The Deprogram: S1 E2

I just started listening to a podcast called The Deprogram. You can find them on Twitter too. This episode of the podcast is about American Exceptionalism.

American Exceptionalism

Many Americans have never travelled outside of the United States meaningfully. They don’t see how people in other places live, work, and thrive. I contend that those that don’t travel outside the USA rarely travel out of their state. So they depend on their view of the outside world, the media they consume, and what they’ve learned from their schooling. ¹ 1. Pew research on international travel https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/12/most-americans-have-traveled-abroad-although-differences-among-demographic-groups-are-large/

American Media Plays Its Part

The news that Americans digest is mainly based on the audience’s ideology; essentially, it’s consumer-based. So you have the Fox News watchers that find information to the liking of the viewer’s worldview.
Americans are indoctrinated from a relatively early age that America is the best country in the world. They hear this from their parents from birth (and their parents were taught it in their history classes), so it’s no surprise that they don’t know any better since they don’t leave the country meaningfully .

When Americans Do Travel

The “gall” tourists or invaders is a colonial mindset that goes for the “helpful Karens” as well.

Americans think they’re welcomed worldwide; why would they NOT believe this? The mainstream media feeds off the government like a parasite to promote its message. They employ reporters, not journalists, and they work to help the government manufacture consent.²Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media is a 1988 book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. It argues that the mass communication media of the U.S. “are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalised assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion”, by means of the propaganda model of communication. – Wikipedia Hell, the press even embeds into the military and is financially supported by the military-industrial complex.

How the Rest of the World Sees the United States

Freedom of the Press, Equality Under the Law, Life-Liberty-Pursuit of Happiness, Representative Democracy, and Rugged Individualism

“Freedom of the press” is code in the States for an expectation that the news is nonbiased. The press is free to publish whatever they wish, so that freedom will result in unbiased news. Each catchphrase has a tiny pinch of truth, but not enough to make them accurate. They’re simply propaganda, taught from when you’re enrolled in elementary (primary) school until you leave university.

Final Thoughts on the Podcast

Overall, I enjoyed the podcast. One of the podcast’s failures is to address why American exceptionalism continues to thrive and survive in today’s world. They spoke of the history of the USA being a colonial project that continues to uplift and support the ruling elites while screwing the working poor. They pointed to why Americans want it to be the world’s policeman and how they think of other people. I’m afraid I have to disagree. I don’t believe most Americans think (or even care) about the rest of the world. The United States is a very insular, narcissistic country that huffs its farts and thinks it should earn the top prize at the county bakeoff.