Call me a 4th of July Scrooge.
No doubt it's simply the national occasion, and my (as usual) excessive sensitivity. Or paranoia, as some might say. It's just that I can't quite get over how often, in even some of our most non-political online media - hobby-and-interest-themed websites, etc - the glory of American exceptionalism somehow manages to creep in. Or, as often as not, comes out screaming in one's face.
How it is that I can't explore, say, even a jazz review blog these days, without being reminded of how insufficiently exceptionalist I am. Or how lukewarmly "proud of America." Without being immersed, I mean, in some heart-warming litany to all the countless ways in which the United States is not just an indisputably great country (a proposition I can fully understand and accept), but, in true Muhammad Ali form, THE GREATEST.
The first question that comes to mind:
Just how do you believe and profess that statement literally, and with all your heart, and not find yourself - without in the least intending to, of course - mentally consigning all sorts of harmless non-Russian, non-Chinese countries to a growing redundance, irrelevance and invisibility. And especially those that aren't quite fully on the same page with US-driven agendas: that are perceived as not fully sharing, or as indifferent to, our Western Establishment consensus of "market-driven" growth, globalization, regime-change interventionism and radical (i.e., post-gender) self-determination.
Imagine you're a person of real clout - perhaps even global-scale geopolitical power and influence - who fully subscribes to this grand consensus. How do you stop from finding yourself - again, perhaps against your better initial judgment - more and more treating even "important" individuals from these countries in ways which to you may appear entirely reasonable, but to their unenlightened non-Western minds may seem cavalier, callous, disrespectful, demeaning? Or even oppressive? Granted, that exact sort of outcome may be hard to imagine in Today's Enlightened Globe, given the careful humility, deference, patience, etc, with which our globalist Best and Brightest normally conduct relations with non-Western states (/sarc). But if we could try to see farther down the road . . . as opposed to just kicking the can . . . ?
A few more questions, addressing the same issue on a more abstract level, and putting to one side peculiarities of our American history:
When any nation more and more deems itself, not just a great, but THE greatest nation, culture, civilization, etc, ever to have existed, what might be some probable - albeit unintended - consequences down the road? Is that sentiment likely to make it more tolerant and accepting of other countries notably different from itself (including those countries not trying to undermine that glorious nation's strength, or question its prestige, but simply asking to be left alone)? Or is it just as likely to make it less tolerant and accepting? Is such an attitude most apt to make the Superior Nation more respectful and appreciative of the (non-threatening) differences in other countries, and other cultures? Or more impatient and dismissive? And is its sense of its own vast superiority - but particularly if that excellence is based on some universally-wise-and-applicable Idea - liable to make it more inclined to let other countries go their own way, and make their own mistakes, that they might see the error of their ways (and the truth of ours) for themselves? Or might it make this Superior Nation just as easily tempted - say, for certain humanitarian reasons - to apply this universal Idea zealously, and rigorously, to less fortunate regions of the planet? By various subtle and other means of pressure, wherever possible - but even by force, if necessary?
Finally (and to get specific again):
Why is it that the more a Superior Nation (like, say, America) boasts, and swaggers, and congratulates itself on having both MORE FREEDOM, and more unique and cutting-edge freedoms than anywhere else on earth - somehow, the less free it seems to become? And how is it that the same "elite" US interests most deeply invested in advertising, marketing, exporting, perhaps even enforcing these unique cutting-edge freedoms abroad, are also the ones most intent on abridging and circumscribing ("ideologizing?" politically correcting?) the exercise of certain much older, more time-honored freedoms here at home?
Could it simply be that, in the words of Hamlet's immortal Gertrude:
