I used to make excuses for shithole countries with a lot of corruption and poverty.
Now I understand wealthy countries are wealthy because the people do what they're supposed to do.
Poor countries are poor sometimes because they are victims, but more because everyone's always fucking off or trying to get something for nothing. Otherwise, how the hell is Japan so advanced? They have no oil, no iron ore, they haven't got shit but they bust ass.
Now I admire my own USA much more than I used to. You can drink the water, incredible natural beauty, lots of money if you bust ass in a consistent and organized fashion and are halfway smart.
Half the systems the world runs on were invented here. The light bulb, the internet ( yes I know the Web was Berners-Lee, the internet protocol was all USA) , UNIX, mass production of cars, probably most plastic science, much pharmaceuticals, vaccines which have totally changed the face of life for all humanity:
http://www.american-inventor.com/dr-jonas-salk.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Hilleman
That's right, Americans eradicated Polio, measles, Mumps, German Measles, invented the internet, the light bulb. We launched the satellites and broadcast GPS signal for free around the world, even to our enemies. You're welcome.
Shit like Feminism is annoying, but people had real problems like dragging a crippled body around for life from Polio. There is no comparison between the classes of these problems.
Alarmists can scream, it's easy to doomsay. Let's see you get a country running at all like our genius founders did. Their insight got us a society with basically no religious conflicts, which dogged the world for thousands of years and still have morons blowing each other up. The separation of church and state was a massive invention of genius. Fuckwits blew up the WTC, bombed Boston, and mosques still sit undisturbed everywhere. Because we aren't reactionary morons. They are.
I'd argue that the people of the USA have created as many inventions in health and convenience for all mankind as any other civilization ever. True, we put scumbags like the Shah of Iran in power, and murdered the American Indians and other political mistakes. But our positive inventions, have had such immense impact it's hard to even see it, it's everywhere.
Go ahead, tear it down, I know we're annoying. But I'll bet you my next ten paychecks you'll never get polio. And that's because of us.