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When Did the United States Lose its Prestige?

When did the US lose its prestige?

  • Total voters
    33
hussainmehdi said:
Prestige is not might,
Prestige is not military,
Prestige is not force,
Prestige is not money,
Prestige is not domination,
Prestige is not politics,

Prestige means humanistic principles,

When you sacrifice something because you think that that this is against principles,
Then you do it for nothing but to keep your prestige up and intact,

Prestige is the name of your account in which you keep your good deeds based on values, ethics and principles,

Prestige is promise,
A promise that you once had made with your God,
Prestige is the graph of your actions you do, based on that promise!!!

Your hearts, minds and conscience constantly tell you,
About, whether you are keeping your promise or you are ignoring your promise,

Prestige is the court of your conscience,

And, Jesus Christ is the Justice of that court,

Prestige is very valuable, if you consider,
It does not come from money,
It comes directly from Jesus Christ,

Children are free and protected,
If they have shelter of Jesus Christ,

This is The Prestige.
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While I would love to agree with you, prestige in our world today is not based off of Christ or conscience or even ethics. If it were we would live in a much better world. No, prestige is based off money, politics, and military might which fold into one thing, raw power. Power is what prestige is based on today.

To the thread however, I do not think the US has lost prestige. If we have, it would have been in the 90s when we lost the USSR as a rival. America always needs a rival. Prestige has not been lost; what has been lost is the ability to ignore or not even hear negative comments. The internet has allowed every negative comment a voice and now we can collect and categorize them. Before the internet, we either said these things in a way that made them seem rare or that they didn't exist (if the major newspapers or networks didn't cover it.) The sad fact is that we generally don't categorize positive news in the same way.
 
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When did this "losing" of prestige occur ?
Did we ever have this ?
And in whose eyes ?
For a long time people fled to our shores, and they still are(Mexicans, Central Americans), so we must be doing things better than others - which is not saying very much...
Canada and France are two of the more advanced of the world's nations.
Are they coming or going ??
 
What does 'prestige' mean in relation to the US? This question strikes me as self-indulgent navel gazing. To begin with, it's not really for Americans to decide whether their nation has prestige i.e. fame, reputation, glamour based on success or rank. You can wonder about it all you like, like those "What do you think of me?" threads in the Basement, but you can't be the one's to decide how others see you.

It's also quite telling that the word 'prestige' derives from the Latin word, prestidigiae, meaning a trick, or a sleight of hand. Similarly, having prestige in the eyes of others can be very deceptive and misleading.
 
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SirPwn4lot said:
I largely agree with you that prestige is ethically based, but I think that politics can either be ethical or non-ethical.

Damn, I guess that since I don't believe in Jesus I don't have any prestige. Or freedom, or protection. But I think your line of reasoning is that prestige is a measure of a good life -> ethics come from Jesus -> Jesus = prestige, which isn't that bad, I just disagree that ethics come from Jesus.
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hallam said:
While I would love to agree with you, prestige in our world today is not based off of Christ or conscience or even ethics. If it were we would live in a much better world. No, prestige is based off money, politics, and military might which fold into one thing, raw power. Power is what prestige is based on today.

To the thread however, I do not think the US has lost prestige. If we have, it would have been in the 90s when we lost the USSR as a rival. America always needs a rival. Prestige has not been lost; what has been lost is the ability to ignore or not even hear negative comments. The internet has allowed every negative comment a voice and now we can collect and categorize them. Before the internet, we either said these things in a way that made them seem rare or that they didn't exist (if the major newspapers or networks didn't cover it.) The sad fact is that we generally don't categorize positive news in the same way.
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(a big sigh)
So ok,
Go a head,

Who can stop you???
Of course No One …not even prestige,

Whenever you stop …whenever …may be hundred years later or thousand,
You will have to return to ethics and values and principles,

Would you like to cultivate a barren land???

One day, you will have to return to the Mother,

When you will return, people will ask you questions,
What will you say then???
This is the question for your prestige,

Those, who always side with Mother,
And those, who return very late,
They are not equal,

This is The Prestige.
 
Gapeach said:
It was before Nixon. LBJ screwed up Foreign policy from the get go. He even admitted to hating foreigners.

The latest archival studies suggest that the same was true of foreign policy: in a sense, Johnson did not have one. The historians show us a president who, when his advisers disagreed, would try to split the difference between them
Lyndon Johnson and Foreign Policy: What the New Documents Show | Foreign Affairs
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A level of intelligence and common sense tells me that a hater/racist can be from any political party..
So, lets stop with the bashing - its so childish..
I think that "greatness" can be measured by the quantity of people who have left the comfort and security of their homes abroad to be here and suffer from our intolerance and hatred....fortuniately, this is probably not that bad.... we have a great deal of decent people here, they simply do not get any press.
Did I say that our media needs reform ?
 
Kandahar said:
Just to clarify: I don't believe the US ever *did* lose its prestige, in terms of being worse off. However, there are some relatively recent developments that will make us less competitive in the long term. I think the four biggest changes for the worse in recent decades are:

1980s - The ramp-up of the war on drugs, which has devastated our inner cities, exacerbated racial tension, and caused civil wars in at least two countries to our south.
1980s - The birth of the foolish belief that tax cuts will either A) produce a free lunch by paying for themselves, or B) "starve the beast" and force Congress to cut spending. Both of these conclusions are at odds with reality, as well as each other.
1990s - The beginning of the Senate "tradition" of filibustering every bill by default, requiring a 60-vote supermajority for everything and making it impossible to make any necessary economic decisions.
2000s - The incredibly self-destructive notion that we need to view terrorism as a problem that can be solved with our military.
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We do think alike, do we not....
We need to :
tell the truth
have far less advertising
have far more people engaged in politics
stop with the blame game
vote
 
Redress said:
The US is still hands down no contest the greatest country on earth. What more do you want?
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Agree
But we can be much "greater".
But how do we achieve these "greater" goals ?
Better education
peace, not war
acceptance, not so much change....this is so difficult, trying to change attitudes.
 
Redress said:
The US is still hands down no contest the greatest country on earth. What more do you want?
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That's the kind of comment that detracts from your prestige, in the eyes of non-Americans at least, and let's face it, that's the only place American prestige can exist.
 
We lost our prestige in 1945 on the 6th and 9th of August, when we attacked two cities of Japanese civilians with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Never before, nor since, have there been atrocities of genocide of that magnitude.

Of course we spin it as having ended the war and saved many lives. The rest of the world has always seen it for what it really was.
 
Mickey Shane said:
We lost our prestige in 1945 on the 6th and 9th of August, when we attacked two cities of Japanese civilians with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Never before, nor since, have there been atrocities of genocide of that magnitude.

Of course we spin it as having ended the war and saved many lives. The rest of the world has always seen it for what it really was.
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The 6th and the 9th were one of the best decisions out of a list of very crappy options the US was forced to make.
 
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Temporal said:
Thanks for adding nothing of substance to this thread.
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I was unaware that disagreeing with the OP's conclusion and explaining why is adding nothing to a conversation. Do you prefer people to only say what you want them to say?
 
cpwill said:
stronger forward motion. not to be facing a crushing debt. our debt is really the only existential threat to our hyperpower on the stage right now, but it's a doozy.
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We are moving forward, and leading the way doing so. The debt is a transient problem that is unlikely to harm the country in the longterm as long as something is actually done about it. The issue with the debt is that when republicans have power, they leave it to the democrats to fix, and when democrats have power, they leave it for the republicans, and there is no sign that is changing.
 
SirPwn4lot said:
So, when did the United States lose its greatness. People are always talking about how the US has separated from what made it great, just wondering when exactly this happened.

I know most of you probably think it was a gradual process, so just tell me when you think it was diminished the most.

Thanks!

Note: I can only make 10 poll options, so if you're undecided/other/don't think it's lost any prestige/think it never had any, then post below :)
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I don't think we really have lost our prestige. Every year has it's great points and bad points, after all.
 
I don't think we have, countries still look to us for leadership. Our policy still dictates much of what happens in the world. Even recently the Egyptians wondered where we were during their struggle. They didn't look to China, or Canada and ask those questions.

We just have too many people with too much free time to ponder, and armchair criticize every single little breath and word ever spoken by a politician. It is so easy to have all the criticism at the ready, and none of the responsibility of decision making.
 
WI Crippler said:
I don't think we have, countries still look to us for leadership.
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Who? In what way anymore? I think you underestimate how much the Iraq war clobbered our prestige.


Our policy still dictates much of what happens in the world. Even recently the Egyptians wondered where we were during their struggle. They didn't look to China, or Canada and ask those questions.
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Because they don't have a significant relationship with them like we have had. It's not because we're extra sparkly.

We just have too many people with too much free time to ponder, and armchair criticize every single little breath and word ever spoken by a politician. It is so easy to have all the criticism at the ready, and none of the responsibility of decision making.
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o(~.')b
 
I'd say the 70s is when a lot of problems came in. That marked the legalization of abortion, the beginning of the gay rights movement, fomenting of evolutionary psychology, and the creation of no-fault divorce.

However, economically it also marked the beginning of free trade agreements like NAFTA that would spell the destruction of our manufacturing industry and a new period of warmongering per Vietnam. Shortly afterwards, CEO compensation skyrocketed from 35 times the pay of the average work in 1978 to 300 times by 2000. Deregulation resulted in the growth of fascism, i.e. corporate rather than democratic control, and a resurgence of the monopolization that Teddy Roosevelt and his era of trustbusting in the early 1900s had stamped out.

Because of American intrusion in Vietnam and elsewhere, we began to destroy the worldwide goodwill we had built up following WWII, even as we let China parasite our economy by using a much lower minimum wage to take all of the economic growth with its cheap workforce, destroying the economic strength that made us the predominant world power.
 
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SE102 said:
Who? In what way anymore? I think you underestimate how much the Iraq war clobbered our prestige.
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Everybody. Who's response to any situation is so thoroughly critiqued? People and leaders of other countries have expectations of us, either as an ally or as a potential advesary. As a giver or witholder of aid. Just because you think our "prestige" was severly clobbered with Iraq does not make it so. I'm not saying everybody was ok with Iraq, but the idea that everybody quit looking to us is ludicrous. If a global emergency opened up, where will they look to for help? Canada? France? Spain? Germany? Russia? I doubt it.
Because they don't have a significant relationship with them like we have had.
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Well thats what a world power has. Significant relationships with several countries. And with that comes expectations. When you do little to nothing, little is expected of you. When you are a major player, with lots of prestige, there is expectations that come with it.
 
NAFTA's results are likely mixed and to complicated to be commented on as being positive or negative with any accuracy, it was made more to merely bring high level bureaucracy from the two countries together to pass something that was politically positive and wouldnt do much. If anyone claims NAFTA resulted in a overall positive or negative they are squarely speaking out of their hindside.
 
Both we and Canada have good minimum wages, but Mexico is far lower, and thus likely to have an unfair advantage in attracting cheap labor to the country. While NAFTA itself may be difficult to evaluate, since our relationship with Canada is good but Mexico not so much, it marked the beginning to a number of more questionable trade agreements, including the one with Oman that Barack Obama voted for while in Congress.

Logically, if a country like China has no minimum wage, and we require workers be paid $7.25 an hour with benefits, so a company can hire dozens of foreign workers for the price of one U.S. one, then labor will go over there. That is why we have yearly been running a huge trade deficit with China, importing 3-6 times from it what it imports from us. It's a one-sided trade relationship.
 
WI Crippler said:
but the idea that everybody quit looking to us is ludicrous. If a global emergency opened up, where will they look to for help? Canada? France? Spain? Germany? Russia? I doubt it.
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What is this 'looking to us' thing? You mean gaze off into the sky with a twinkle in their eyes called America? What's a global emergency? Last I remembered the latest global emergency, the global economic recession, was caused by America. You need to get out from behind the stars and stripes curtain sometime. :shrug: American prestige was demolished by the Iraq war.
 
I think obama is slowly getting the prestige back with his well crafted and meaningful foreign policy. I think a few more clever apologies to the world by him will usher in a renewed American love interest.
 
Kandahar said:
Just to clarify: I don't believe the US ever *did* lose its prestige, in terms of being worse off. However, there are some relatively recent developments that will make us less competitive in the long term. I think the four biggest changes for the worse in recent decades are:

1980s - The ramp-up of the war on drugs, which has devastated our inner cities, exacerbated racial tension, and caused civil wars in at least two countries to our south.
1980s - The birth of the foolish belief that tax cuts will either A) produce a free lunch by paying for themselves, or B) "starve the beast" and force Congress to cut spending. Both of these conclusions are at odds with reality, as well as each other.
1990s - The beginning of the Senate "tradition" of filibustering every bill by default, requiring a 60-vote supermajority for everything and making it impossible to make any necessary economic decisions.
2000s - The incredibly self-destructive notion that we need to view terrorism as a problem that can be solved with our military.
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I can't believe I am agreeing with you, although these aren't the only issues. I keep going back to what our founding fathers warn us about ie; two party system, national banks, standing armies, foreign entanglements, military industrial might, incarcerating our own citizens etc. The tax issues is the only thing I disagree with you about or perhaps it is the method of taxing.
 
Awesome! said:
I think obama is slowly getting the prestige back with his well crafted and meaningful foreign policy. I think a few more clever apologies to the world by him will usher in a renewed American love interest.
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Those threats against fascist dictators seem to be working superbly as well. I'm sure that quivering Libyan guy is about ready to cave after that previous stern letter.
 
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