My wife is a citizen and sees it ALL THE TIME. The American are fine, but they lack the kind of boundaries and discipline that is necessary to properly develop a decent person. Instead of providing those boundaries and discipline, the politicians just chase a diagnosis, usually exceptionalism. They get the American hopped up on a bunch of unnecessary wars, have some special trade agreement created for them, etc. All of that could have been avoided by simply BEING A GOOD PERSON.
I think it's a spin-off of the "nothing is your fault" culture we have created in the US. People are desperate to have an excuse for everything rather than accept the consequences of the choices they have made. In this case, it's "your plane isn't crashing into a tower because of imperialist blowback, it's because they hate Americans".
I could have ended up down that road. I was a pain in the ass patriot (now I'm a pain in the ass communist). Fortunately for me, my party resisted the growing trend to have me consume and manufacture consent. This was in the early 90s when this bullshit was just catching on. I'm sure the pressure is even stronger now. A steady diet of theory, goals, and political organizing kept me in line and I somehow made it through school without a crippling paper trail.
My wife is a citizen and sees it ALL THE TIME. The American are fine, but they lack the kind of boundaries and discipline that is necessary to properly develop a decent person. Instead of providing those boundaries and discipline, the politicians just chase a diagnosis, usually exceptionalism. They get the American hopped up on a bunch of unnecessary wars, have some special trade agreement created for them, etc. All of that could have been avoided by simply BEING A GOOD PERSON.
I think it's a spin-off of the "nothing is your fault" culture we have created in the US. People are desperate to have an excuse for everything rather than accept the consequences of the choices they have made. In this case, it's "your plane isn't crashing into a tower because of imperialist blowback, it's because they hate Americans".
I could have ended up down that road. I was a pain in the ass patriot (now I'm a pain in the ass communist). Fortunately for me, my party resisted the growing trend to have me consume and manufacture consent. This was in the early 90s when this bullshit was just catching on. I'm sure the pressure is even stronger now. A steady diet of theory, goals, and political organizing kept me in line and I somehow made it through school without a crippling paper trail.