[mikkergp]

Can you really divorce greatness from goodness?

I mean you can, but the author seems to go back and forth in how he places value on bigness. The sentiment that we have the most research institutions does not seem to be presented as valueless, and yet we also talk about the replicability crisis in science.

McDonald’s is the largest restaurant chain in the world, does that mean American cuisine is the greatest?

I think I agree with the overarching sentiment of the piece: that America is unquestionably exceptional given a neutral definition of the word exceptional, but may conclude we are less driven by greatness and more driven by dominance at all cost.

And this is overly critical, America is obviously not do bad things 100% of the time, in fact I would probably say America is equal parts "Do great things" "Do, even if there's no evidence it's good" and "Gosh, no one has ever been inhumane enough to charge money for THAT before"

[s1artibartfast]

I think you absolutely can divorce greatness from goodness. Think of Genghis Kahn, Stalin, Alexander the Great, and even Hitler.

These are humans who have had an outsized impact on the course of humanity.

Perhaps similar historical events would have come about with a different person, but they were the human that made massively impactful decisions. Their personal whims and experience decided the fate of large portions of the world.

They had a great impact. If that is not the same as greatness, perhaps we need an alternative term to describe great impact without moral connotation.