One thing I notice about conservatives
[and moderates to be honest]
here on JPP is something that I find quite disturbing.
They describe America exactly the same way that an elementary school teacher
describes it to very young children in a classroom.
America is the gold standard to which all people in the world aspire.
It's Constitution [perhaps combined with the Bible] is the user's manual for life.
Our failure to rank highly in global assessments of workers rights, education,
health care, standard of living, public transportation
---one important thing after another---
is irrelevant in arriving at this assessment.
This naivety is not healthy.
It contributes to paralysis when America has to change
in order to be a 21st century nation.
I've described it many times:
Americans believe that moderate solutions exist for highly immoderate problems.
They have to believe that.
They cannot contradict,
or even question,
what they were taught in elementary school.
Political sophistication is regarded as blasphemy by conservative Americans.
Any examination of ourselves is valid
as long as it arrives at the predetermined conclusions.
Otherwise, it's subversive.
America is socially regressive for its economic potential--very much so---
and while that would take true patriotism to correct,
we instead have nationalist chauvinism to impede any corrections.
I'm an elderly man and I hate much of the change that I've witnessed in my life.
I don't hate the alleviation of social and economic injustices, however.
Instead, I hate the hypocrisy of declaring values
while making every effort to prevent their actual manifestation.