A little rant on American Exceptionalism to start your day.
“We’re Americans…we’re better than this…”- a survivor of Jared Lee Loughner’s shooting rampage commenting on recent mass shootings in the news.
‘We’re Americans…we’re better than this…’
‘No, no we’re not.’ was my first thought when I heard that statement made on NPR this morning. The myth of American exceptionalism is a dangerous one, and it needs to die. I was going to say, ‘it needs to die if we’re ever going to get ‘better’ than this’, but there’s really no getting better than this. This is the human condition, and we are only able to improve by understanding that we are all animals, and we are all capable of any kind of behavior under the sun.
Think of the worst people you know. Odds are, they believe they have it all figured out. Human potential only shows through when people embrace struggle; the cruelest, stupidest, most backwards among us are people who have decided it is better to embrace a comfortable illusion than to be real.
“God is on our side. Our people are better than their people. My kids would never do anything like that.”
There is no god. People are people. You better believe your kids are capable of anything.
Let’s stop bullshitting ourselves. We’ve got work to do.
cross posted at EVERYTHING IN THE MEDICINE CABINET HAS EXPIRED.