In that case, I think you’ve led a very privileged and sheltered life. I was born and raised in the US with ancestry that has been here long enough that my family participated in the committees of correspondence as well as fought in the revolutionary war. I even had the privilege of traveling outside of the US once in my life, though I wish it were more so I, too, am privileged. Most of my life was spent growing up all over Texas which is allegedly a very free state.

While our poor are richer than some others in the world, they aren’t nearly as well off as your claim. My family once needed food stamps temporarily after my parents divorced and we couldn’t qualify because I was in college, had a minimum wage job, and not pregnant; my sister was in high school and not pregnant; and my brother was too young to work. Basically because we were actively bettering ourselves and just needing temporary help, we couldn’t get help. Child support only went towards my siblings because I was irrelevant, legally speaking, and my mom didn’t get alimony even though she’d been a stay at home mom up until that point. That same year I got into a car accident due to a semi that failed to yield to the right of way and lost my job. Still didn’t qualify because I was in college and not pregnant.

While one of my schools never experienced a shooting, I had regular bomb and shooting threats instead that required us to evacuate the school often. Even got to watch a fight break out in the lunch room once that resulted in the winner running out to a car that had a driver waiting to whisk them away. Rumor is that it was the offender’s mom. This same school tried to get me suspended because I wouldn’t tell the assistant principal what I talked to the counselor about, something that’s illegal. That same assistant principal got demoted to teacher and proceeded to cuss out the entire class on the first day when my brother got her for math. He ended up being so far behind that when we finally were able to move, he had to do remedial classes for a good while because he was at an elementary school level and couldn’t do high school level math.

So I’m glad you were sheltered and as privileged as you were. But you shouldn’t dare state that this country is amazing either. Because it’s not. Thinking that sort of way is foolhardy at best and insinuates that there’s no room for improvement and that things are fine. A lot of other places have issues too with others that are certainly better than here and others that are certainly worse. Have some nuance instead of perpetuating the nationalist propaganda that any criticism is intended to harm the country.