Australia might be a bit closer to the kind of thing you want, since our settlerist history is broadly similar to that of the USA in both achievements and crimes, but without any claims to national greatness, except on the sporting field.
Our favorite self-description "The Lucky Country" coined by Donald Horne in the 1960s, continues with "run by second-rate people who share its luck", but even those who are aware of the second clause tend to use it unironically. A slightly more boosterish version I heard in relation to a citizenship ceremony "welcome to the best club in the word".
That hasn't prevented the emergence of Trumpist politics, but is has so far kept it on the margins.
This reminds me of Richard Rorty's essay "Looking Backwards from the Year 2096", which presents itself as an encyclopedia entry written in 2096 that details the civil unrest, military dictatorship, and restoration of democracy that takes place from 2014-2044 (we're right on track!). This experience produces an "isolationist, unambitious, and middle-grade nation" with a "sense of fragility, of susceptibility to the vicissitudes of time and chance"; sounds good to me. Happy 4th!
But then how do I know I'm the most specialist person who ever existed inside the most specialist country ever? Obviously that has to be the case or else life has no meaning, right? /s
It is a bit bizarre that if you're born here there are all these big abstract ideas that you're somehow obligated to believe in. And then we engage with those ideas instead of dealing with the reality on the ground. It's just bizarre. Why are we like this?
It's not just about believing in ideas -- you are part of a *project*. What I'd like is a government that's basically like a big insurance company that also runs a post office, that people mostly don't have to think or care about.
As a Spanish born Australian I say yes! - come and join the rest of the world where you don't need to incessantly be better than everyone else and always be number 1. Then maybe we can all together figure out how not to destroy our one and only home.
Australia might be a bit closer to the kind of thing you want, since our settlerist history is broadly similar to that of the USA in both achievements and crimes, but without any claims to national greatness, except on the sporting field.
Our favorite self-description "The Lucky Country" coined by Donald Horne in the 1960s, continues with "run by second-rate people who share its luck", but even those who are aware of the second clause tend to use it unironically. A slightly more boosterish version I heard in relation to a citizenship ceremony "welcome to the best club in the word".
That hasn't prevented the emergence of Trumpist politics, but is has so far kept it on the margins.
This reminds me of Richard Rorty's essay "Looking Backwards from the Year 2096", which presents itself as an encyclopedia entry written in 2096 that details the civil unrest, military dictatorship, and restoration of democracy that takes place from 2014-2044 (we're right on track!). This experience produces an "isolationist, unambitious, and middle-grade nation" with a "sense of fragility, of susceptibility to the vicissitudes of time and chance"; sounds good to me. Happy 4th!
But then how do I know I'm the most specialist person who ever existed inside the most specialist country ever? Obviously that has to be the case or else life has no meaning, right? /s
It is a bit bizarre that if you're born here there are all these big abstract ideas that you're somehow obligated to believe in. And then we engage with those ideas instead of dealing with the reality on the ground. It's just bizarre. Why are we like this?
It's not just about believing in ideas -- you are part of a *project*. What I'd like is a government that's basically like a big insurance company that also runs a post office, that people mostly don't have to think or care about.
As a Spanish born Australian I say yes! - come and join the rest of the world where you don't need to incessantly be better than everyone else and always be number 1. Then maybe we can all together figure out how not to destroy our one and only home.