Man, I had this great, snotty, really insulting reply all ready, but my conscience just got the better of me. Sigh.
Lobley, you are wrong. Americans, as a group, are not any more patriotic than any other nationality. People are just like that: they make the kneejerk assumption that whatever group they belong to is better than any other group out there. The group could be “Americans.” Or it could be “Christians.” Or it could be “Ford owners.”
Most people can get beyond that, some can’t. You’ve had a bunch of bad experiences with people who can’t. But you are working with a skewed sample. You say that this is an opinion formed by, “…years of talking in newsgroups, chat rooms, message boards, and seeing it in the media.” lobley, how many actual Americans do you know? Chat rooms and message boards are not the best way to get to know a group of people. Hell, if I had to judge humans as a species based off of my experiences in chat rooms alone, I’d assume we’re all a bunch of psychotic, raving perverts. You can’t trust the media for an accurate depiction of life in another culture, because any media is only going to show you the stuff that will earn them money: the violent, the sexy, the controversial. You know, interesting stuff. People being polite and reasonable doesn’t make good television. In other words, even though you meet these uber-patriotic Americans on-line and see them on the TV, that’s not really an accurate presentation of what most Americans are really like.
The relative patriotism of Americans aside, I think you need to examine your own behavior in this thread. You’re having a serious meltdown here over the fact that a bunch of people disagreed with you. Not attacked you, although there was some of the later (and more to come, I’m sure), but merely disagreed with you. Although I disagreed with your OP, I didn’t find it offensive. However, your first response in this thread, “I am afraid the replies to this post prove what I was saying. I can see you guys egos are hurt. It’s obvious.” That really pissed me off. No one had done anything to this point but disagree and ask if you had any evidence to support your position, and you come back with a patronizing line about how fragile their (and, since I agreed with them, mine by extension) egos were and it was obvious that they were only arguing with you because you’re right. That’s insulting: you are telling people you know their mind better than they do, you are dismissing their opinions (while angrily demanding the right to your own), and you are completely avoiding any direct response to the issues they brought up.
Well, since you now seem to be in the middle of a full-on board melt-down, I doubt you’ll actually read any of this post. But in case you do, here’s my advice. Learn that disagreement is not an attack. Be willing to question your own beliefs. Never say that you will “always believe” something, it shows that you have a closed mind, and that arguing with you is pointless. And, most importantly, stop posting for a while. Ask the mods to suspend your posting priviledges if you really can’t help yourself. And lurk. Get a better feel for how the boards work. 90% of the flack you just got in here didn’t come from people angry about your opinion of America, but from statements like, “I don’t need to supply information as this is just an opinion, my opinion.” This isn’t how the SDMB works. Everyone has a right to his or her opinion, so long as they can defend it. Using cites is a really good way to do this. If you want to say Americans are too patriotic, do a Google search, look for studies comparing crimes against foreigners in the US with similar crimes in Europe. Find news articles from objective sources that support your opinion. If you can’t find any, maybe you should rethink your opinion.
+:smack: = lobley. Ever notice when school is out the troll population doubles?