1 HN user recommended this video1 month2018–2026score 1
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
Posted in threads on US costs and institutions as a famous fictional rebuttal to American exceptionalism.
The opening scene of HBO's The Newsroom, in which anchor Will McAvoy answers a student's question about why America is the greatest country. He delivers a blunt speech arguing it no longer is.
“this a great riposte to "freedom in the US” (HN, 2026)
It's from a fictional drama (The Newsroom) but this a great riposte to "freedom in the US". You're going to say that we're the only ones in the world that has freedom? Canada has freedom, Japan has freedom, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium has freedom. [this video]
Fictional speech rebutting US exceptionalism about freedom.
As measured .. how? I understand liking your country. I'm an American, too. I like my country, a lot. But, I think that the phrase "we are the best in the world" gets thrown around a lot as a meaningless platitude. It gets used more as a "my team is the Yankees"-style of statement. e.g. expressing your preference/allegiance, rather than meaning what it actually says, which is that the US is the 'best' in the world. To be the 'best' at something, you need to define how you're measuring that. Healthiest? Happiest? Longest life span? Because when you look at actual metrics for these types of things, across multiple countries, the US does not rate at the top. Have you seen this clip of Jeff Daniels in "The Newsroom"? [this video] ("America is not the greatest country in the world anymore")
Clip questioning claim that the US is the best country.
No, it's you who are delusional. The U.S. ranks 45th in press freedoms. There are 25 European countries who rank better. Heck, there are even 5 African countries who rank higher. [link] [link] This infamous clip from The Newsroom might shed more light on how the U.S. is actually doing in comparison to other democratic countries (all statistics quoted are easily verified if you want to look into it) [this video]
Reminds me of the speech "America is not the greatest country in the world" from the show Newsroom: [this video] It was made 14 years ago and I don't think the US improved on any of those statistics.
The "titans" you speak of are Jerome Powell, and Janet Yellen. Not the schmucks that put Taxis on the internet, or effectively stole billions of dollars from SoftBank to build a rental company. These types of extremely competent people are far and few between in important parts of our society. So idk what the fuck you're talking about Yosemite? (from NewsRoom Intro [this video] ).
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed
5 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.
Citations, criticism and jokes
Read more