An open letter to certain parties...

[conuly]

"Greatest country in the world" is a meaningless statement until and unless you give some sort of metric. In what way is this the "greatest" country? What, exactly, are you measuring here? That's not sarcasm - or, at least, it doesn't have to be. Just give me something to work with here!

(I've tried actually asking people individually, but I've never gotten anything constructive out of them. I think they don't know what they mean either.)

Comments

[lilysea]

Yes!

One country might be the best at having reduced it's carbon emissions;

another might be best at affordable access to healthcare;

another might be best at free public education;

another might be best at social mobility...

[conuly]

Either the most of something good or the least of something bad.

Or I suppose we could mostly have good things and not bad things and simply average out as the top contender overall without being tops in any one particular category, but again, you have to be able to back that up and these folks can't.

[pensnest]

I doubt you will ever get anything constructive... from what I've seen on the internet - and I grant you, that isn't really a fair sample of anything - the answer is IT JUST IS with a side order of EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT.

Which is actually better than the "they hate us for our freedom" crap which some Americans pull.

I bet my country was good at being The Greatest Country In The World back when the British Empire made it TOTALLY OBVIOUS. Hmph.

[pensnest]

PS Sorry to be curmudgeonly - I wish you all the luck in the world with the application of logic.

[conuly]

Which is actually better than the "they hate us for our freedom" crap which some Americans pull.

Oh, god. Even if they actually did, they wouldn't do terrorism for it, they'd just live their own lives and quietly pat themselves on the back for not being like us decadent Westerners.

[hudebnik]

Obviously, the metric is whatever we're greatest at. If we're not greatest at it, it's obviously not a good metric.

Off the top of my head, "spending money on health care", "gun ownership without being in a civil war", and "gunshot deaths and injuries without being in a civil war". All per capita, of course. We're only second or third for incarceration, and somewhere in the top twenty on a number of other more-positive measures.

Oh, number of Nobel prizes. But I doubt the U.S. still wins that per capita.

[conuly]

These people really resent the phrase "per capita" and pretend they have no idea what it means or why it's relevant. (Maybe they don't know what it means.)

[redbird]

I think it's often like asking someone "why is your spouse/partner/beloved the best?" Someone who says "you're my best beloved" is talking about the intensity of their emotions, not literally expecting everyone else to agree that their beloved is better than everyone else's.

There are probably a bunch of reasons that patriotism tends toward claiming that whichever country it is, is best in some more absolute sense; I suspect part of it is that it's harder for people to believe their patriotism is reciprocated. However good my country might be for me, or however glad someone else is to have been born in theirs, few of us believe that America, or France, or any other country is even aware of us as individuals.

Now I wonder, what sort of response would you get if you answered "greatest country in the world" with "I'm glad you like it so much" or even "What do you like best about it?" If there were a not-just-emotional sense in which any country was greatest, it still might not be what someone cared most about.

I don't have the book handy (so this is from memory/paraphrased), but there's a bit in The Left Hand of Darkness where one of the characters is saying, about patriotism, that they love the hills of the Domain of Estre, where they were raised, but "that kind of love doesn't have a boundary" and "beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope"--which the narrator interprets/explains as "'ignorant' in the Handdarata sense, of holding fast to the concrete and refusing abstractions."

[hudebnik]

Yes, of course that's what it's about. Like the dog-food commercial that says "Doesn't the best dog in the world deserve the best dog food in the world?"

Syllogism: if you DON'T think your dog is the best in the world, you must not really love it. You do love your dog, the advertiser reminds you (giving you a warm feeling), ergo (contrapositively) you think it's the best dog in the world. Does the best dog in the world deserve the best dog food in the world? Of course: to even ask the question in those words is to answer it in the affirmative. But what IS the best dog food in the world? Well, since the advertiser has just said several things that make you feel warm and snuggly and that you agree with, the advertiser must be "on your side", so you're inclined to believe one more implied statement from the same source, that the advertiser's product is the best dog food in the world.

"${X} is the greatest country in the world" is not a statement of fact, but a profession of faith, a signal of team allegiance. Its purpose has nothing to do with its true/false value, but with the psychological and social impact of saying it.

[conuly]

I like my doggies an awful lot, but I gotta say, this talk about how they're the best dogs in the world? It's puffery. They're not. Any other two dogs would be as sweet.

[hudebnik]

Exactly. And if I lived in another country, I would see its greatness (and its shortcomings) too.

Sibelius wrote a sorta-national anthem to that effect: it talks about how beautiful the skies, the trees, the mountains, of my country... and then immediately points out that other countries have beautiful skies, trees, and mountains too. And so on.

[conuly]

I've always loved that song.

[sabotabby]

The only metric I care about is the utilitarian greatest good for the greatest number. It means abandoning the GDP as a metric and looking at environmental policy, access to housing and transportation, access to clean water and food, sense of community and wellbeing, labour rights, leisure time. A port of safety for refugees and a frontline fighter against climate change. But people who believe in that aren't interested in being the greatest country because there is no point to being the greatest country if people in other countries don't have those things, too.

[greghousesgf]

I think the only way anyone could really know which country is the best would be by living in all of them for a long period of time, and who's done that?

[conuly]

I'm sure there's some other, less subjective way to tell.

But even then, even if we could peg the objectively 'greatest' country in the world - so what? How great can it be if we stop there and refuse to improve?

[thewayne]

Yeah. There's so many metrics where we're absolute shite, and so few where we're #1 that I'd really like to know where they're coming from.

[conuly]

Their deeply wounded sense of nationalism.

[silveradept]

I think they usually mean it in terms of "most rampant consumerism and greed" and express it in admiration for all the possible choices for goods that are supposedly available to purchase with the money they wish they had, but don't because they're temporarily embarrassed millionaires toiling at a job until they "make it."

[conuly]

*snrk*

[tielan]

So much burn on so many levels.

Very well done!

[readerjane]

Makes me think of Will McAvoy. He's preachy, but on this topic I agree with him. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wTjMqda19wk

[rhoda_rants]

I kinda wonder if it's more about patriotic loyalty. Like, not even any specific Thing but you're not a True Patriotic or Anti-American if you don't think America is the BEST. (Assuming you're talking about America--correct me if I'm wrong.) Which is nonsense, obviously, but I'd wager that's where this line of thinking goes.

Once in a US Government class in high school, the teacher was getting us talking about this America Is The Best thing, and eventually asked, "Okay, but who's BETTER than America?" One kid said, "Sweden." I said, "Australia." Both immediately, and without raising our hands. I don't think I'd say the same thing now (Australia is dealing with some shiiiiiiiit, but at least they don't have guns anymore--plus, Monster Spiders, and the second-best Chris), but I think she was mostly shocked that we had an actual answer.

[conuly]

LOL.

[bitterlawngnome]

Surely it means "we have the finest urban planning in the world"?

[conuly]

We do not.

[bitterlawngnome]

:)

[peristaltor]

People who say that are literally simple minded. Not unintelligent per se; just unable to handle an overload of executive, non-heuristic brain work. If you try to challenge the very existence of a definition, their minds get full and they get cranky.

John Wayne was one such "thinker." When told that he couldn't just divide the world into black and white, good and bad, divine and evil, and the like, he said, "Why the hell not?"

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

We're definitely the greatest country geographically. We've got the entire temperate zone of a major continent "from sea to shining sea" - very few other nations in history could claim that. Genghis Khan's empire and the Soviet Union were bigger, but neither of them lasted long; Australia is one nation, but most of it is barely habitable. With climate change, it's likely Canada will become the greatest country (in that sense) within a century, if civilization lasts that long.

We may still be the greatest country in terms of unspoiled natural resources and number of species, though the spoiling and extinction have proceeded at a terrifying rate for the past two centuries. Europe and Asia were relentlessly warred-over by mounted armies for millennia; whole regions were deforested for the building of navies; hoi polloi could barely scratch themselves a living. Not that the First Nations didn't war on each other, but it wasn't the same sort of warfare. So the USA began as the richest nation, and systematically conquered all the other nations on this continent, taking their resources. Russia is doing the same thing to Siberia, so it's hard to say which of us is greater now, by that standard of greatness.

We may be the greatest country for genetic diversity, since for the past few centuries people from all over the world have been coming here and swapping genes around the pool fairly freely. Genetic diversity has an extremely high survival value; the more options a species has, the more it can adapt to change. By the same token, we may also be the greatest country for cultural diversity, which fosters creativity and innovation.

We arguably have the best system of government, despite the shameful way it's currently being misused. Our Founders had a unique opportunity to start fresh, to design a system from the ground up, rather than fighting to modify an existing one into accordance with the principles of the Enlightenment. They designed it very well indeed, and even built into it safeguards against the kind of bullshit Trump and the GOP are trying to pull. Obviously, no system can stand forever against determined efforts to destroy it from within, but ours has stood so far, and if it falls, it'll be a great loss to the world.

So, there ya go; something to work with. The USA has the greatest location, and 'location is everything'. The USA has (or had) the greatest natural resources, which must be scrupulously protected, especially our clean water. The USA has the greatest genetic and cultural diversity, which is a huge advantage, so the bigots and xenophobes need to STFU. The USA has the greatest system of government, carefully designed to ensure "government of, by and for the people", and We the People need to fight like hell to protect it from hostile takeover by the corporate robber barons.

[conuly]

It's true, we are certainly the largest nation in the world that isn't mostly frozen tundra, and having access to two different oceans is nothing to sneeze at. And we do have a lot of diversity, though I'm not sure we have more than Canada.