Reply #31: my honest response [View All]

[sweetheart]

I don't accept that any population on the planet is born special, so that
would place the 5.5% of the world's population that lives in the US equal
opportunity to be as bonkers as anywhere else.

If mass media were benign, i doubt that we would really have this, but it
is not. It is media that pushes nationalism, and the reason they do it is
that it works!.. just as milosovich, hitler, stalin, mao or bush. The issue
is not the existance of rotten eggs in evey culture, but the media climate that
functions like a virtual terraine. In some cases, the terraine supports
intelligent life; cities are built; people realize they are equal free
citizens on the earth, protect their environemtn and wish for the well being
of all others..... but only in a good terrain.

Most political terrain's are so paranoid that a mass media oligopoly actually
dictates and controls public opinion through newspaers, news(?) TV and whatnot.
The biases of this spin are different for every terrain. This would explain
why some might see americana as *more* tribal, just whatever the mass media
reports will eventually be reflected back by the populace-mirror.

Frankly, you ought to meet a scottish person who believes, like many yanks,
that scotland is the best country on earth, and this belief is founded on a
similarly nationalist media model that supports the american illusion... yet
when the facts are challenged, we see a typical republican response of deviance
on discovering the brain=washing being tested.

the US has no corner on tribalism... and frankly, as long as people focus on future
and their current lives, the long term roots of systemic tribal strife will not
take roots.... (boy is THAT optimistic... i'll have another one of those desserts
please and goodnight fine sir) :-)