Why Do U.S. Politicians Keep Using the Same Trite expression, "American Is the Greatest Country in the World" If Nobody in That Country or Anywhere Else Thinks It Means Anything?
August 16, 2017
Alex Henderson, Periodista and Technical Writer
Nationalism on the part of U.S. politicians is a cheap, crude, shallow way of soliciting votes (mainly, white votes). Republicans are the worst, although some Democrats will resort to vacuous nationalism as well. But nationalism, at the end of the day, is meaningless and doesn’t solve problems. Instead of seeing some yahoo waving the flag and shouting, “U-S-A! U-S-A!,” I want to hear about issues. What are you going to do to reduce unemployment? Protect us from terrorists while simultaneously safeguarding our civil liberties (the two aren’t mutually exclusive)? What are you going to do to achieve universal healthcare? Protect the environment?
The nationalist crap isn’t nearly as common in Europe, although white nationalist Marine Le Pen did win about one-third of the vote in France’s 2017 presidential election (which is disturbing). A more innocuous, albeit idiotic, type of nationalism will occasionally rear its head in Italy when a member of the Italian parliament proposes forbidding the use of any foreign words during parliamentary sessions. So instead of saying “film” (an English word commonly used by Italian speakers), you’d have to say “pellicola.” But many Italian voters are smart enough to respond, “Hey, cornuto, instead of worrying about whether someone uses the occasional English or French word, how about you address real issues like unemployment and climate change?”
I want to hear about solutions to problems, not how patriotic you think you are. But nationalism works with some low-information voters in the U.S., especially GOP voters.
One of the big problems with many Republican voters in the U.S. is a lack of worldliness. They never study a foreign language, they don’t own passports. They don’t visit foreign countries, and even if they do, they stick closely to a tour group and don’t interact with the locals. Their view of the world is shaped by whatever garbage Fox News and AM talk radio feed them. The result is that they have little understanding of what works well in other countries and what doesn’t. And if they weren’t so pig-ignorant about the rest of the world, they would see that a long list of European countries do a much better job than the U.S. when it comes to health care, for example. You’re much better off getting sick in Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, France or Italy than you are in the U.S.
So, bottom line: waving the U.S. flag and resorting to cheap, shallow nationalist rhetoric won’t work with me. If you want my vote, you had darn well better talk about real issues.
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