Fucking mood, I grew up in a new England state. Yeah we learned about the fucking horrible things done as a result of “manifest destiny” and imperialism and slavery, and the military industrial complex, and while it was a couple decades ago I really don’t recall the US or capitalism being put on a pedestal in historical terms. (The fucking pledge of allegiance, on the other hand…)The only thing I can think of that was egregious was how we learned about trickle down economics and weren’t taught about how much of an abject failure it was. We learned about different economic systems, and how countries more or less fall somewhere in a triangle with corners of socialism, capitalism, and communism. I don’t know how accurate that really is but it got the point across, that countries and their economic systems are separate, and that systems as implemented aren’t really strictly one thing or another, but on a spectrum (Which helped me understand gender a lot later on in life tbh).

I forget that I’m lucky to have grown up in a state with good education, and that a lot of people’s experiences differ from mine in that regard. But yeah what really gets me is people who can’t separate governments from their economic systems, and feel the need to defend the things done by horrible people because their government used a system that was at least in name a system they support. You can display the evils of capitalism and the benefits of communism without having to worship stalin and erase the terrible things he did.