Jingoism vs. Sanctimony

[kungfuwaynewho]

On the one hand there are the people out there cheering in the streets and shouting "USA!"  On the other hand there are the self-righteous hand-wringers making sure we know how morally superior they are, and how disgusting and awful the rest of their countrymen are.

Lay off, all of you.

It's not America being gross, it's people.  Everyone does it.  At the heart of a lot of people is a little caveman jumping up and down over protecting his territory from his enemies, real or imagined.  Why doesn't everyone do this?  I don't know.  But pretending it's just boorish uncultured Americans who do things as despicable as celebrating someone's death is stupid.  There, I said it.  Stupid.

I guess my gripe for today is how sick I am of the anti-Americanism coming from Americans themselves.  Yeah, I get it, we're all a bunch of hick assholes - which just makes the other extreme even more reactionary and jingoistic, and it just goes back and forth ad infinitum, everyone yelling louder and louder about how they're the best because someone else is the worst.   And I don't even give a shit about bin Laden being dead; whoopdie fuckin' do.  Just as there's always going to be some loudmouth yelling about how awesome he is because he happens to be [insert race/gender/nationality/political affiliation/favorite TV show] as though that confers any awesomeness to him, and just how there's always going to be some pretentious shit who is just oh so much better than all those scum she has to live with, there's always going to be evil assholes looking for reasons to kill other people.  The world will go on, much as it has for the entirety of human history.

Comments

[jerusha]

So very true. I find that how well I keep this in perspective is directly related to how depressed I am at any given moment, but...

Dude. Read a bit of history, and then tell me that the world is a better/worse place now than it was 50, or 500, or 5000 years ago. People are people, and sometimes we are awesome, and sometimes we suck gravel through a bendy straw, and most of the time we're all somewhere in between.

[kungfuwaynewho.livejournal.com]

Dude. Read a bit of history, and then tell me that the world is a better/worse place now than it was 50, or 500, or 5000 years ago.

I know! I read an article once about how the invention that most changed human history wasn't fire or the wheel or the steam engine, but the washing machine. Seriously - less than 100 years ago most women would have spent most of their time rearing children, cooking food, and cleaning the house and everyone's clothes. Don't tell me we don't live in a better world today just looking at that and that alone.

...I really need to get some non-fandom, neutral icons for when I'm actually talking about something serious.

[(Anonymous)]

I remember my professor talking about the washing machine - that washing the clothes, more than any other chore, is what took up the most time out of a woman's day, like more than 3 hours for an average family. And that when that time finally became free, woman had a chance to actually think about *themselves* for a goddamned change. Not surprisingly, it was a woman who invented the washing machine, but couldn't get the funding from her HUSBAND to patent it. She had to wait until he died to be able to do it, and change history. No, men are usually not concerned about improving women's lives. On a flip note, the automatic transmission was invented for women, as it was considered "too difficult" for a woman to learn to drive a manual...