I know it tastes bad but reality is good for you.

/i'll give you a lolly after.

red red wine. It tastes so fine....../over and over
ship crashes into dock

Notabunny: fta The idea that the United States is uniquely virtuous may be comforting to Americans. Too bad it's not true.

I never knew American Exceptionalism was a claim of unique virtue

Think about what you just said. Then realize how retarded it sounds.

Every Nation/Culture has had and will have its great moments and its horrible moments. America is no exception.

The derp-squad teabaggers who think admitting this self-evident, basic truth is heresy are the ones who would ramp up the number of not-so-good moments for this country, all the while thinking and proclaiming loudly that they are acting infallibly and are in-line with the most caring of Christian principles.

Abraham Lincoln's admonition that our greatest concern should be "whether we are on God's side"

That's a good one.

/Abe was a RINO

Gwyrddu: We've had disciples of Leo Strauss in the government during both Bush administrations, the Reagan administration and the Ford administration, and these same people have been hired again in Romney's campaign. The big point of Strauss' philosophy was controlling the population through American mythology that the elites themselves aren't suppose to believe, the biggest one being the myth of American exceptionalism. Others politicians glom onto such beliefs and use it to boost their own election chances as well.

That reminds me of a character in Henry Fielding's Tom Jones who believed that religion was to keep simple-minded people happy. It was useful to the rich and enlightened, but the ruling class did not consider it necessary to believe it themselves. It was just another one of their tools to confound the masses.

RanDomino: Whar #OccupyEverything thread?

The powers that be have red-lighted them.

We need:

#OccupyFARK

To be fair the headlines are not so good, and there is not much discussion in them.

sheilanagig: Gwyrddu: We've had disciples of Leo Strauss in the government during both Bush administrations, the Reagan administration and the Ford administration, and these same people have been hired again in Romney's campaign. The big point of Strauss' philosophy was controlling the population through American mythology that the elites themselves aren't suppose to believe, the biggest one being the myth of American exceptionalism. Others politicians glom onto such beliefs and use it to boost their own election chances as well.

That reminds me of a character in Henry Fielding's Tom Jones who believed that religion was to keep simple-minded people happy. It was useful to the rich and enlightened, but the ruling class did not consider it necessary to believe it themselves. It was just another one of their tools to confound the masses.

Wtf was Karl Marx doing in Tom Jones?

McManus_brothers: Wtf was Karl Marx doing in Tom Jones?

There's nothing new under the sun, it would appear. I think it was used cynically in Tom Jones, to illustrate the obnoxious atheist from the ruling class.

Sovereignty to the people. Its the most powerful thing we collectively have, and its not exercised nearly enough.

Denouncements of nationalism need to have a sister component of the long and often connected series of struggles related to moving many from what used to be often hereditary rule regimes controlling large swaths of multi-ethnic, sweeping empires. Hipster U.S. developed this in a different way, sure, but I never seem to see people throw in this extremely important component when they proclaim themselves citizens of the world. This is exceptionally important as the powerful that has so much focus, has been described as shifting their focus internationally, and having much more connections to their class peers in far away lands than to the pleb living 10 miles away.

We live in a very peculiar and small slice of time where sovereignty belongs to the people. it has not been this way for thousands of years, and theres been a huge series of struggles to get us to that point. Remember and exercise that right, and be sure to add that in on any break down of nationalism.