Comment by biohacker42 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by biohacker42 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I find myself disagreeing as well, for much the same reasons.

However, I do think that America is unique in that the rest of the world values brains, but the US seems to instinctively distrust it.

My own totally unscientific pop psychology theory is as follows:

I lived in Germany for a few years. It is easy to sense a lot of national guilt. Dark history, I'll try to avoid Godwin. So modern day Germans are not as care free flag happy as other nations.

Now consider how patriotic Americans are. Now think about American history, there have been some great high points. But what about all the low points, just of the top of my head:

- Pox blankets. Read up on the story of Ishi the last Yahi.

- Slavery.

- Vietnam.

- Etc.

So can you be both deep and happy go lucky patriotic in America? I am not saying no American should be proud of their country. In fact, I think America has done a lot good. But American pride can be complicated if you know too much. So maybe that's why there's this almost reflexive anti-intellectualism?

So can you be both deep and happy go lucky patriotic in America?

This is an impossible question to answer. It depends too much on the definitions of "deep" and "patriotic"... words which are fuzzy enough to span continents. "Patriot", in particular, is almost impossible to define objectively... you start out with some reasonable definition, and ten minutes later you discover -- possibly to your horror -- that the word has shifted to mean "someone who supports my position on Issue X". Everyone agrees that George Washington was, objectively, a patriot -- except for his Tory contemporaries.

But, if we insist on trying to answer this unanswerable question, my answer would have to be "yes". Give me one or another popularly-accepted definition of "happy-go-lucky patriot" and "intellectual" and I'll bet you we can find plenty of people who fit both categories.

Excellent point.

However, I still think that if you're a bit of an airhead and someone drops a knowledge bomb about the darkest parts of US history on you. It will take some time before you can reason out why the ideals of America are absolutely still worth fighting for. That or you go into cognitive dissonance.

America is not an entity; it is a process. Processes can go awry but they are malleable and fixable. Do you resent your program because it crashes? No, you fix the bug and move on. It's the same thing with America.

American culture values action and results more than intellect. But it's hardly an anti-intellectual country. Such focus on action and results implies it's anti-navel-gazing/anti-analysis-paralysis which are things that often go hand-in-hand with intellectualism. But intellectualism which gets results always has respect in America.

slavery?! every part of the world has had slavery at some point... (Most of those countries had revolutions... we had a civil war)

Vietnam? at least we have the guts to go to war. Europe didn't and they got their asses handed to them, we then bailed them out.

Pox blankets? stupid or asinine (I'm not looking it up. Your probably referring to us infecting the 'Native Americans') but I'm sure we aren't the first to do something like that.

Being an actual American... I don't see that we are all that patriotic.

Good point about slavery.

Vietnam? No Europe first. Europe didn't go to war. The Germans went to war. Most of the German war machine was on the Eastern front, you didn't bail the soviets out. And while you helped the Brits a lot, I dare you to say you bailed them out to their face.

Now on to Vietnam, who or what exactly were you fighting there? International communism? As someone who was born behind the iron curtain, I HATE commies more then any American ever will. And yet I would not drop napalm on anyone in any effort to fight commies. It is not worth it me. Obviously we disagree on that.

Pox blankets true fact. Massacres, countless. If at some point you do bother to look deep into that part of US history, you may just never look at your country the same way again.

Having been around the world and currently living in America, Americans are of the, if not the, most nationalistic of all the western nations.

Not that is necessarily a bad thing. My point is, you can and should be proud of America. But it is more complicated if you are fully cognizant of the fine details of US history.

With respect to the Indians/pox blankets/massacres you need to understand that a societal-level berserker rage ([1] [2] for definition) was happening for the better part of 250 years because back about 100 years before America existed Indians killed almost half of the English colonists in New England [3].

Berserker rage is not specifically an American problem; it is a human problem. So an American will not feel bad about being an American because of things like this; he will feel bad about being a human. He will tend to work to prevent America from engaging in this sort of behavior again but the past is the past.

[1] Listen from 22:22 onward through "Act 3": http://thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=195

[2] and/or read this: http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/archive/losing...

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Philips_War

EDIT: Such berserker rages and violence are not justified but they do happen and it's worth understanding the pattern if you want to make the world a better place.

>And yet I would not drop napalm on anyone in any effort to fight commies. It is not worth it.

That reminds me of a brilliant quote from the Vietnam-era fighter pilots, who were at the time dropping Agent Orange on the country-side.

  Original: "Remember, kids, only you can prevent forest fires."
  Pilot:    "Remember, boys, only you can prevent forests."

"Americans are of the, if not the, most nationalistic of all the western nations."

Well, outside of Euro Cup finals week, sure...

A nice thing about sport is that it's a safe outlet for some of the uglier aspects of human nature. Usually, anyway. Some people end up taking it way too far.

"Being an actual American... I don't see that we are all that patriotic."

Speaking as a Jamaican, most people view Americans as very patriotic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com