Could you honestly say right now you're proud to be an American?

[harumph]

9. Being "proud" is a complicated emotion (for me).

Proud? I was born an American, and had nothing to do with it. I suppose I'm proud of my kids when they do something that's difficult and do it well or at least make a good attempt at it. The merit of countries should be judged on whether they take care of their most vulnerable citizens. Even if we had the kind of country that actually gave a shit about woman, people of color, indigenous peoples, the poor, etc., I wouldn't be proud per se, but rather satisfied or contented that we have successfully met the basic moral bar required to be civilized. But we collectively haven't done any of that. We are in fact, taken as a whole, not that impressive and peculiarly violent to boot. We are among the worst of unreliable narrators. Most of our so-called "greatness" leading up to this point in history is due to our enormous material wealth stemming from the size and diversity of America (water, land, minerals) and the fact we easily dispensed with the indigenous peoples with germs and exploited the shit out of the land by means of technology we originally imported from Europe. So much arable land. Lots of oil. Lots of coal. So much profit to be made. Of course, no country or people is angelic, but we are far from it. If we managed to amend the constitution to be more equitable, to mandate only public funding of political campaigns (i.e., goodbye Citizens United), ditch the electoral college, pass the ERA, etc., mandate managed investment trusts for representatives and senators (i.e., no more insider tips), and actually expand the SCOTUS and term limit the justices, then I might be able to muster some pride. I suspect we won't change our ways until we get our collective heads smacked by a 2 x 4 good and hard.