For me it was when I was around 8 or 9 and met someone from Kenya. They could speak perfect English, wore normal clothes, and talked about having electricity. I’d literally never been told that those things existed in Africa - every reference to that continent only talked about tribes and jungles, save for Egypt which only talked about ruins and deserts. I asked around and found that most of the rest of the world has the same stuff we have, and most countries have a functioning government. I was so confused - why were we the country of freedom when everyone else has the same thing?
At the time I just assumed that there was something I was missing, or maybe the rest of the world just caught up to our idea, but eventually I came to the conclusion that they tell us we’re the country of freedom - and keep our studies of other countries to a minimum when we’re young - so that we can internalize the rhetoric that our country is the best before we find out that most other countries about the same, and often better in certain ways.
Just think which countries make their kids pledge alliance to the flag in schools.
I realized that later, yeah. That’s not something that a kid would usually realize is bad on their own, though; if it’s something you and everyone you know has always done, most people wouldn’t think to question it.
When I became an adult and realized life isn’t “My Team No Matter What” juvenile pissing contests.
“There are two types of patriotism, although sometimes the two are mingled in the same breast."
“The first kind one might call nationalism; nationalists believe that all other countries are inferior in every respect and that one would do them a favor by dominating them. Other countries are always in the wrong, they are less free, less civilized, are less glorious in battle, are perfidious, prone to falling for insane and alien ideologies which no reasonable person could believe, are irreligious and abnormal. Such patriots are the most common variety, and their patriotism is the most contemptible thing on earth.”
“The second type of patriot is best described by returning to the example of General Fuerte. General Fuerte did not believe in ‘my country, right or wrong’; on the contrary, he loved his land despite the faults that he could so clearly see and that he labored to correct. It was his frequently stated opinion that anyone who supported his country when it was so obviously in the wrong, or who failed to see its faults, was the worst kind of traitor."
"Whereas the first kind of patriot really glories in his own irrationality and not in his country, General Carlo Maria Fuerte loved his country as a son loves his mother or a brother his sister.”
-Louis de Bernieres, The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts
When I moved abroad for a half year.
I think since at least middle school. I was already aware of some of the lies and “half truths” that they were teaching us. I don’t remember most of what they taught us but I remember telling some of my classmates about it and they acted like I was weird.
Not an American, but I realised it when I had to talk one of my online friends out of suicide because he almost worked himself to death (ten or more hour shifts six days a week for over a month) and couldn’t afford rent.
My friend from Ukraine could not understand why and how someone would pay to be driven to the hospital in an ambulance.
Wait… what?? Isn’t america the best country in the world?
No, Kazakhstan is. All other countries are run by little girls.
Australia is run by Arisa Trew so we’re doing pretty well at the moment.
It is by many measures. But there are a lot of problems too.
You know, I’m not sure one measure by which America is the best country in the world, at least with a metric that matters to the average person. So not like GDP, number of billionaires, or number of prisoners.
I’m not an American but seeing that bit from The Newsroom was kind of a hammer on the nail. America is not the greatest country in the world
I wanna know at what point America was the greatest country in the world when he said we use to be. Excluding one set of ppl America pretty much sucked for everyone else that lived here since its creation
It’s a pretty subjective question really. If you mean greatest country for rich white guys then the US probably qualifies as the best for a reasonable chunk of its history.
For everyone else, not so much.
One could argue America was a straight white man utopium in the 20s. After the first World War America was the saviour of the western world. The economy was booming and the capitalist society we know today felt love opportunity and wealth.
But again, this was definitely not the case for everyone.
I think ‘the greatest country’ really rather depends on the metrics by which you judge these countries. It would stand to reason that the people in the video would see America as the greatest country by metric of wealth, power and freedom (for some). Skating over gender oppression, race oppression, poverty… For some people it would be better to be in America than anywhere else in the world.
And the 20s were not the only decade this was the case. The 50s had many of the same appeal for wealthy, straight white men. And the 80s. Since then it’s been downhill.
On the other hand… I wouldn’t wanna answer the question what is the greatest country in the world right now. As a European, I like to look at Scandinavian countries as a model for a great country. But I wouldn’t really leave the Netherlands for Denmark.
Not American, but my views of America being “the good guy” completely crumbled when I read Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent.
It made me put into perspective the amount of propaganda we’re being fed by mass media, just by reporting with carefully chosen words. It’s obviously not limited to America, because the same patterns are being used all around the world to justify imperialism, nationalism and ruthless capitalism.
It also helped me realise how fucked up some of the things my government did (and is still doing to be fair) and we just gobble it up, because it’s insanely hard to get out of the bubbles we’ve created for ourselves.A definite must read book. Which country do you live in?
I live in France, and roughly 90% of the media is between the hands of a dozen people at most. You can really feel the impact in the general population.
A whole dozen of people?! That’s pretty good by American and Canadian standards.
I wish your anthem still had the full lyrics.
I woke up after Powell’s speech to the UN, accusing Iraq of having WMD. He didn’t present any real evidence, but every TV show and almost every newspaper said it was an “Open and Shut” case over and over. One guy even wrote “only a fool or a Frenchman would doubt now”,
thank you for the book reference, learned something new today!
It’s a tough read (as in long and highly detailed), but I feel it’s worth it to help understand how the media treats and reports information.
For anyone looking to get some of those views right away (as opposed to reading an entire book), here’s a short (<10min) video of Chomsky talking about propaganda terms in the media and what they mean.
I was a teenager during 9/11, and watching nearly every adult in my life go absolutely stark raving mad from both fear and blood lust was a real wake up call for me, I can tell you that much. If you aren’t old enough to remember it there’s nothing recent I can really compare it to. 9/11 and the Iraq War are what really got Fox News off the ground, so just imagine living in Fox News land, because it was absolutely tapping into some primal response a lot of people had.
I was in my early 20s and it definitely was a moment when I realized things weren’t what they seemed. I also fell for the narrative for a bit. Then a couple years later when it was revealed that the WMDs in Iraq were made up it started to all make sense. This country operates the highest, most advanced form of propaganda and corruption. It’s how it stays in power.
I also believe this is what Israel is going through now. Leveraging primal blood lust to justify what being committed. No wonder the US is supportive.
With each passing week, there are more and more parallels to the aftermath of 9-11. Israel has now even had its own equivalent to the leaked photos of prisoners (held without trial) being degraded, tortured, and sexually assaulted at Abu Grahib.
It’s depressing watching history repeat itself within your own lifetime, even despite the far greater visibility of Israel’s war crimes thanks to the internet.
I was a sophomore in high school, from a military (though pretty progressive) family. Both my grandfathers were sailors and my father went to West Point. I was in NJROTC and had every intention of going to Annapolis. I wanted to be an astronaut, so navy pilot seemed the path, and I would be making my family proud. I happened to be the one to put up the flag at school that morning. All of this is to say that I was very proud to be an American, and was looking forward to serving my country. The terror and confusion of that day hit me as hard as anyone else, but in the following weeks I was appalled to see how my fellow countrymen reacted. The way we reacted, with fear and hatred and overwhelming violence, both within and without, fundamentally changed how I saw my nation. I eventually dropped out of ROTC and started studying history and politics. I found punk music and took theater classes. I identified as social Democrat until the BLM riots of 2020, when I was radicalized. I now consider myself an anarchist.
I had more or less the same experience. “Terrorists” were the villains in spy movies and they were NEVER in the USA. I thought we were invincible? Get a little older: oh look at the social services and infrastructure that other countries have for free.
… and how the us likes to bomb the shit of said infrastructure when it makes them money somehow.
Perspective from a mid-twenties American. I realized it was horseshit during the 2016 Trump election.
I was turning 18 just in time to vote in this election, and it was right around then that I started forming my own ideas about politics and what political “side” I stood on. Like a majority people with a semi-functioning brain, I thought Trump was an actual joke, a meme that had no chance at actually winning, like how we were acting when Kanye ran. Unironically, I thought that having trainwrecks of a leader was something that “other countries” did, obviously America wouldn’t let someone like this win because even though we make little mistakes here and there like Iraq and slavery we’re still the good guys and we wouldn’t actually let a moron like Trump become our president.
When it became obvious that he was more than a joke and an actual serious candidate with high potential to win, I realized that the only people consistently talking about how amazing America was at everything were the people voting for him, and I started dissecting the things I’d taken for granted.
You think slavery was a “little” mistake?
As an aside, my autocorrect wanted slavery to be Disney and I was a little tempted to let it stand.
Nah I don’t think they think slavery was little. They were just being “cheeky.” You can tell because of the big jump from Iraq to slavery. If they used immigration instead of Iraq I’d have a different opinion on their intention.
Younger millennial here: I don’t remember a particular moment, but it was somewhere during the 2nd Bush administration. Between the horrible things that happened in Guantanamo Bay, the completely unjustified war on Iraq, and the harm I saw No Child Left Behind inflicting on my own community, the country’s flaws were very apparent to me.
When an obvious charlatan got elected in 2016, that devastated my hope that things would improve.
My answer to this is so complex I’m not sure I can put it into words. Grew up at the very height of cold war US #1 propaganda in a military community. I’m a veteran. So many moments where those sentiments rang a little hollow, even if they were enticing, but I really wasn’t aware enough to put it all together at any one moment.
I’m in my 50s now, and over time enough of those myths of US exceptionalism were weakened as I learned more about US imperialism, and became more aware of how easy it is to find yourself choosing between food and medicine (or even getting neither) in the US, and could see how so much of our culture revolves around hiding our flaws from ourselves like avoiding seeing your own fat naked ass (or similar insecurity you have) in the mirror.
I think we have the potential to live up to every single bit of propaganda. I think we’ve done a poor job executing on it. Individual people I meet every single day amaze me with how wonderful and generous they are. But huge groups of our people are pretty awful, and a much bigger group is still avoiding looking at their fat ass in the mirror when they come out of the shower. I’m not sure whether things will head up or down from here.
I’ll close with this, which covers most of my bases I think: https://youtu.be/OO18F4aKGzQ
Thank you for sharing. Great music video!
You got it!
When I was in basic training and during some down time one of the instructors put on a compilation of people deemed terrorists being killed in various ways. The majority of my fellow trainees were cheering and it weirded me the fuck out.
Two minutes hate
Yeah, fairly similar. Without the chanting tho
When they had us stand up in grade school and pledge allegiance to the flag. Nope, no thanks. If we’re that amazing we wouldn’t compel children to worship nationalist symbols.
On the other hand we’re #1 at a lot of things, like medical bankruptcies, mass shootings and incarceration per capita. So, go us and our amazing country?
Same for me, stopped doing it in high school ~2011. Felt weird and culty to me, so I sat for it. My critical examination only continued from there, and I grew up in a very conservative/nationalistic household.
So everyone should try not to worry about conservatives having all of the kids, lmao. Conservatives birth future leftists too ✌️
