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For all their patriotism, Americans rarely think about how their national identities relate to their personal ones. This indifference is particular to the psych

For all their patriotism, Americans rarely think about how their national identities relate to their personal ones. This indifference is particular to the psychology of white Americans and has a history unique to the US. This is the thesis of the piece. The rest is an extended critique of Americans. I have difficultly buying into the thesis, so the rest of it reads like a very long-winded opinion piece with the standard throwaway charges about how the U.S. is horribly bad. This seems to be a perennial topic and folks all over the world eat it up. It's nice to see it done in such a talented way. Just not my thing.

boyce 9y ago
It's certainly going to be an easy sell to the bulk of the Guardian's readership. Can't see them publishing the equivalent article about the prejudices of, say, the north London elite.
- DanielBMarkham 9y ago
  Yes. This is a case where I upvoted the article for the work and clear thesis, but would downvote the editorial staff if I could. They gave this author a bit of a softball pitch and could have cut this way down. Column-inches aren't worth sacrificing quality over. As an American, I've noted the popularity of this kind of "America still sucks!" media material. I've seen it for 40 years and I imagine it'll still be going strong 40 years from now. It's not that I have a problem with introspection and going over all of our faults and thinking about where we could be better. It's after a couple hundred of these things? I'm not seeing where a lot of them are adding any more to the discussion. It gets to have more of a feel of a religious sermon or catechism, where the material is well-known by both the speaker and audience and held dear, but over time the ritual of pronouncing and consuming the material can become more important than the content itself. Still, given the caveats about the genre, points for style and cogency.
  - boyce 9y ago
    I think that's fair. Not sure who was challenged by this piece apart from the author. Sometimes that can be interesting of itself though.
  - arethuza 9y ago
    Perhaps a difference of expectations? In the UK we have overtly opinionated print press and "neutral" TV while I believe in the US it is generally the other way round?
  - kenjackson 9y ago
    Different days, new audience. I think that the fact that this same writing is going 40 years strong says something about the past 40 years, don't you? In contrast, if said writing had evaporated, that would be an interesting data point as well -- or do you not agree?
    - DanielBMarkham 9y ago
      It's a genre. Like all genres, there are rules. I don't think you can compare across genres. Over a period of centuries you can observe which ones come and go and which ones stay. Disaster stories, for instance, seem to come and go on regular intervals. This "I am observing so many things about my upbringing that were invisible to me until X" story? It feels to me a much older genre, one that originally had roots in verbal story-telling, not books. The interesting question (to me) is how the genre changed moving from a verbal interaction to an essay form. You could extend that to this particular writer. Have they had experience with this form of story-telling, perhaps in a religious or social setting? So looking at these multiple genres with the same theme, yes, it says something. There's something powerfully true about the human spirit at work. But 40 years of seeing this in <FORMAT_X>? Nope. At least not for me. Too soon. Check back with me in a hundred years or so. :) ADD: You know who this type of written story reminds me of? Emily Dickinson. There's that same feeling of turning your life inside-out and looking at it from the outside. That's about as far back as I can go with the written word, but my Kung Fu here is quite weak. It's also reminiscent of the flagellants, which had much the same message and delivered it verbally to whomever would listen.
- Nursie 9y ago
  Actually I think they probably would. The Guardian's schtick is quite full of "Oh god we're all so awful, we must repent". Although you may be right - it's more likely to be aimed at everyone they consider less enlightened than them. All that said, there certainly is something in what she writes, particularly about the naivety of people growing up with little world perspective like that.
  - marcus_holmes 9y ago
    Her assertion that world geography is not taught to US high school students shocked me.
    - Nursie 9y ago
      Yes, me too. I had a fairly sheltered upbringing in the UK, but we did at least do some world geography and the GCSE curriculum in the early 90s required a little bit more social geography, concentrating on the southern parts of West Africa (not that I remember much of it now). Without any world geography at all, well it seems criminal to set up an education system, that way.
      - davedx 9y ago
        Yeah, and swathes of the conservative / alt-right movement currently running things want to get rid of the (Federal) Department of Education altogether, so I read. I've even seen people on Twitter claiming America would be better without any college system at all.
        didgeoridoo 9y ago
        The DoE has only existed since 1980. American public schooling did just fine without it for centuries. Why is it beyond the pale to consider eliminating it?
        jessaustin 9y ago
        Who else would enforce standards in geographic education? /s
foxhedgehog 9y ago
Pretty sure this piece was written by a second-year college student.
l33tbro 9y ago
I think "throwaway charges about how the U.S. is horribly bad" lacks charity for what the author is getting at in this piece. While exploring shadow narratives to American exceptionalism may not be everyone's cup of tea, you must agree that it's rare (and even refreshing) to see an identity politics op-ed that relates to the foreign policy and conduct of one's country, rather than one's own gender, sexuality, or ethnicity? Perhaps it's just me, but it seems the overwhelming majority of op-eds I read these days are outrage screeds pertaining to the latter.
- jjt-yn_t 9y ago
  Agree, for the most part FWIW.
coldtea 9y ago
>This seems to be a perennial topic and folks all over the world eat it up. Probably because they have also eaten bombs, interventions, pressure etc for a century or so before that.
- tome 9y ago
  Merely a century?
  - coldtea 9y ago
    Well, before that they were eating that oppression from the British, French, etc.
    - tome 9y ago
      Indeed. Therefore it seems a bit much to pick on America now given that it's doing no worse than what every powerful country has done throughout history.
      - coldtea 9y ago
        >Therefore it seems a bit much to pick on America now given that it's doing no worse than what every powerful country has done throughout history. Well, I don't think the above information would be much comforting to the people affected. Maybe we should be picking on all of them, but even more so to the one actually doing it at the present (and for near a century)? Especially since "picking on" (criticizing negatively) seems like the lightest of responses about the abuses and harm from a powerful country to others.
        tome 9y ago
        What I really meant was something from a different vantage point, like > It seems a bit much to expect America not to throw it's weight around since there's no superpower in the history of humanity that has restrained itself like that. Instead it would be more productive to learn to to live with and mitigate it.

boyce 9y ago

It's certainly going to be an easy sell to the bulk of the Guardian's readership. Can't see them publishing the equivalent article about the prejudices of, say, the north London elite.

DanielBMarkham 9y ago
Yes. This is a case where I upvoted the article for the work and clear thesis, but would downvote the editorial staff if I could. They gave this author a bit of a softball pitch and could have cut this way down. Column-inches aren't worth sacrificing quality over. As an American, I've noted the popularity of this kind of "America still sucks!" media material. I've seen it for 40 years and I imagine it'll still be going strong 40 years from now. It's not that I have a problem with introspection and going over all of our faults and thinking about where we could be better. It's after a couple hundred of these things? I'm not seeing where a lot of them are adding any more to the discussion. It gets to have more of a feel of a religious sermon or catechism, where the material is well-known by both the speaker and audience and held dear, but over time the ritual of pronouncing and consuming the material can become more important than the content itself. Still, given the caveats about the genre, points for style and cogency.
- boyce 9y ago
  I think that's fair. Not sure who was challenged by this piece apart from the author. Sometimes that can be interesting of itself though.
- arethuza 9y ago
  Perhaps a difference of expectations? In the UK we have overtly opinionated print press and "neutral" TV while I believe in the US it is generally the other way round?
- kenjackson 9y ago
  Different days, new audience. I think that the fact that this same writing is going 40 years strong says something about the past 40 years, don't you? In contrast, if said writing had evaporated, that would be an interesting data point as well -- or do you not agree?
  - DanielBMarkham 9y ago
    It's a genre. Like all genres, there are rules. I don't think you can compare across genres. Over a period of centuries you can observe which ones come and go and which ones stay. Disaster stories, for instance, seem to come and go on regular intervals. This "I am observing so many things about my upbringing that were invisible to me until X" story? It feels to me a much older genre, one that originally had roots in verbal story-telling, not books. The interesting question (to me) is how the genre changed moving from a verbal interaction to an essay form. You could extend that to this particular writer. Have they had experience with this form of story-telling, perhaps in a religious or social setting? So looking at these multiple genres with the same theme, yes, it says something. There's something powerfully true about the human spirit at work. But 40 years of seeing this in <FORMAT_X>? Nope. At least not for me. Too soon. Check back with me in a hundred years or so. :) ADD: You know who this type of written story reminds me of? Emily Dickinson. There's that same feeling of turning your life inside-out and looking at it from the outside. That's about as far back as I can go with the written word, but my Kung Fu here is quite weak. It's also reminiscent of the flagellants, which had much the same message and delivered it verbally to whomever would listen.
Nursie 9y ago
Actually I think they probably would. The Guardian's schtick is quite full of "Oh god we're all so awful, we must repent". Although you may be right - it's more likely to be aimed at everyone they consider less enlightened than them. All that said, there certainly is something in what she writes, particularly about the naivety of people growing up with little world perspective like that.
- marcus_holmes 9y ago
  Her assertion that world geography is not taught to US high school students shocked me.
  - Nursie 9y ago
    Yes, me too. I had a fairly sheltered upbringing in the UK, but we did at least do some world geography and the GCSE curriculum in the early 90s required a little bit more social geography, concentrating on the southern parts of West Africa (not that I remember much of it now). Without any world geography at all, well it seems criminal to set up an education system, that way.
    - davedx 9y ago
      Yeah, and swathes of the conservative / alt-right movement currently running things want to get rid of the (Federal) Department of Education altogether, so I read. I've even seen people on Twitter claiming America would be better without any college system at all.
      - didgeoridoo 9y ago
        The DoE has only existed since 1980. American public schooling did just fine without it for centuries. Why is it beyond the pale to consider eliminating it?
        jessaustin 9y ago
        Who else would enforce standards in geographic education? /s

foxhedgehog 9y ago

Pretty sure this piece was written by a second-year college student.

l33tbro 9y ago

I think "throwaway charges about how the U.S. is horribly bad" lacks charity for what the author is getting at in this piece. While exploring shadow narratives to American exceptionalism may not be everyone's cup of tea, you must agree that it's rare (and even refreshing) to see an identity politics op-ed that relates to the foreign policy and conduct of one's country, rather than one's own gender, sexuality, or ethnicity? Perhaps it's just me, but it seems the overwhelming majority of op-eds I read these days are outrage screeds pertaining to the latter.

jjt-yn_t 9y ago
Agree, for the most part FWIW.

coldtea 9y ago

>This seems to be a perennial topic and folks all over the world eat it up. Probably because they have also eaten bombs, interventions, pressure etc for a century or so before that.

tome 9y ago
Merely a century?
- coldtea 9y ago
  Well, before that they were eating that oppression from the British, French, etc.
  - tome 9y ago
    Indeed. Therefore it seems a bit much to pick on America now given that it's doing no worse than what every powerful country has done throughout history.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      >Therefore it seems a bit much to pick on America now given that it's doing no worse than what every powerful country has done throughout history. Well, I don't think the above information would be much comforting to the people affected. Maybe we should be picking on all of them, but even more so to the one actually doing it at the present (and for near a century)? Especially since "picking on" (criticizing negatively) seems like the lightest of responses about the abuses and harm from a powerful country to others.
      - tome 9y ago
        What I really meant was something from a different vantage point, like > It seems a bit much to expect America not to throw it's weight around since there's no superpower in the history of humanity that has restrained itself like that. Instead it would be more productive to learn to to live with and mitigate it.