I posted the following in response to comments in ❦the_monkey_king's journal. Since by the time I was finished ranting, I wasn't sure the response was actually relevant to the discussion any longer, I figured I'd reproduce it here.

Our problem is that we are inevitably the hero of our national narrative. It isn't just the politicians of today but the American myth itself that tells us we're always the Good Guy, the White Hat, the Messiah Hisself, and that we can never do any wrong. What America does is, a priori, the Right Thing To Do.

Of course, it's not that way to everyone, but enough people have unquestioningly absorbed this myth that belief in the national narrative is now the only possible definition of patriotism in their minds. America has done nothing terrible enough yet—at least, nothing that the world has been able to force us to confront, as happened with Germany in World War II—to force us to reevaluate this myth. (America has skeletons in its closet a-plenty, starting with genocide during the Philippine-American war between 1899 and 1902, or probably starting earlier, but nothing we've let stick to us.)

My father says that no one person has done more damage to America in the past 30 years than John Kerry. I assume he believes this outrageous sentiment because Kerry dared to stand up in 1971 as a decorated war hero and point out that the American myth was untrue, that the emperor had no clothes. I believe there's still a giant, blinkered segment of the populace that will never forgive him for that. (Kerry, I mean, not my father.)

America is young as nations go, and while it's agile and vital and brimming with brio, it's also immature and often rash, like a typical adolescent. It struts and preens and disregards the hard-won lessons of its elders. We can only hope that its maturing process, in which it comes to terms with its own beliefs about itself, right and wrong, is one it survives.