people in their country. In a nutshell. Am I wong?

OP posts:
BlueEyedBogWitch · 13/09/2025 22:44

I’ve always found the place to be a total pain in the arse, and resent how much of an influence it has on our economy, politics and culture.

We’re Europeans. We should be looking at how other European countries do things, not following America because it’s loud and shiny and speaks a version of our language.

Let’s face it - with a backstory like that, it was never going to end well, was it?

BetteButler · 13/09/2025 22:50

It is great not without fault, but what country is not without that.

GeneralPeter · 13/09/2025 22:51

LoopyLoo1991 · 13/09/2025 22:17

Unfortunately the 'slavedriving' and exploiting the 'little people' mentality has never left America . They won't even let cashiers in supermarkets sit down FFS.
This is what happens when a übercapitalist society that doesn't care about social safety nets gets out of control.
Part of my company's group is based in the US - many of the bosses earn six figures and do essentially no work, while those earning under $60K work 50+ hours a week trying to catch up paperwork the bosses are supposed to be doing. It's a fecking joke and unlikely to change anytime soon.

The insane orange muppet in the Whitehouse has just made things worse 🤦

If $60k is your threshold for the ‘little people’, you are brilliantly demonstrating one of the US’s greatest strengths. That income is global top 3%, even after accounting for costs.

The poor in the US are rich by the standards of almost all of the world, and unimaginably rich by the standards of almost everyone who has ever lived, historically.

If you can’t concede that, or discount it, your privilege is showing.

Moonmelodies · 13/09/2025 22:59

Let's not forget the native Americans were well practiced in genocide, and kept their own slaves, long before the Europeans arrived.

LoopyLoo1991 · 13/09/2025 23:04

GeneralPeter · 13/09/2025 22:51

If $60k is your threshold for the ‘little people’, you are brilliantly demonstrating one of the US’s greatest strengths. That income is global top 3%, even after accounting for costs.

The poor in the US are rich by the standards of almost all of the world, and unimaginably rich by the standards of almost everyone who has ever lived, historically.

If you can’t concede that, or discount it, your privilege is showing.

Earning under $60K on a job they should be being paid $115K on. Same job in the UK would earn them over £100K.
I've talked to a few of those working in the US, and they tell horrific stories over being underpaid for working six days a week and being on call 24/7. Also there maybe a $20K salary difference in the same department, for doing the same jobs , but as salaries are meant to be 'secret' the companies take full advantage to pay some less.

GeneralPeter · 13/09/2025 23:10

LoopyLoo1991 · 13/09/2025 23:04

Earning under $60K on a job they should be being paid $115K on. Same job in the UK would earn them over £100K.
I've talked to a few of those working in the US, and they tell horrific stories over being underpaid for working six days a week and being on call 24/7. Also there maybe a $20K salary difference in the same department, for doing the same jobs , but as salaries are meant to be 'secret' the companies take full advantage to pay some less.

So the hardship here is that they are top 3% when they should be top 2%?

I’m from the rich world too. I get it. I don’t think I’d like those working conditions.

Assuming they are not being illegally oppressed, they can leave and get the 2x raise somewhere else. I’m curious which sector it is that UK wages are so much higher than US like-for-like, as that’s rare.

But this is diamond-shoes stuff in world terms. The fact you don’t see it is a testament to how normalised the US has made that kind of world-topping income.

ClawsandEffect · 13/09/2025 23:14

OneGladRoseTiger · 13/09/2025 09:29

And where do you think the majority of the “white settlers who committed genocide” (you don’t need the word “mass” in front of “genocide”, by the way. It’s already implied) came from? Why do you think we speak English? People in glass houses…

I’m an American. I love this country. Nothing wrong with that. If you don’t live here, you don’t really know what you’re talking about.

I've lived there twice, in two different parts of the country, and found the white washing of the decimation of the native population horrible. Also really hated the racism and violence of US culture. I've let my green card lapse. No intention of going back.

Screamingabdabz · 13/09/2025 23:31

Thank God for America is what I say. When you see Putin and his batshit murderous cronies from North Korea and China shaking hands and plotting world domination who are we going to turn to for safekeeping? Our self serving European ‘friends’? Nope. It’ll be America and her allies.

All this backward looking history about slavery and native Americans is irrelevant to the ‘great’ in MAGA. The main thing is enough voters have experienced the ‘feeling’ that America as a nation was great, is great, for whatever reason, and that slogan speaks to them from recent history.

It’s quite ignorant, not to mention disrespectful, if you’re not an American, and don’t understand the country, to sneer. American is a fantastic diverse country, and its contribution to the world, in many different spheres - culture, science, military, aid, tech, academia, philanthropy etc is immense. Don’t let your hatred of Trump distort the reality.

FellowSuffereroftheAbsurd · 13/09/2025 23:42

I don't think any nation is great; however I also thing you're vastly oversimplifying to the point of being wrong and unreasonable

No, the US wasn't formed by committing genocide, it developed with it as it gathered powers as many powers do. I could see the argument of Spain being largely violent to the point of genocidal from fairly early on in Central America, but that wasn't the case until later in US history. The early forming has conflict, but also cooperation, as American Indigenous nations had with each other. Treaties with American Indigenous nations were made by Britain and others in what is now the US, that's part of what led to conflict between the early colonists and the British government of the time. Some of the American Indigenous nations welcomed the Europeans, some leaders of those nations merrily trading their daughters as 'translators' for access to European weapons and other supplies to fight wars they were in with other nations - pretty standard for the time. Some other American Indigenous nations were defeated because they had been so brutal to their neighbours that those neighbours stepped aside and some helped the Europeans to defeat them. In the US War of Independence, some American Indigenous nations sided with the US, some with Britain, some tried to remain neutral, some fled - as did some who sided with Britain after the war. The genocide-manifest destiny comes later as the US government stabilizes power and wants to expand in the way of most powers have within its own borders and then beyond them - much as Britain's genocidal tendencies grew with power, remained largely within its own self-assumed growing borders until it gained enough stability with its neighbours to be violent elsewhere too.

A small percent of White Americans owned slaved, as did a smaller percentage of American Indigenous people and Black people. There was ongoing conflicts in the US about slavery from the start, and then there are things like the Barbary pirates situation where US ships alongside European towns being raided by Barbary pirates unless tributes were paid and those raids hat included taking people to Ottoman slave markets. The US's system was terrible. I think when Europeans point at it and act it was the pinnacle of evil, erasing both what Europeans did with slave trades and what was going on with the slave trades as a whole at the time, it hasn't done much good.

In the early days, many did not go willingly - it was used to dispose of prisoners, significantly more than were eventually sent to Australia, and then there is the whole indentured servitude system that one can never pay their way out of and at times could pass on to one's children. The idea that it great for all White men is a vast oversimplification.

I've lived in the US. I wouldn't go back, not because of its history, which I don't think is that unique, but because the current system and risks aren't ones I'm willing to face with my family.

Its like the UK...decendants of immigrants moaning about immigrants!

I hear this a lot. It is not the kindness to immigrants some seem to think is for a few reasons including that people who hate immigrants already call us invaders, an invading army, and so on, so equating modern immigrants with those repeated invasions of the UK is not helping. It also implies that immigrants and our children who speak negatively about other immigrants or the immigration system must be 'moaning' and in the wrong. I think we're quite well placed to discuss issues of immigration, the issues of and barriers to integration, the issues that the system is only working for those who are making money off of it with no concern for the wellbeing of either immigrants or British-born in our communities.

mathanxiety · 14/09/2025 01:09

Jellycatspyjamas · 13/09/2025 09:10

Well given it was largely Brits doing the settling, the genocide and the slavery I’m not sure we’ve any place to judge.

This.

Also, what about 'Great Britain'?
An island whose prosperity was built on the back of conquest, enslaved labour, and exploitation of the resources and peoples of a huge chunk of the globe.

CoffeeCantata · 14/09/2025 07:55

It’s ridiculous to start rubbishing whole nations (which weren’t the same in any way as they are now) because of their history - especially when you’re a bit vague about history.

It’s virtue-signaling. “Ooh, they did bad things in the past!’ Well, yes - so did most nation-states at some point. Find me on that never put a foot wrong! Focus on the present.

If we want to be childish we could point out that the US saved the world from Hitler in the end, but that’s a very simple-minded version of history just asvthe ‘bad’ things are.

CoffeeCantata · 14/09/2025 08:01

mathanxiety · 14/09/2025 01:09

This.

Also, what about 'Great Britain'?
An island whose prosperity was built on the back of conquest, enslaved labour, and exploitation of the resources and peoples of a huge chunk of the globe.

Part of the ‘truth’ (what’s that?)

But also a highly dynamic, creative industrial nation which led the world at one point in huge technological leaps. Also developed advanced legal and governmental systems in advance of many other nations. Avoided catastrophic revolutions through its evolving political system unlike many other more repressive countries.

Ooh - and Shakespeare!

Don’t be so bloody negative and blinkered.

Fearfulsaints · 14/09/2025 08:08

mathanxiety · 14/09/2025 01:09

This.

Also, what about 'Great Britain'?
An island whose prosperity was built on the back of conquest, enslaved labour, and exploitation of the resources and peoples of a huge chunk of the globe.

The Great in Britain is a term differentiating it from Lesser Britain or Brittany. Its about size, not being better or wonderful.

Thats not to say some people dont also want it to be Great as in powerful/good or hard back to the old days when everything was wonderful off the back of the empire.

mathanxiety · 15/09/2025 05:09

@CoffeeCantata

The avoidance of catastrophic revolutions? Like the Norman invasion, the War of the Roses, the dissolution of the monasteries which paid for the Tudor revolution (and foreshadowed the Bolshevik approach to private propeery and to the church in many respects), and the Tudor and Marian terror, the Civil War, the beheading of Charles I, the 'Glorious Revolution', the Highland 'clearances' (aka ethnic cleansing), the brutal treatment of the underclass that gathered steam as the industrial revolution developed, with tens of thousands executed and deported, the triangular trade, the oppression of Ireland including the brutal suppression of several rebellions, an entire region of the realm formerly known as The United Kingdom of Great Britain and ireland held for the crown by military occupation, along with a military police that lived in and worked from barracks throughout the countryside...

I don't go along with the 'all's well that ends well' theory of history.

Shekespeare was pretty cool, I do agree, but plenty of other countries have produced literary giants.

citygirl77 · 15/09/2025 05:19

OneGladRoseTiger · 13/09/2025 09:29

And where do you think the majority of the “white settlers who committed genocide” (you don’t need the word “mass” in front of “genocide”, by the way. It’s already implied) came from? Why do you think we speak English? People in glass houses…

I’m an American. I love this country. Nothing wrong with that. If you don’t live here, you don’t really know what you’re talking about.

Isn’t it amazing that people who have never lived in a country are suddenly an expert on it. We were lucky to live in the U.S. for 2 years and loved it. It’s not that long ago that white people from Germany and allied countries invaded most of Europe and committed the most unthinkable atrocities. We came very close to being invaded too. That’s whites against whites. But for some reason they keep banging on about history from hundreds of years ago, not recent history. Op just wants to hack people off.

knitnerd90 · 15/09/2025 06:23

Well, "MAGA" as a concept is a load of rubbish and is about a false view of history.

But yes: America was founded by the British, so as someone who is a dual citizen I do have complex feelings on that subject! But people really oversimplify the Puritan business. They mix up Plymouth (Separatists) and Massachusetts Bay (Puritan) colonies, who were formed by different groups of Christians. New York was Dutch and a commercial colony. Pennsylvania was founded by Quakers on the principle of religious tolerance. Rhode Island was also founded for religious tolerance, and his home to the first synagogue in the country, originally founded in 1658. Maryland was Catholic. Virginia was founded on a commercial basis and in general the South's economy was originally based on the exploitation of natural resources, first tobacco, rice, and indigo and then cotton.

Meanwhile, the colony that was founded by Puritans ultimately became the least religious part of the USA (and the original Protestants were outnumbered by Catholic immigrants) and the Puritan emphasis on universal education means that to this day, Massachusetts is the most educated state in America. The evangelical Protestantism people think of is homegrown and the product of later religious development (look up the First and Second Great Awakenings, particularly the Second)

Parker231 · 15/09/2025 11:52

The latest Trump classic - apparently 300 million Americans died from drug use last year - so small US population left!

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