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  • USians have been conditioned to externalize all badness as originating from either other countries or "the human species" (in a vague, hand waving way) and all goodness as originating from their "one of a kind" (very generic and not lived up to at all) constitution. The only thing that seems exceptional to me in USian culture is con artistry skill. Which would fit with so much of US positive reputation propaganda revolving around pretending like some stuff laid out in the constitution means something sacred and special in practice that it doesn't mean and never has (e.g. conning people is in its roots). We're supposed to believe a bunch of genocidal slave owners were really into human rights and thought ahead on it. What they did think ahead on was their own class interests, which are not the interests of most people in the region and never have been.

    Anywho, I like to point out to people that the Nazis learned from Jim Crow laws when they bring out the whole "the US is acting like Nazi Germany" comparison. Like no, sweet summer child, Nazi Germany acted like the US and the US was never a real opponent to Nazism. But if people do want to blame something the US is a big part of since its inception, but that goes beyond the US as villainy, they can point to colonialism.

    • This idea of human goodness being something exceptional to the US also plays a role in USians considering themselves a morally upright "world police".

      • For sure. When the reality US people are probably some of the worst in the world in terms of having an understanding of morality tied to material realities. We in the US have plenty of should-based thinking about how people should act morally, but, and I am once again being reminded of the "purity" issue that others have written about, we have little in substance that contends with day to day realities. Anyone can get up on a pedestal and talk about what's right in theory, but actually doing it is a whole other thing and until the region is run by people with a decolonial mindset, much less working class rule at all, much of our "morality" is hypothetical. Not applied power. The actual power brokers imperialists presumably have some sense of dog eat dog morality, but there's a disconnect between that and the regular people who buy the propaganda and think the US is policing against actual terrorism; some of whom would actually give you their shirt, but might also react badly if you say you're communist because they're disconnected from the morality that is said and what is actually being done and by whom. Much of them (or I could say "us", since I live in the US myself) don't wield any meaningful power, so there's not even a basis through which to form morality at scale beyond charity and ideals that are never tested. I don't feel I'm really doing the subject justice with this post, maybe oversimplifying a bit too much, but it's a bizarre dynamic, is all I can say.

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