An Imitation of European Civilization: the Illusion of American Supremacy.

I just had a conversation with somebody
I've known on the internet for five years but we haven't really spoken in five years and we were exchanging observations on why it is that life in the United States of America is so unbelievably intolerably awful stay with me for a minute here I really think that most people who are born and raised in Europe who have never been to United States of America they cannot imagine how awful daily life is in the city of Seattle many Americans will tell you that Seattle is one of the most wonderful cities in America that it's one of the most pleasant to live in let me tell you something if you compare Seattle to Brussels if you compare Seattle to Perpignan if you compare Seattle to second and third rate cities within Europe daily life in Seattle is unbelievably horrible compared to life in those European cities and I would go so far as to say there is not a single city in the United States of America not one where life is as pleasant as daily life in cote d'azur south of france not one now America has this tremendous reputation that is partly projected through television movies even things like sports that always seems very strange to me born I was living in France I had some tragicomic conversations with French people who told me because I was Canadian we were speaking French by the way I don't speak French that well but enough um and they told me that their dream was to move to Canada and live there and here I was I just escaped from Canada to France I was living in France I was applying to become a French citizen and you know when asked why not too offensive their answers often did revolve around watching sports on television hockey baseball football this was their impression of Canada not a single one of these people would actually visit Canada so the main purpose of this video is actually to kind of challenge my own set of values and assumptions at the beginning of this conversation with an old friend I was bringing up put it this way I was bringing up points about life here in Canada the United States that I've said to my girlfriend many times that I've said to my mother and my deceased father many times I feel like fundamentally what we're dealing with here in Canada is an inestimable cultural deficit because we live in a country built on genocide that the erasure of the culture that was here before the failure to either preserve and promulgate that native culture the failure to even have some kind of hybrid culture you know interacting between Europeans and Native people which you could argue at least some areas in Mexico at least some areas in Brazil have a kind of hybrid culture of indigenous and foreign parts instead in Canada United States you're talking about a total cultural genocide and then on the basis of that cultural genocide what did we construct can we even say this is a second-rate imitation of European culture my girlfriend and I here we very frequently walk past the Opera here in Victoria British Columbia you probably didn't know there was an opera in Victoria British Columbia Canada most people who live here don't know it to call it a second-rate imitation of European opera is like an insult to European opera I don't care about opera I don't valorize opera my point is this anyone could look at the Opera that we have here which is by the way totally dependent on taxpayer support it's does not exist because there's a you know population here that loves opera the way that people in the Czech Republic or Amsterdam or Germany or Austria there are many countries in Europe Italy that have a vibrant culture of opera and includes both the people in the audience and people on stage no there's nothing like that here on either side this is taxpayers money being spent by the government to create the illusion that we have some of this European culture European tradition which we don't in a much more subtle way if you were to ask why is the quality of education in the university garbage why is the quality of education of the high schools in primary school I think it really is the same thing I think that even though it's not as glaringly obvious as the extent to which the up the Opera is terrible our universities and our schools are kind of a hollow facade they're this paper-thin imitation of European culture I would even say that about our Constitution and our politics and our version of democracy right so what we have here in Canada in many many ways is never going to be as authentic as democracy in Switzerland we could try we don't try and when you're looking at the gravity of this genocide you also have to look at the failure to achieve anything great thereafter we didn't it's not as if Canada committed this genocide and then built the pyramids we didn't committed this genocide and the country settled into this unbelievably mediocre suburban you know hockey playing marijuana smoking video game addicted model of you know development and the various factors of that - the connection to European Imperial is a British imperialism French imperialism also American frozen we could go on - those are themes and topics have reflected on before with my girlfriend with my parents people who know me personally have heard me reflecting those things what I'd say now that's really a bit different and where I'm challenging myself is this we have a book here on the history of China if you've studied the history of China in a formal university course as I have what you're told again and again and again is that the Ching dynasty this is Cheng spelled with a q qi ng the Ching dynasty period is the lowest and the weakest and the most terrible Denis T in this charts is decline decline decline there's this whole ethic or Athos of declines how the tissue this is the navier-- this is the low point of Chinese history after which we get the ascent into modernity supposedly right the author of this book very bluntly argues the exact opposite he says no this is maybe the greatest period of the Chinese Empire in many obvious and important ways like military history so if you actually care about battles if you actually care about armies if you actually care about conquering territory this dynasty that everyone you know formal historians but also just generally the way the culture remembers that period shows you what everyone's remembering is a period of weakness and decline and disintegration it was actually the period of greatest strength and they conquered huge amounts of territory including Mongolia and Syngenta so China really increased in size permanently and this guy is saying he's an expert I'm not he's saying if you really study the battles if you start to study the way the military was organized now they fought and were armed that this this really deserves to be celebrated as something kind of impressive as a tremendous honor what this makes me reflect on is the extent to which we as modern people with modern values just fundamentally do not care about military greatness like whatever type of greatness China had in the Han Dynasty or in the Ming Dynasty or the tang dynasty or the song whatever the greatness is that we're talking about that we care about it's not military and whatever greatness or whatever weakness we perceive and we care about in the Ching dynasty in that period has absolutely nothing to do with military strength so I feel like in the year 2020 the evaluation of the strength of the United States of America very simply falls into these two separate yet strangely overlapping categories what is the strength of the United States of America military nobody else has aircraft carriers like the United States of America nobody else has submarines that fire Tomahawk missiles and by the way the reason for that is those Tomahawk missiles can cost over 1 million dollars per launch mind-blowing the budget that has to go behind these things right nobody else has ships that can fire long-range torpedoes satellite-guided with tremendous accuracy over tremendous difference the way the United States is unchallenged naval dominance unchallenged air force dominance and yes yes y'all there's this little thing called the atomic bomb they have to back it up with if what you care about is military strength then of course this is the Golden Age of the United States of America if what you care about is the ability to walk from city hall to the nearest bakery without passing homeless people living in tents no Pink's surrounded by homeless drug addicts and without being let's be honest afraid for your life it's unbelievable how awful life is in every major city the Unites States America because in all cities and it's easier if what you care about is the quality of education and cosmopolitanism the character of the people and just just in a simple unpretentious sense I have a seven-year-old daughter would I want to raise my daughter here in Canada or in France would you want to raise your son or your daughter in downtown Seattle in Los Angeles or in a fundamentally functional city like Brussels in Belgium Brussels is not the most romanticized city in Europe it's most people wouldn't even put it in the top ten list of desirable places in Europe but I would say there was not a single city in the United States of America that's as good a place to live as Brussels all right so yes there's the quality of life there's the character of the people there's the quality of education and there's the possibility of leading a meaningful life all right the type of wealth that matters to me the type of power that matters to me is not the wealth and is not the power that the United States of America has in such tremendous quantities and I can say to you honestly as someone whose lives all over the world I used to live in a backward small city in communist China a city that Chinese people themselves consider poor and a bad place to live I do not believe there's a single city in the whole the United States of America that's as wonderful a place to live as that city in China and if you ask me why it's all of these things taken together it's the fact that that city in China has four living languages that it's not built on genocide that their indigenous people are still there and so living there that they have this tremendous cultural depth that isn't just Chinese it's actually several different cultures coming together and it's the quality of Education and the character of the people and their commitment to education there are a whole lot of components that go into it they're components that can't easily be replicated in the United States nor in Australia nor in Canada nor in these fragments of the predator Empire you know built on genocide they're all the impalpable things that separate a university that may have opulent campus opulent sports stadium and a great football team that's what American universities have that's what Canadians universities have right and yet there are all these important ways in which university education high school education all levels of education in Canada United States are an absolute sad joke compared to the universities of Europe right we're at a crossroads now figures like Bernie Sanders even more explicitly the filmmaker Michael Moore they asked the question can America catch up with Europe and the same question is pole can America catch up with Japan can America catch up with Taiwan Taiwan has single-payer healthcare Scotland has a socialized healthcare public payment system for healthcare National Health Service put it right there are some really obvious ways in which the United States is simply behind and they're not just behind Europe anymore they're also lagging far behind even compared to these countries in Asia so if we can recognize that if we can start asking those questions maybe maybe in the next hundred years Americans and Canadians can start coming up with the solutions but I've got to tell you in terms of how I feel at 41 years old I just want to run away I know I can have a better life in this in Hong Kong in Beijing in dehang even in Thailand I know what can have a better life than this in like the worst city imaginable in Western Europe it's very very hard to live with the crushing compromises that 21st century culture imposes on us as Canadians and Americans