Honestly way more with just being the one super power standing after the war. We were basically untouched, even accounting for dead and wounded we only lost ~1 million people and practically zero manufacturing infrastructure so we came out of the war roaring and flush with cash. That catapulted the US to where it has been for the whole of the time since but a lot of people seem to have believed we were owed that or earned it through some special property of the US and the come down from it is not going well socially.

This feels revisionist to me. It was not accidental. The US had the booming wartime economy, AND it had a State department that went at solidifying global influence. Essentially the "greatest generation" locked in America's situation, and doubled down on cultural and economic dominance.

The combination of state, industry and WMF-type loans extended American power globally. It was a very very good time to be American. This is the core of the "Great Again" part of the slogan. Boomers remember this America and want the growth, wealth and dominance back.

My point is that dominance flows from the fact that every other major world power of the age got massively bombed and the US didn't. Just look at the graph of pre-War GDPs and note how far you have to scroll down before you see a country that didn't have intense fighting and bombing within their borders. [0] Much of what happened post war that set the US up would not have been possible if the US was bombed out like Germany or the UK and needed to rebuild it's entire economy like Germany, the UK, Russia, France, China and Japan who made up the rest of the upper crust of the GDP pie in the pre-War economy.

> This feels revisionist to me.

Reexamining past narratives/theories based on new data or ways of viewing things is the core of science. It's particularly important in softer social sciences where so much of the effects can only be viewed in the long term.

> Boomers remember this America and want the growth, wealth and dominance back

My point is you can't go back to there, at least not without another massive war and this time the chances the US gets by unscathed is practically zero.

Not to mention shattering the alliances that put the US in that position isn't the way to get back there either. Even if we tried countries are going to be a lot more wary of trusting the US for critical things like military protection which was a major part of the deal for the US's position, we extend a military umbrella across your country and we get good access to your markets.

Trump et al fundamentally misunderstand why we were in the position we were and their actions push us further away rather than bringing us back to it.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1334182/wwii-pre-war-gdp...

Maybe not "accidental", but it's lucky for the US that the Nazi regime came to power in central Europe instead of Northern Mexico or Canada.

Or even inside the US itself.

It definitely feels like the US could have swung the other way, we were deeeep into eugenics over here long before the war and there was plenty of explicit support for the american Nazi party.

We were, it’s just that this special property was owning our own private continent.

_It's free real estate_

True I meant more in the political/economic sphere. Being isolated geographically from both WW1 and WW2 was a major boon to the US economy, we got the economic benefit of the wars without the damage (beyond lives lost of course).

And as time has gone on that geography is less and less effective as a shield.

Yeah, I was really just reinforcing your point in a cheeky way.

Australia tried that, too, but their continent is really problematic.

They were also only quasi independent at the time of the wars too so they had less flexibility to decide on their policy.

> America's success as a scientific powerhouse had more to do with the research infrastructure spun up to win the war than Nazi scientists afterwards

Bit of A, bit of B, with B encompassing the Nazis and the British.

And the investments that it continued to make in it after the war.

Parent comment says "the opportunity created by Nazi ideological purges of scientists" , which is not the same as "Nazi scientists".

Did you see the "Oppenheimer" movie? Check the real physicists depicted working on the Manhattan project. A large number of them were European Jews who left before or during the war. Even some others left Europe because of this: Niels Bohr (Jewish Mother) and Enrico Fermi (Jewish Wife).

To be sure there was Wernher von Braun and co as well.

In fact, it would be quicker to list the Manhattan project physicists depicted in that movie who were not Jewish at all:

* Ernest Lawrence

> America's success as a scientific powerhouse

If you really think about it, America's "success as a scientific powerhouse" owes a significant debt to foreigners: scholars from abroad and workers on H1-B visas.

It has been a well-known fact for decades that white native-born Americans are at a real disadvantage in academia, tech fields, and any sort of research positions, because for whatever reason, the foreigners coming in on H1-B can run circles around them in terms of productivity, innovation, and even sheer numbers.

Perhaps this isn't the sort of "stealin' our jerbs" people first think of, rather than picking strawberries and selling oranges off the 405, but it's a real phenomenon. This is a very prominent reason for skepticism about DEI from the Right, because the outsized influence of foreigners on academia, and by extension STEM and other sciences, has been steadily growing and growing and inflamed by DEI hiring practices in the industries. Essentially, thousands of foreign nationals have been immigrating to the USA to be educated at our best schools, and then exert two-way influence over culture and commerce. Is that a sustainable practice? Is America enough of a "melting pot" that we can withstand that sort of outsized foreign influence within our borders?

Furthermore, America was first in line to embrace Eastern-bloc Jews, from the outbreak of WWI through the end of WWII. Those German and Soviet Jews from the diaspora gained significant prestige, not merely from sympathy or pity, and they now have outsized influence in many Western industries, including Hollywood, finance, manufacturing, and psychology. These are markedly distinct career paths from the ones taken by homegrown Jews, such as the Hasidic ones and other Orthodox communities from New York.

You talk about this like it's an accident almost. It was a considered Federal policy to brain drain as hard as possible.

Anecdotally, I too worry about the influx of the dirty Irish into our borders, stealing good jobs and spreading their Irish culture. Oh, sorry, I forgot it's not 1940. In my opinion, America has a strong, strong culture -- brain drained scientist's kids in general look pretty integrated to me, at least the ones I know.

> Is America enough of a "melting pot" that we can withstand that sort of outsized foreign influence within our borders?

Depends.

If your idea of America consists of just the pre-colonial native groups, Navajo etc., then America was already gone a century and a half ago.

But the America of 1925 had exactly the same arguments about Italians, and of 1845 about the Irish, in that the local born were complaining a lot and didn't trust the newcomers.

The melting pot has been melting for a long time now; you're a big endless stew of a country. (Except for the "real" natives, if there is such a thing).

> These are markedly distinct career paths from the ones taken by homegrown Jews,

Actually "Oppenheimer" the movie also supplies examples of two very different New York Jewish backgrounds:

J Robert Oppenheimer, from an affluent, non-religious family - with an Upper West side apartment and a summer vacation home on Long Island. His father came to the USA as a teenager, and prospered in business.

Isidor Isaac Rabi, from an orthodox, Yiddish-speaking family living in a two-room apartment on the Lower East Side. He was born shortly before the family came to the USA.