“Greatest nation” rhetoric roars back

reading such a book in order to finally grow up and become fully human and humane will read such books and carefully listen when people speak about the real truth about the U.S. is in doubt. Many afflicted with this disorder of superiority and greatness will likely remain close-minded, I believe. But it can't hurt to try to [educate].

If someone tells me in person that the USA, or Canada, or Britain, or ... is/are great, then I will tend to laugh, but when it's on the Internet or in print, or tv, then I get frustrated, because these means of communication reach very many people very quickly and I despise mass-brainwashing, dumbing down attempts. That's really angering. In person, face-to-face, I'll tend to laugh, because I'm not going to be fooled and we're either in a very small group, or else speaking one-on-one; and if it's a small group, then the others in the group will hear what I have to say. I'll tend to laugh and then explain why the person is mistaken, and we don't have to be historians, PhD or graduate scholar historians for this. We don't even need a bachelor's degree in history, albeit academia evidently doesn't do a good job of teaching history truthfully anyway.

The complex of superiority and greatness is a consequence of the disorder of inferiority that's due to ignorance, brainwashing, dumbing down, et cetera; and, sometimes anyway, arrogance. That's my layman take on this particular subject.

As for patriotism, I'm patriotic and it means recognition that I am, first of all, a member of the worldwide human "family" and that I must not be biased about this; must not accept misjudgment of one in wrongful favor of another. And that applies with friends. Wrong is wrong, no matter who is committing it, and I need to stand with what's right. So I have to patriotically be opposed to the extreme criminality of government(s) and corporations. It means saying, f.e., "Not in my name!" when the elites try to fool us into supporting their crimes that they try to pretend to be justified and legitimate, non-crimes.

True patriotism requires developing and exercising real conscience, and avoiding, as much as possible, being duped by the criminal ruling elites, as well as other non-petty criminals. True patriotism requires real intelligence and it's not only the kind of intelligence required for doing well on IQ tests, for such testing is very incomplete. There's more than one kind of intelligence and a very important kind is sometimes referred to as emotional intelligence, though I'm not sure that that's really an accurate way to refer to it. It's intelligence related to [conscience], which like common sense, is not taught in academia; except in [some] philosophy courses, f.e.

Many Americans use "common sense" in ways that really don't make any common sense or sense, and they have great difficulty understanding this. What they really mean is common way; not sense. With "way", sense doesn't need to be involved; it can be like flipping a coin in order to decide which of two courses to take. The choices of ways can all be equally good, can all be good, but variably so, some can be good while others are not, or can all be bad choices. Meanwhile, sense infers [reason], it's related to real analysis and, therefore, intelligence, though little learned about in academia. And common means that whatever the subject happens to be, it's not being thought of only in terms only oneself or a small group; it's being thought of in general terms, what's good and isn't good on a common, mass scale, like for a society or a community, depending on what the subject is.

Patriotism has to be thought of in terms of the common good and this means not blindly following or obeying politicians, or anyone. It requires putting our "thinking caps" on, energizing our batteries, getting sufficiently informed about what politicians say, learning from other, especially unbiased and independent, sources, and making informed decisions or choices. Common sense "says" to not follow orders blindly, while it's an awfully common way to do the opposite. Common sense "says" that "war is bad" and must always be opposed, that it has to absolutely be the very last resort and that we must have strong proof that that resort needs to be undertaken, before accepting to support it; but the, or a very/too common way has us going in the opposite direction. Common sense "says" to be very wary of politicians trying to make dupes of us; it "tells" us that politics is full of hypocrisy and charlatans, not 100%, but many nevertheless are of these traits, while many others are incompetent. And common sense also "tells" us to not follow directions from incompetent people. Common way, a too common way anyway, has us doing the opposite. And many Americans treat common way as if it is the same as common sense when there's no real sense at all in doing this. Being dumb is too common, but it is contrary to the development of common sense and conscience.

A society is in big trouble when common way is practiced by a majority and common sense is exercised by a minority. Run for the hills. A society is in very big trouble when it loses its humanity; a human society, that is.

Humans on this planet, all humans, including the small groups of people who still live in very primitive ways, are all [human]. They should all be thought of as brothers and sisters in Humanity.

Former Pope John Paul II, who I definitely disagreed with in some respects that he got me seriously pissed off about, was very right when he said that all of humanity is God's human family on Earth. Take it literally or figuratively, metaphorically, whatever, he was right.

Voila! When I was born, I knew nothing of political or man-made boundaries. I was born into God's human family on earth, this universal family. With God, there are no man-made borders and like Jesus said, man's law is not God's law.

My patriotism is of a universal sort; universal human rights and dignity, f.e. But it also relates to Earth, which we've been atrociously destroying and toxically polluting, poisoning. That, in turn, relates back to humans, since we depend on having a healthy environment, but it also relates to other creatures. We can not separate ourselves from our environment, the "natural world". David Suzuki, who I sometimes disagree with, coined the concept of "Sacred Balance", and I definitely support it. We and all other creatures depend on it.

Perhaps this can be considered a holistic view of reality.

We need to achieve "Sacred Balance" between ourselves, universal humanity, as well as with the "natural world", which is essential to all life forms on this planet; while money is only a utility and an awful lot of it is whipped up like magic, out of nothing, thin air. Money is not essential. The economic system can be changed. We can't separate ourselves from the need for a healthy planet and treating each other justly.

I am patriotic, but it's not the kind of patriotism Washington falsely and hypocritically talks about or preaches. Patriotism does not require that we be nationalists, definitely not in biased and blind ways anyway.

To defend one's country requires defending it against the enemy from within, as well as foreign ones, and the US really has no foreign enemies, but is overloaded with those from within. We can say that the US, with its actions, creates foreign enemies, but I don't think of them as enemies. We [are] the enemy; we're the enemy of the people we claim to be our enemies, because we created them, and we're our own enemy. The real enemy is within.

Add this to high school IQ tests.