So, I have to say, first off, that I am very tired of the talk about "the greatest (fill in the blank) ever". People slap such labels mindlessly. I live in the United States, and here, there is no shortage of people who simply take it for granted that they live in the "greatest country in the world", and there are plenty of sentiments of "USA #1!". This is entrenched by the President of the United States (no matter who that President is, no matter the political party in power at the White House at the moment) end every address to the American people with "God Bless America". So, most people simply don't give it much thought, it's just a given that they live in the "greatest country in the world". Even very early in our history, so early that "The United States of America" did not yet exist, there was a belief that we were the "shining city on a hill". This was first expressed by John Winthrop (who, by the way, it should be noted, was vehemently opposed to democracy) way back in the early days of colonialism, back in 1630, and was echoed more recently by late President Ronald Reagan, who greatly helped usher in a new wave of nationalism and an American superiority complex that has not yielded anything, despite some dark times and days and deeds in recent years, and a paralyzing political polarization that has seen Americans more divided than they have been in a very long time.
The most annoying thing about this sentiment, other than the extent of how often and relentlessly it is repeated and continuously echoed by various people (for various reasons), it is most often expressed by people who have either (a) never left the country's borders, or (b) gone on a trip to either Canada or Mexico for a few days, America's immediate neighbors, or perhaps went cruising in the Caribbean. In other words, it is expressed by people who have very limited experience of the rest of the world, and who usually say such things loudly, all the while assuming that they are in positions of authority on such matters. They just "know". More often than not, they also tend to believe the worst stereotypes about those "others" who have the misfortune of living somewhere other than these American borders. In other words, the rest of the 96% of the planet's population.
Yet, it is not restricted to nations. I live in New Jersey, in the suburbs of the greater New York, metropolitan area, and I hear how New York City is the "greatest city in the world" all of the time. I have heard it from several sources, but particularly on radio, and I think that it seems to be expressed on FM104.3 more than anywhere else. Not sure why that is, but it appears to be the case.
I am not sure what it is about patting oneself in the back that has moved from being dismissed kind of tacky, in bad taste, and more more than a little self-serving (obviously), to almost a de facto policy. At times, it seems that your measure of patriotism in America hinges on whether or not you think America is better than everyone else, and if it deserves the supremacy which it apparently strives for. Funny, but a lot of Americans who not only wholeheartedly believe themselves to be a part of the greatest country on God's green earth, but loudly proclaim this in the face of the rest of the world, cannot understand why so much of the rest of the world seems to resent, if not outright hate, Americans. But this brand of nationalism turns incredibly ugly when you feel entitled to invade a sovereign nation on a whim and against the wishes of the world, to mock the rest of the world and claim that we don't need their permission to do whatever the hell we want, and to mock a world organization that we ourselves created, and now undermined, for apparently little more than to reap a few short term profits in hording oil so that we can continue to neglect alternative energy that the rest of the world already understands is in our collective future, to "shock and awe" them to smithereens under a premise that was proven false, and then, when the rest of the world is appalled, and the war begins to turn out badly, to simply shrug and look the other way and, for all intents and purposes, conveniently forget all about the war. How can Americans not understand how they are viewed by everyone else? It starts by being so self-absorbed as a nation that you close yourself off from anything outside of your borders, and then repeating the myth of your own superiority ad nauseam.
As I have mentioned before, my personal belief is that this national prejudice, far more than anything else, is our greatest obstacle. Literally, every other problem that we face, even those that have ballooned beyond all reason, nonetheless were exacerbated by this desire to be "Number #1!"We want to dominate the world, and for the world to acknowledge our superiority. Because we are the most powerful nation (for now), we tend to think that they should follow our example, and that, on the flip side, we really have nothing to learn from them. Nothing could be further from the truth, and we get in our own way and halt progress by wrapping our patriotic red, white and blue banners around our eyes to blind ourselves to anything and everything else. It is to our detriment that we do so, and we are paying a steep price for that already. Let's see if we have the courage to improve beyond this national self-obsession and narcissism sometime in the future.
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