ScholasticSpastic wrote:

pelfdaddy wrote:
You may disagree, of course, but that is what we mean when we make those inflated claims.

Of course, not all of us feel comfortable making those claims, given that it looks like we were pretty damn great for a while, but then we stopped trying to improve while an increasing number of countries found ways to leave us behind. We don't even seem terribly excited about learning from others' success any more. They're not Americans, so we bristle at being asked to try something un-American. The McCarthy Era is over. There's nothing wrong with trying un-American things and seeing if they work well enough to make them American things.

There is absolutely NOTHING more fundamentally and thoroughly American, than to directly take something that another culture conceived of, slap a new label over it, and declare it to be ours. We inherited much of that delightful behavior from our mother country, which came the closest ever, to ruling the entire planet.

Suggestion for consideration:

There may be a sort of "rule of propaganda," to the effect that whenever a large entity (nation, corporation, etc) becomes fixated on chanting about it's own "greatness," it is only because it has entirely lost sight of true greatness altogether.

After all, wherever we look, wherever there are people who think it is necessary to chat up the concept that they are extra wonderful, it's because they perceive themselves to be in really big trouble. The ones who feel everything is fine, are busy doing other things, like actually living their lives, and can't be bothered, thank you very much.