* Anger (why is this happening to me?)
* Bargaining (I promise I'll be a better person if...)
* Depression (I don't care anymore)
* Acceptance (I'm ready for whatever comes)
The death of an idea or the death of an ideal can be as hard to deal with as our own death or the death of a loved one. I believe that we are witnessing the death of both; an idea and an ideal. I believe that we are watching the death of America, and the death of what she once enshrined in the values of the Constitution and the values of her people. The nation that was once a beacon of light in a world that at times could be cruel and dark for people for people living in places where despair was a lifetime event came here to break out of the circumstances they were born into. In America people could reinvent themselves, and in a country of immigrants, they had the closest thing to an even break that they could ever hope to have anywhere else.
This nation came into being because of ideas that people
developed after living under a British monarchy that seemed to have no regard
for their rights. The people who founded this nation also believed in ideals
that they fought over with each other tooth and nail, for many long months,
virtual prisoners in a house that was shuttered during the hottest part of the
summer. Some of these very same men died, and some lost everything they had
acquired in their lives, in order that they be given the chance to live their
ideas and ideals. No people had ever been as bold as those that put everything
they had, and everything they were, on the line against the superpower of the
era. This wasn't just a political revolution; it was a revolution of ideas.
That was "American exceptionalism".
Today we are bombarded with the term "American exceptionalism".
The sad part of this is that most of the people that use the term have no idea
of what it means. When they say America is exceptional, they usually refer to
the fact that our nation is the world's lone superpower. They pride themselves
in the fact that we went from a group of colonies to a superpower that actually
rescued its mother country from fascism. They point to our inventiveness and
our power" always our power. That isn't American exceptionalism, its
nationalism.
False patriotism and rampant nationalism have brought this once great nation to its knees. I find it hard to comprehend the fact that so many Americans willingly gave up their lives in order to insure that American ideals would prevail. Today we see the United States in the theater of war, not to fight for ideals, but to fight for resources. We no longer stand against torture, but practice it. We give away our liberties, the same liberties that so many Americans died for, in order to have "security" from those that could possibly do us harm. They are called "Terrorists", not long ago they were called "Communists". Those that fight against the American military are called "insurgents". An entire religion has been deemed to be our enemy.
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