The “Ugly American” …….. what a concept.
Has it changed ……. are Americans less ethnocentric? Are they less arrogant and thoughtless?
Well, to ease your mind in case you thought you had missed something in the last forty years ……… No, they aren’t.
That is exactly what that American Exceptionalism is all about.
Oh sure it’s bull shit but so is the American Dream and the American Political System, which is really more nightmare than dream.
And not to surprise you but they have always been.
See when one needs to justify what is clearly JUST WRONG the Exceptionalism Dream of America is the default position. So in that way “we Americans” don’t need to conform to normal rules or general principles of others because we are special.
And that makes our killing and torturing and destroying morally necessary so as to assist those we kill, torture and destroy to better their chances at “democracy”. This is the rationale of all those “humanitarian-wars” we start are all about.
As a country we seem to be in the middle of “a race to the bottom” and with the likes of Obomba, Hillary, and Jeb as leadership examples, well face it ……… we are fucking doomed.
No really ……. “THAT’S ALL FOLKS”!
The cartoon that is American has run off its reel.
Tubularsock 
I really like the way Native American historian Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz explains it: the US, Israel and apartheid South African were all founded as “covenant” countries. The three countries are unique in the entire world in this respect. In other words, they were founded based on a “covenant” with God, in which he gave them permission to conquer and displace the indigenous populations who previously occupied the land. She says this is the origin of America “exceptionalism” – all the horrific stuff the US does is perfectly okay because God said so.
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Well DrB, Cotton Mather, our very own Puritan minister from Boston would agree that GOD made us do it! He was a big supporter of the Salem Witch Trials as well which may explain why he doesn’t have a big following of feminists on his FaceBook Page. Ortiz’s perspective is interesting as well as true but even she would have to admit that if it had been left up to the Native American we as a nation would not have asphalt today. That alone proves that the Great Spirit had invested heavily in asphalt futures. The Stock Market doesn’t lie!
Thanks for your informative comment.
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I ran across this quote by Paul Craig Roberts, I think it fits here:
“People as uninformed and as gullible as Americans have no future. Americans are a dead people that history is about to run over.”
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Thanks sojourer ……. that is beautiful.
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Your commentary and observations are on point as always, Tubular. The graphic was simply awesome.
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Thank you Jeff.
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And the congregation shall say “amen!”
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Wow, did Cotten Mather step back in when Tubularsock wasn’t looking. But hell, amen brother!
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Call me cranky, but on reflection I’m withholding my “amen” — even for so fine a post — until my people find a better (i.e. saner, less embarrassing) damned god. That shouldn’t be so hard, right? Hell, even I could invent a better one, and I’m … religiously challenged.
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“religiously challenged”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Linda, I love it! You are a tonic for me! I haven’t laughed SO hard in quite sometime, but that had my head thrown back and I was roaring with laughter! Thank YOU ever SO much! Between you and Tubularsock, I declare, you guys always make my day and or night!
But! Uh hum, after all that preachifying I did as the good Reverend ‘Give Me All You Got’ Courtland, you mean to say that some of that great preachifying didn’t rub off on you? And here I had the nerve to think that I had answered to a higher calling! ROTFLMAO! I guess I must’ve got confused and been hell bent on doing the devil’s work! Can I get an “AMEN?!” LMAO!
Linda, never change! You are perfect!
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I know I’ve said something like this before, but what the hell!
It’s almost like many of us (like me) have to go through some kind of religious experience in order to find it as the fraud it is. It has been my experience, since departing, that former partakers of religion are filled with much more disdain and bile for religion and the religious than those who never got their feet wet, if you will. And I am one! I seethe when I see one of the assholes on the boob-tube!
I know why religion is a fraud, because I went through the addiction and withdrawal process, just like you, Shelby. It’s a dead-end leading to a herd mentality, a being a stooge of this or that despot and system/order/government.
Yes, religion is mind-numbing, but it is very good at it! Religion is the ultimate deceiver, not that pitchfork carrying dude with horns, especially for those of us who approached it at the historical and intellectual level. I was never the hands above the head, Hallelujah shouting type. No sir, where I got sucked into religion, was where many people do, in the ‘consciousness/aware’ end of the warm and fuzzy spectrum. And this, at least for me, made the withdraw that much worse. It took fourteen years of my life to become deprogrammed, and I did it all by my not so little self.
It was almost as bad as being a flag-waving, democracy loving, USA shouting imbecile, believe it or not?
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“religiously challenged” …… there is a six step program for that. And the seventh step you rest. Tubularsock got hung up on the seventh step and has spent his life to date religiously following the seventh step. Wake me when it’s over!
Thanks, Linda.
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I AM exceptionalism personified! And don’t I know it! Now, what I need is to get the rest of the world on board to that fact! Oh, I know! I’ll start another war! Uh…is there ANY place on earth that we ain’t already started a war in? Let me know so that I can start one to show ’em! I’ll show ’em how filled with ‘exceptionalism’ I is!
Great work Tube!
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Thanks Shelby. You are “exceptionalism personified”. There is no doubt in Tubularsock’s mind. Tubularsock is afraid you have come to the war market a little late. You’ll have to fight your way in. Tubularsock suggests that you “fire-bomb” them with one of your hot-fired-up-ballistic-poems. That would do the trick! And now ladies and gentleman may Tubularsock present the new Ms. Exceptionalism …. Shelby Courtland Personified.
For your safety ……. please stand behind the asbestos covered guardrail.
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LMAO!! You and Linda, take a bow! Again today, I roar with laughter! I love it!
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My religiously challenged state? Ah Shelby don’t blame yourself — that’s no reflection on your, ahem, sincere piety and preaching, it’s just acquired immunity from growing up in a fatuous little cult that had “all the truth” and wasn’t shy about saying so. Possibly I could fall for snake oil, but it’s gonna have to be from snakes of WAY!! different stripes!
Tubularsock, That six-step program might be fine, especially the resting part, but so far I’m still enjoying the ‘high’ of sitting home in my jammies on Sunday mornings — I don’t even want to get over it!
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Linda ……. are you familiar with the snake oil cult of Tubularsock? We meet every fifth Monday of the month.
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Every fifth Monday? Well, that sounds most tempting, but Monday’s still the weekend to me — and weekends are sacred, though not much else seems to be.
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