Living in “The Greatest Nation on Earth” by Tom Engelhardt

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/09/11-3

I hope you know that, on the 11th anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001, you live in a country so exceptional it’s blessed by God; that, in fact, it’s -- no point in pulling punches -- “the greatest nation on earth.” If you don’t believe me, just listen to President Obama, who used the last words of his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention to say exactly that. And depending on your political druthers, you don’t have to believe him either. After all, the stages of the Republican and Democratic conventions were filled with politicos insisting on the same thing. (Who says there’s no bipartisanship in America?)

At the Republican convention, Mitt Romney, speaking in his acceptance speech of Neil Armstrong’s first footfall on the moon, said: “Like all Americans we went to bed that night knowing we lived in the greatest country in the history of the world.” Chris Christie in his keynote speech drove home this point: “Standing strong for freedom will make the next century as great an American century as the last one.” Michelle Obama praising her husband as a great dad wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to say: “Every day [the people I meet] remind me how blessed we are to live in the greatest nation on earth”; and Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser and secretary of state (she of double-hulled oil tanker fame) gave the Republicans a primer on foreign policy for the Romney era, and this was her version of it: “Because it just has to be -- that the most compassionate and freest country on the face of the earth -- will continue to be the most powerful!”

And that’s just to name a few among a bevy of American exceptionalists from whom you certainly wouldn’t want to exclude Vice President Joe Biden. After all, leaving Mongol horsemen, Apache warriors, Roman legionnaires, Napoleon’s Army, and every other war-fighter twitching in the dust, he claimed President Obama was well aware that our special forces are “the finest warriors the world has ever known.”

Think of all this as a kind of exceptional post-9/11 fever. The more ordinary Americans worry about their country being on the “wrong track” or “in decline,” the more loudly, emphatically, aggressively (and yet defensively) politicians seem to insist, against all evidence, that we are and always will be (unless my opponent gets into office) the greatest, finest, freest etc. around.

[deutsey]

1. It's too often more like living in "The Greatest Show on Earth"

where more than just one sucker is being born every minute...

[treestar]

2. Always found it interesting

And I wonder do other countries say the same thing?

Note Rice likes the "power" aspect best, so that she would not believe our nation was "greatest" if it were not the "most powerful." But the rest it sounds like standard, it's your nation so you like it best, as any other would, unless from a truly terrible country. Surely if you were born and raised and had your ancestry in say France, it would be the best nation on earth to you, powerful now or not. Even North Koreans likely believe they live in the best nation.