There are a few comments here making similar points, so I’ve just picked one to respond to, but it’s a response to all of them…

As some background, I’ve worked with many US citizens over the years, all over be world in different jobs, and all of them university-educated. Almost all of them liberals (not a term I use lovingly). I only ever met one who didn’t despise Trump.

What always struck me as tough to swallow was that although they could criticize Trump or the GOP, all of them appeared to love their country, and more annoyingly, to feel a palpable sense of superiority about being ‘American.’ I would often get made fun of for being where I’m from, and I’d ask them why exactly they were so much better than every other country.

Was it the corporate government masquerading as democracy? Was it the ability for their military to flatten peasant villages? Was it their long record of overthrowing democratically elected governments all over the world?

What, oh educated well-traveled ‘Americans,’ makes you so superior to the rest of us?

I’ve lived in dictatorships, in highly religious states, in places where children having shoes is a rarity, but I’ve truly never come across people so sure of their greatness and the greatness of their country as ‘Americans.’ It’s quite nauseating, whether as a colleague or simply as a tourist.

Indoctrination is surely everywhere. I’ve lived it myself and I’ve seen it in every country I’ve ever been. Try avoiding a Turkish flag in Istanbul, Hindu propaganda in India, or CCP everything in China. Despite all that, I’ve found the US inflated sense of importance is quite incomparable, especially when compared to the many other nationalities I’ve met outside their home countries.

I suppose it’s the cliché of the “ugly American” I find so irritating. None of them I met, not one, ever took time to even try to understand my story as someone whose greatness could not measure up to theirs, so it certainly doesn’t come naturally to me to feel as if they’re all poor victims who I need to be patted on the head and smile at. Their smugness doesn’t inspire that.

I was indoctrinated. We all were. If you’re an educated adult in the 21st century, all the historic info one would ever need is out there. To instead choose a default superiority-mode seems simply ignorant to me.

And again, I’ve worked with dozens upon dozens of educated ‘Americans.’ I’ve also traveled all over the US more than once, not that I ever would again.

Anyway, I know enough to differentiate between some everyday ‘American’ and a rabid MAGA fascist, yet that inner core of “we’re better than you” seems to exist in the overwhelming majority of them that I’ve met, even the ones I call friends.