Reminds me of a Michael Parenti speech on "Superpatriotism" from 1988. There's no existing transcript I can find so I may be the first to do this:
"The superpatriots love of country seems predicated on the country being 'up there', stronger and superior to other countries.
What happens if it's gonna slip? What about people from ... lesser lands? What about somebody from...Luxembourg. I mean now, Luxembourg is #122, just barely ahead of San Marino in its military might.
So what does someone from Luxembourg do? Do they go around shame-faced? Do people tease them, "Are you from Luxembourg?", "No no, I'm uh...French". And you say, "Do you love your country" and they say "well wha..what is there to love ... I mean a few border police, no army, no navy ..."
Why people only rip on Americans for being patriotic? Nobody rips on the French when they say they have the best {food, fashion, history, literature, country, *}. Everybody seems fine with European snobbery in all its variants: French, Italian, and even English snobbery is accepted, but not quite as much as the others it seems.
"Nobody rips on the French when they say they have the best."
Everybody does, it is called "chauvinism". There is nothing wrong believing your country is the best, provided that you have actually traveled to other countries and know it is a fact. You will find your country being the best "at something", but could learn and improve a lot from other countries as well.
The problem with chauvinism is not understanding other countries(not knowing other cultures or countries) making yourself prejudices that are not real, and the mass of people being easily manipulated by the power establishment.
Given that the US has the biggest army in the world, with nuclear subs, nuclear missiles, drones and stuff, American prejudices are extremely important for the rest of the world.
For people living in Libya or Syria, Afghanistan , Iran or Saudi Arabia, American prejudices and actions could be the difference between being alive or dead, for you and your family, abandoning your country as a refugee with nothing or having everything you have destroyed.
When people in charge want the gross of the people to support an invasion of a foreign county and make a big business with the natural resources, they use patriotism as the main tool(e.g Americans were "being Attacked" in Iraq because 20 people from Saudi Arabia hijacked Americans planes).
> There is nothing wrong believing your country is the best, provided that you have actually traveled to other countries and know it is a fact.
Yes, there is. No single country can be "the best" or "the greatest", because this term is ridiculously underdefined. (The same fallacy applies to the submission, btw.)
I suppose you are American living in America, because, you would be from another country and living abroad (I am French and used to live in the US, Denmark and for the past 10+ years in Germany), you would definitely see that being a bit patriotic is fine and was always fine.
The problem is being patriotic to the point you cannot see outside of your bubble. If you start to be snob, in Europe at least, your friends and colleagues will quickly be sarcastic with you. And this is fine, because we do not have a safe spaces mentality.
As a German I probably heard an order of magnitude more (friendly) mocking of the French then of the US-Americans in my life. In fact, I wasn't really (conciously) aware that American exceptionalism was even a thing before I visited the first time. This year Turkish nationalism is a high-profile topic in the media. The US equivalent is only mentioned in passing (if at all) when it comes to the upcoming election.
But by frequenting English websites mainly targeted at an US audience you wouldn't know. Naturally the US is going to be a frequent topic there.
That's simply not true. The French, for example, are often seen as arrogant by other Europeans. Also, sometimes their view of being "la grande nation" is ridiculed. Generally, the more snobbish someone behaves, the easier it is to make fun of that.
"The superpatriots love of country seems predicated on the country being 'up there', stronger and superior to other countries.
What happens if it's gonna slip? What about people from ... lesser lands? What about somebody from...Luxembourg. I mean now, Luxembourg is #122, just barely ahead of San Marino in its military might.
So what does someone from Luxembourg do? Do they go around shame-faced? Do people tease them, "Are you from Luxembourg?", "No no, I'm uh...French". And you say, "Do you love your country" and they say "well wha..what is there to love ... I mean a few border police, no army, no navy ..."
Here's the mp3: http://9ol.es/luxembourg.mp3
The entire speech: http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/23514