What are your national delusions?

ahahhaha - little goil ones must have sugar and spice

Maybe foreign aid ??

C'mon, tsar...

How many other countries have you tried?

I've never thought of you as a provincial Murrican. But rather with well rounded views....
Don't prove me wrong now!

Margo did a good job of answering this, but mostly I can't think of any delusions because they're delusions. I think America is lots of things, but I'd have to do a bunch of research to find out which of those notions are delusional. For everything else I either am correct (so it's not a delusion) or I don't think it in the first place (so it's not a delusion).

Note, I'm sure I have some delusions, I just don't know what they are. By definition.

edit: or are you asking what delusions I see emanating from my fellow Americans? That's how Margo answered it I think.

The best pizza makers in Italy (specifically in Napoli, Roma, and I suppose Palermo - the sfincuini) make the best pizza in the world, despite competition from Nancy Silverton (LA), Jamie Oliver (England somewhere), and similar.

This is not to say that you can't find miserable pizza somewhere in Italy, probably more likely in the north. (Memories of mushrooms landing on my nose, just outside of Florence at a bowling alley cafe).

I guess this pov doesn't qualify, as that's not my very own country.

You know, now that I think of it, that is actually the most common national delusion I have ever heard. Even people who want to emigrate often just want to do it for the economic benefit temporarily, because they maintain that their country is still the best place to live.

That's actually a good one, but more localized than national. I know of many cities that claim to have the best pizza (Chicago, New York, Sao Paulo are all that claim so adamantly).

true. America does not own the gold hat on that statement but , and it could be just because my experience is limited only TO america, there seems to be a much stronger streak to that statement here. People will actually start fights with other people , even physical ones, if someone disagrees with the perceived grandeur of america..

Well sometimes you know it's a delusion but can't let go anyway right? Like your kid, you know you are not fully rational about your kid right? That you think she's prettier than she is, smarter than she is etc?

To take a psychology 101 example, of the dispositional/situational delusions we are all very subject to: when something happens in the US, like a bridge collapsing its just a tragedy. The focus is situational. If it happens in China it's because of their corrupt and shoddy craftsmanship, the focus is dispositional. And when America is succesful it's because we are exceptional (dispositional) and when we fail we are unfortunate (they took our jobs! or rather, situational).

Right. That'll work better if north and south ever do the splits, assuming Rome ends up south. (I haven't been south much past Rome, don't know that a lot of other places there don't make great pizza. That's probable.)

Next: the best story tellers have some irish in their souls.

OK, that makes sense.

I think I'm far more prone to being irrational about my kid than my country -- I grew up with parents who were highly critical of it and have spent a lot of time protesting/ trying to reform it. And I have spent time abroad (not as much as I'd like) and have seen things that they do so much better than us elsewhere. And I was happy when abroad that people were surprised I was American. ("Yay, I don't seem American!")

So a lot of the things I'd tend to be delusional about as an American I'm already not, I think. (Healthcare, education, yadda yadda.)

I think I have one! The idea that Americans have this whole can-do thing going on. Give us adversity, we'll dig in and overcome it.

I do believe that to some extent, but a) I think it's not completely true here and b) I think other countries have a lot of that too.

derivatives...

I thought nationalism generally made you think that your country, whatever it is, is the best country to live in.

I guess that holds true for me....I love lots of things about other countries I have been to or whose cultures I know something about, but overall I prefer to live here. I think I would be very happy living in other countries and I would love to spend a few yearsin say New York , but at present I believe I would want to come home. Of course, that might very well not be true if I really DID live in another country for a while.

But I find myself wondering if it's a bit deeper than nationalism......whether it's more part of the same thing that makes not actually want to change places with people we perceive to have a better life than us.

I think nationalism is the thing that makes us think that our country is just intrinsically superior to other countries...and rationally I can't think of anything I believe Australia is actually better at than some other country except we have the best goddam marsupials in the world!

When I am responding without really consciously weighing things up, i think nationalism makes me think we do wry humor pretty damn well, and a secular society and pretty well at egalitarianism.....but I certainly can't say we do that better than anyone else.

But those marsupials....man we got da best! And as for our monotremes...show me a monotreme and we got better.

Bada bing! Unless we know it's a delusion we can't realize it's something it's something nationalism makes us think....and by then we likely don't think it any more!

However, I think there's a difference between what we think when we are making a point of engaging those frontal lobes vigorously, and the sea of assumption, emotion and reflex beliefs that lie beneath and likely influence the reactions of most of us more of the time than the really rational stuff does.

I can often hear the dissonant voices in my head when I am reacting to something.....it's likely when I'm not listening to them that its a worry....or when I don't know enough to have them.


I thought the Brits DID have the best SAS, by the wAy.....but when I look for evidence for that belief I don't have any.

Damn. Robert already addressed that.

Being irrational about your kid is likely hard wired in....to stop us abandoning the little buggers.

I suspect tribalism/clanism is too, so that people will sacrifice themselves. And on that we have laboured mightily to glue nationalism.

I'm sorry weeBeth....the butter tarts just aren't doing it for me.

I think I have a lot of delusions about Canada....I think it's a fantastic country.

The Germans are delusional in thinking that they can safe the world - environmentally that is, since they're the poster child in recycling.

Come to think of it, a lot of the Australian immigration policy over the last decade has struck me as a bit xenophobic, but Australians really do seem more socially progressive than that. What is it with that? It seems like there's both a castle-complex but also some genuinely progressive culture at the same time to me.

Which reminds me of a bit of a politics I don't get about Australia. I don't know a single Australian who supports American foreign policy, but I also wonder how you guys reconcile that with going along with it as a nation. It seems like a strange dichotomy between a national identity that leans towards isolationism and often resents foreign influence but whose government is fairly active on the geopolitical stage.

Basically I just don't get how un-American most Aussie political opinions I hear are, while the foreign policy is so very... American. Is there some political reason that your government can, for example, get away with joining wars that the public seems so strongly against?

Something that gets me - I grew up enduring a third world existence, yet feeling proud and lucky to be an American. I thought being American protected me from the sort of life I already had.