Well, what do you mean by "past"?
European settlement in America has a very long history, which of course extends back to the 17th century. It has a rich intellectual tradition, in which respects it surpasses many European countries -- and many of the dominant strains of thought today have their roots in America. It has an exceptionally rich literary and artistic tradition, with numerous styles which are characteristically American. In scientific achievement, few countries can compete. It even has its own aesthetic, just as Japan does.
You could say that Japan is regressing from modernity into older ways of being, but this is far from true. Japan before Meiji was strictly aristocratic and feudal. The average Japanese family were tenant farmers with zero political power, economic power, and near-zero potential for advancement in society.
If anything, Japan is apparently regressing into an American-style older way of being. A pre-New-Deal manner, with big winners, bigger and more numerous losers, and increased social strife. Also, the atomization the article picks up on isn't a Ye Olde Japanese thing; it's very American.
This is relatively true and largely because the US has little history compared to other nations. That's part of why so many facets of American society and history are nonsense myths, such as the American West myth. So much of US culture and history is made up ego stuff.
Isn't the UKs historical 'shared identity' way more of a myth than the American west? I mean my grandmother from the midwest still had stories that would have fit any western novel, and her parents spoke German and were the 'poor midwest farm settler' family straight out of the west. My other grandmother has kachina dolls in her living room that her family was gifted for helping out a local village. My town has opium dens dug out next to the railroad from during it's construction. I have visited a ton of ghost towns.
The history of “white america” didn’t start when they landed on the shores of America.
I think you proved the point (about no history) without wanting to.
How large percentage of history lessions in Europe do you think is spent on the years after the 17th century?
Before that you could only think in terms of loosely connected realms/kingdoms, before more in terms of tribes and some city-states. Those aren't that useful to study to understand the present, from the 17th century is where most of the current culture branched out from.
The historical connection to the land from the people/tribes living in territories of modern Europe from before the Middle Ages is more akin to studying Native Americans in the USA, they were the people inhabiting the land, they had their traditions, and some of those traditions were used to forge the national identity of present cultures but there's a lot of this national identity that was myth-making by National Romantics to generate a sense of unity needed for creating the nation and nation-states.
Of course, students also learn ancient and ancient-adjacent history -- the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Charlemagne, etc. -- but this is general and isn't unique to any national tradition, but common to the entire continent.
I feel like you see this less in other parts of the world where people don't have tens of thousands of dollars from their retirement savings that they have to take out each year, and they would rather give it tax free to their favorite nonprofit than take a haircut with taxes and then do nothing with the money
Japan's had a couple of major upheavals in their "national values" over the past 210-ish years, you might have heard of them.
A country can have good values and moral and be peaceful high trust society with low crime, despite past atrocities.
Which country on this planet with a history of imperialism has NOT committed similar atrocities in the past? Does that invalidate their achievements?
So what's your argument here, except a cheap gotcha like you just found out something revolutionary in the history books, that invalidates the argument.
What's more, the British didn't leave Britain so they could go be British overseas necessarily, but so they could go do un-British things, it could be argued.
On top of that, 250 years is both a very short time, but also a very long time. It's more than enough not to be hand-waved away, at least. In 250 years it went from a coastal breakaway to the sole hyperpower, slavery came and went, communism arrived and died out, the information age dawned, religion became more of a niche than a facet of everyday life... That's a lot of cultural upheaval.
To make a long story short, in the US, you are and have always been one of two things: the exploited or the exploitor.
After all, the average prisoner is not a diligent, sober, hardworking person trying to get ahead; how much economic value are you really likely to extract, even if you're evil?
Chattel slavery and prison labor may be distant relatives, but they're not siblings, and it's wrong (in a dozen different ways) to imply they are.