Quote:
Originally Posted by queequeger
You can't seriously tell me that Americans don't feel 'special' or 'superior' in majority. Look at any thread on illegal immigration and the whole thing will REEK of excessive nationalism. Any topic comparing the US to any other nation or group of people results in this display of flag waving and preaching.
Since WWII our government has been employing propaganda machines saying that effectively we are democracy, we are the perfected government and we must defend our freedom-democracy-liberty machine against the evil intentioned 'other.' The difference now is that the 'war information movies' don't have the 'office of war information' banner at the beginning. In fact, the videos and press that are shared now have been engineered to look like real news, trying to hide their propaganda.
Let's be clear: I'm not using 'propaganda' in the sense that it is exclusively produced by the US. Just about every country that has been involved in a modern war has used it to rally their people. This is mostly because people almost never react the way their leaders want if they are presented with all the information and given a while to decide. It's FAR more effective to create a black-and-white landscape.
The point I'm making is that you cannot refute the claim that Americans have been raised by birth to believe that we are THE beacon of democracy and enemies are all around us, who hate freedom. I think, in fact, that the 90s were the only decade in recent memory where there WASN'T a vast faceless enemy trying to destroy us... mostly because there was no group that could be made into it.
Also... how does it have nothing to do with Islam when the name we given to our enemy is 'The Islamo-fascists.' Why aren't they just fascists?
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The bottom line is that I can seriously tell you that Americans don't feel 'special' or 'superior' in majority any more than any other counties citizens do about their home. You mean to try to tell me that people in China, UK, Canada, North Korea, Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, or any other country does not exhibit a certain sense of nationalistic pride?? Every country does so. I have spent a lot of time with soldiers from the UK and a few other countries and they are furiously proud and nationalistic about their owns country, as they should be. We have the same pride as others do. Other countries, many, use film and differing levels of propaganda to support their notions of nationalism. Nothing new there.
What we have is difference among governments, not among people and their response to a sense of nationalistic pride. It is the policy and actions of governments, albeit temporary in nature, that get people all bent out of shape and make them want to spew hate toward each other. We are becoming more and more polarized as a nation and as a world.
This has little to do with Islam because you are using a minority of radical islamic believers to define the cause. Most followers of Islam are peaceful and want to be left alone like many other. I am all for our country using whatever means are available in finding these radicals anywhere in the world in any country and hunting them down and killing them. That is not the issue. The issue is that it is a minority of all of those who follow Islam.