Star-Spangled Bald Eagle Bullshit

I distinctly remember being propagandized as a youth. USA is No. 1. Freedom, Fireworks and Eagles.

I remember sitting in class and doodling USA planes dropping bombs on USSR tanks. We were elite. We were the peak of awesomeness. All other countries just wished they were us.

I remember thinking that an education outside the US wasn't a "real" education -- as if a degree from Oxford was somehow beneath one from South Central Louisiana State University. The strongest of these feelings, which came directly from schools and the way History was taught therein, was somewhere between 1986 and 1992. It was about then that I started to wake up a little and realize that America wasn't some Bald Eagle Utopia. By then, I thought we were just another country on equal footing with everyone else.

I was still wrong.

Fast forward a few decades and a little time spent checking over the scorecard, and I realize that our nation -- not all people, and not even all political leaders -- are OBJECTIVELY the Bad Guy in the movie.

In a very short 250 years:

• The brutal elimination and isolation of the indigenous people.
• Slavery.
• Divided its union and killed one another over the above.
• Systemic racism meant to thwart the advancement of specific people.
• Japanese internment camps.
• Two big-ass bombs.
• Happened to be on the right side of history in the WW's. (yay?)
• But more systemic racism meant to thwart the advancement of specific people.
• Invaded multiple countries because we didn't align with their political or economic systems.
• Even more systemic racism meant to thwart the advancement of specific people.
• Wars over oil.
• More school shootings than everyone else.
• ICE raids violently rounding up and killing both immigrants and US citizens because the systemic racism isn't enough anymore.

So ... we're the bad guys, right?

Fuck.