Justin Schwartz wrote:
>
>
> Still, I think it's true, that this, that we are a good and decent people,
> mostly.
>
Of what randomly selected group of people can this not be said? And if it is more or less universally true, why should there be this endless demand that it be said of the US? Mostly, u.s. residents have two legs. Mostly, u.s. residents (put in almost any predicate you want, and replace "u.s. residents" with almost any "nationality" you care)
The German people (1944) "are a good and decent people, mostly."
The Japanese people (1937) "are a good and decent people, mostly."
The Cambodians (1975) "are a good and decent people, mostly."
The blank (any date) "are a good and decent people, mostly."
The assumption that the American people "are a good and decent people, mostly," is the assumption that they are capable of coming to see that the U.S. state is neither good nor decent, that it is, in fact, a threat (and the greatest threat at this time) to the very survival of the human species.
A couple years ago on the marxism list one frequent contributor (in a context in which there had not been a mention of feminism of any form for a number of months) suddenly posted a fairly lengthy critique of "bourgeois feminism." Yoshie & I tried to explain to him that whether or not what he was saying was valid or invalid, in the context it was implicitly an attack on "feminism" of any variety.
I don't know who intiated this topic, but whoever it was, intentionally or unintentionally, was claiming that there is something uniquely nice about the American people. Bullshit.
Carrol