PREVIOUS: 1)... what is exceptional about Americans is their mix of murderousness, infantile self pity and devastating lack of self-insight. Mark 2) Exactly. Just add America's new "hyperpower" status to that mix and you have the most toxic combination for world calamity since WWII. Carl.
COMMENT: I trust no one will accuse me of singing the praises of the beast. But how "exceptional" is this in truth? - "Anceint Greece had no interest whatever in compromise. It pursued everything to the point of self-destruction"; J.Burchardt cited by Christian Meier "Athens Portrait of the City in Its Golden Age"; New York; 1998; p.507. - "It must also be said that Athens had become its own worst enemy. Grandly as it dealt with its problems, it had long since over-extended itself"; Meier Ibid; p. 510; -Perhaps the best example that shows that the USA is not "exceptional" - take Good Old Eng-A-Land. In the National Portrait Gallery, in London is a picture by Thomas Jones barker from c.1863: That is entitled "The Secret of England's greatness - Queen Victoria Presenting A Bible in the Audience Chamber at Windsor". The benovelent white Queen bestows a bible to the handsome cheetah cloaked be-feathered be-jewelled "exotic" Black Warrior Chief who kneels at her feet and wondrously extends his muscular arms towards the 'secret'. But rather than reason - let Poetry bring some cheer perhaps - Intone your Shelley: "I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast & trunkless legs of stone Stands in the desert.....Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies........ On the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works ye Mighty, & despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that collosal wreck, boundless & bare The lone & level sands stretch away". Ozymandias circa 1800 The New Oxford Book of English Verse" Oxford 1972; p.580. Take heart. Hari
