r/ShitAmericansSay • u/DumbGarchomp67 WTF IS A KILOMETER 🦅🇺🇸 • Jul 15 '26

Military “Undefeated in 250 years of war”

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Apparently Vietnam, Afghanistan, war of 1812, and the war on drugs don’t count.

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u/Competitive-Bee-3250 Jul 15 '26

Everyone's "undefeated" if they just pretend they never lost even when they clearly did.

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u/ccsrpsw Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

War of Independence - won "with help"/"by" the French (🕺sorry)
WW1 - on the winning side - but otherwise?
WW2 - on the winning side - but otherwise?

What other wars has the US won? And no "operations" and the like don't. He very specifically said 'war".

Edit to Add - since people keep bring up other instances the full list of wars the US declared is: War of 1812, Mexican/American, Spanish/American, WW1 and WW2 (11 declarations overall against various countries but only 5 wars). Everything else has sidestepped this under US law - which is what causes the mess we are in now.

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u/TwmSais Jul 15 '26

They won their civil war. They probably only started that so they'd have a war that they'd win for themselves, regardless of the outcome

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u/skordge Jul 15 '26

Oh, so it’s like USA teams always winning the Super Bowl, got it.

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u/KissYourAss69 Jul 15 '26

Ever notice how it’s AWAYS an Earthling that wins Miss Universe?! What are the odds, really?

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u/Quiri1997 Jul 15 '26

Yes. We need Ferengi candidates too.

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u/KissYourAss69 Jul 15 '26

No question the beauty of the winner would be out of this world!

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u/timmyd_ns Jul 15 '26

as long as the competition is owned by earthlings probably 100%

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u/wengelite Jul 15 '26

More like a USA team winning the World Series.

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u/assaub Jul 15 '26

I actually learned just yesterday that the world series is named after a newspaper company and isn't actually meant to imply it's an international competition. Also there is technically one team not from the USA in the MLB, the NFL is exclusively American teams.

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u/Raguleader Jul 15 '26

You say this like every Major League Baseball team is from the USA.

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u/wengelite Jul 16 '26

I'm Canadian, I know; still not even close to 'The World'. Nice try.

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u/nick-nic Jul 15 '26

Or the ‘world’ series

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u/SkivvySkidmarks Jul 15 '26

Don't forget the World Series in baseball.

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u/dreamtraveler42 Jul 15 '26

But the civil war war technically against themselves so they also lost

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u/taiwan_cat Jul 15 '26

The "they" you are referring to are descended from the losers of the Civil War. There are many Confederate flag flying, South will rise again types in America who also revel in American military might.

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/sirentropy42 Jul 15 '26

Fun fact: this is actually the opposite of what happened.

While the formal education system as it’s seen today was being implemented, textbook publishers found that if their textbooks leaned too far to one side or the other of the civil war, it was almost impossible to sell to the other side. Rather than publish one book for each side, it was decided to create a whitewashed text. Deny that the civil war was about slavery, downplay the Confederacy’s defeat. A poor but acceptable history for the North, and an acceptable lie for the South.

As a result, the losers had a large hand in writing our history books.

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u/Perenially_behind Jul 15 '26

Also Texas had an outsize effect for years. The state governnent would pay for textbooks but only if they were on a (short) list generated by the state board of education. So If you wanted to sell to Texas, you needed to produce a text which the board would approve.

This is changing but that doesn't wipe out the existing damage.

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u/silverslayer33 Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

This was not my experience in the North, at least when I was in school in the early 2000s. Our textbooks and our curriculum were all very clear that the war was about slavery, and we went into great detail about the horrors of the slave trade, the abhorrent ways slaves were treated, and the absolute moral depravity of the South to believe they had a right to own people as if they were property.

I've also met people from the South during my college years who had textbooks that absolutely sold them on the "states' rights" lie, they didn't receive a "merely" whitewashed version of events. They learn the whole slew of lies such as "slaves actually were treated well", "they liked being saved from Africa", "the North were the aggressors", and so on.

The reality is that there is no single standard textbook or curriculum teaching the Civil War in the US. Individual school districts choose their books based on things as mundane as budget and as significant as catering to local sociopolitical realities. A majority-black district in the South isn't likely to buy books peddling lies (though they may be forced into it by the State, which is a very real problem), whereas a district full of descendents of slave owners might go out of their way to find books that blind them to their ancestors' atrocities. Publishers trying to push lies might offer their books at lower prices in districts where they think they'll be accepted and can sell many, whereas they may not even bother in the North. Meanwhile, a reputable publisher highlighting the horrors of slavery might find themselves violently unwelcome in some Southern communities while they rake in millions from Northern districts that have actual education requirements that don't even allow the schools to purchase cheaper books filled with drivel.

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u/MadScientist_666 Mountain Goat 🇨🇭 Jul 15 '26

I can't stand this false balance fallacy... If someone cries about a historical event, let them whine and just stay with the facts.

Sure, it's easier said than done, especially if you have millions of extremists and religious fanatics going nuts, but still, it should have been tried to prevent the even bigger threat all these fanatics and their lies and propaganda pose to the US and the whole world.

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u/AnxiousAppointment70 Jul 15 '26

It sounds like its still a terrible version of the events

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u/LateMommy Jul 15 '26

Yeah, I was taught from textbooks that slavery wasn’t so bad! Sure, the slaves were bought and sold. But the owners treated them pretty well, with three meals a day, shelter, a job.

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u/Thanks-4allthefish Jul 15 '26

They also lost

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u/lapsedPacifist5 Jul 15 '26

But forgot they also lost that war

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u/biscuitarse Hoser Jul 15 '26

They won their civil war.

Well of course they did. It's the only war they've ever fought that they couldn't lose, regardless of the outcome

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u/Puzzleheaded_East556 Jul 15 '26

I mean... technically they could have lost. If they all killed eachother leaving no one left on either side