Originally posted by
Aragorn
But that's just it. You identify as an American.
I live in Belgium ─ a country also torn by divisions, and that's plural, because in addition to the left-right paradigm, there's also the tension between the Flemish and francophone population, albeit that this is more of a political spiel than that the people themselves would be hostile toward one another ─ but I do not identify as a Belgian. Belgium is just the patch of land where I happen to live, and whose laws I must abide by if I want to stay out of trouble. But I see myself as just a person, and likewise I see other people as individual humans. I care not whether they are Christians, Jews or Muslims, black, white or Asian, Dutch-speaking, francophone or whatever other language they speak, native-born or immigrant, and so on.
I do not see myself as a Belgian. That's just an administrative formality.
Now, as you probably would have gleaned already from my earlier posts, I'm not exactly a fan of the way the EU works internally, but would it really be such a bad thing for Planet Earth if ─ just as an example ─ the EU were to end up leading the world instead of the USA? Would it?
Never mind Russia ─ Putin is too much of a nationalist, and he's way too busy trying to hold his own country together amidst of all the political dissidence and criticism he's reaping. And never mind the Chinese, because as a socialist nation in a capitalist world, they too are too busy to even think about invading countries on other continents and overthrowing their regimes.
But of course, if the EU were to lead the world instead of the USA, then America would suffer, even if only because America ─ with its self-righteous defiance of the metric system and of the human rights principles that exist outside of the USA ─ would suddenly be exposed for what it really is underneath that glamorous Hollywood veneer and those heroic looking military outfits, namely a socially, culturally and intellectually underdeveloped country. They would need to learn what it means to be civilized. American children would suddenly need to learn about the existence of those other nations at school, and maybe learn new languages.
They would need to learn that Austria is not the country with the kangaroos that lies north of Scotland. They would need to adapt to something that is not America. And most of all, they would need to learn that Americans are not more valuable and not more exceptional than any other human being on this godforsaken planet, but that they instead have yet so much to learn from all those other cultures whose existence they have been ignoring in their American hubris.
Those divisions have already existed ever since the USA was created on the blood and bones of the natives whose land was stolen from underneath them at gunpoint, on the blood, sweat and tears of the African slaves that were kidnapped away from their families and their homes only to end up being treated worse than farm animals, and on the sweat of the underpaid and maltreated Chinese railroad laborers that were lured over to America under false promises only to end up being treated only marginally better than the African slaves.
This is nothing new. It just so happens to be that the times have changed and that people are now gathering online, which allows extremists to find each other and form organized or semi-organized lobbies ─ as well as militias, but that's just because America has a quasi unbridled firearms industry.
Some scholars believe that Earth is flat, and some scholars believe that "Jesus died for our sins". Some mathematicians, statisticians and scientists believe that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was a biological weapon developed in a Chinese laboratory.
If I had a penny for every ludicrous belief system in existence, I'd be rich.