"This is the final and most frightening truth about Americans.

They believe that they are the only real people in the world

Americans live completely isolated from the rest of the world. They are told about it, but they perceive it as if through a haze. The realities of other countries are Fun Facts, things you might have to know for a game show, or to entertain friends and family at a dinner table. All narratives are grounded in American exceptionalism, where America is Special and not subject to the same standards as everyone else. If a thing is done in America, it is the best way that thing has ever been done. If critique from beyond its borders SOMEHOW reaches the ears of Americans, they explain it away by saying that those judgements simply make no sense when applied to America.

This behavior is rooted in the founding of the country. As I said before, America’s founding myth supposes that it, a colonial venture of the British Empire, could actually be counted among the VICTIMS of the British Empire. As work progressed to detach the birth of America from history, an image emerged where America was the unspoiled and refined child of Europe. That all of the things which were best in these societies had been incorporated forever in the framework of the American state. That the sons of the Enlightenment had taken up home in the New World, free from the dark reactionary forces which plague Europe. This provides you with the strength to continue where merely dismissing or joking about how horrible your country is cannot.

And this is unacceptable.

Americans often say very strange things about these mythical founding fathers. Thomas Jefferson is considered the physical incarnation of Enlightenment Thought. Rarely do Americans debate the merits of this man with people who’s conception of the champion of Actually Relevant Liberalism is someone like Montesequi or Thorbecke. If they did this, their assertions about the superiority of Jefferson would be laughed out of the room. In reality, he is an extremely tiny fish who splashed into a putrid swamp where nothing bigger than him could ever live. Any examination of his thought in comparison to the people from which he drew would reveal this.

But it doesn’t matter what we think, because we are not Real People. It does not matter that Americans who are aware of their ultimate descent in the Old World practice obnoxious generalizations of these cultures and speak of them with supreme authority, because the places they are actually from do not exist in their mental world as places where real living breathing human beings are. Within the borders of the United States, people are complex, have good and bad parts, are acknowledged to have aspirations and values that are utterly different from other Americans. The way they experience oppression is allowed a complex interrelation, vital for any good person to examine their place in. But beyond the border of the United States, things go grayscale and fuzzy. The things which go on there at most have a vague resemblance to the things Americans are familiar with.

An example I use often is the repeated insistence of Americans that Polish people are white. Before I continue this at all we must correctly understand what “whiteness” is. Whiteness is a name given to the quality of people who are the default and ultimate beneficiaries of European-American institutionalized racism. Without having such a name, these people could not at all be modelled as participating in this system. In that case, the cosmology of racism would consist of disassociated groups of people who are harmed by a faceless group of Racists. This is indeed the conception most politically unaware white people have of the whole thing, and they take the accusation that they play a part in this as a great insult.

Anyway, I have no idea in what way Polish-Americans interact with whiteness as it exists in their society. Regardless, a few Americans have insisted that whiteness is universally open to the Polish people, everywhere. Here the mindset I have described becomes apparent: Poland is not a Real Country, the people that live there do not have a Real History (unless they immigrate to America), and they do not have any Real complex relations to the states and peoples surrounding them. Furthermore, the moment you cross the American border; Americans seem to forget the previously mentioned facts about whiteness, and ignore that the way in which each of the white European states have constructed what whiteness means cannot be extrapolated from what Americans have defined whiteness as. Simplified for the distant outside world populated by vampire demons, whiteness becomes a monolithic Thing that applies across the board. I have even seen it said that the ethnicities of Europe are basically just subsets of White People, which is a view shared in Europe only by white supremacists. It does not matter to Americans that these ethnicities have complex power relations that are in many cases over four or five times as old as the United States, because they are not Real People.

In reality, Polish people do not partake of white privilege in Europe. They were one of the peoples targeted for complete destruction by the nazis, while also facing Russian nationalist invasions from the Soviet Union (hostilities between the two long predate the formation of that state) . After being an eastern bloc state, Poland’s economy was destroyed and forcibly integrated into the pan-European capitalist economy. Having few options to work and so survive open to them, they are free as citizens of the European Union to move about and find it elsewhere. But here is the trick: because they are not citizens of the other European states, their labor protection laws do not apply to them. They can be paid far less than minimum wage. There are companies which scam immigrant workers such as them, take their passports and put them in indentured servitude. The attitude of the citizens of these richer nations is formed by a media narrative that Americans will find very similar to the one they hear about Mexicans. They come here, to take our jobs. And how dare they do this. How dare they. Why are they employed? No idea, probably sinister reasons. Certainly not the fact that they are cannot genuinely unionise or seek shelter in laws designed to protect workers from the abuses that make their employment more profitable.

But this is too complex an examination of the conditions of people who lack the Special American Souls. Any examination of others is ultimately an exercise in finding the one damning thing about them that validates the decision to never think of them again. Including them in an analysis of an American’s place in the world makes everything far too complicated and exhausting. That mental energy is best left to think about Real People.

And this is unacceptable.

An understandable argument Americans may raise in response to this is that this behavior is common chauvinism. The rest of you do it too! Indeed, didn’t I mention at the beginning of the article that the conception of America that exists in our societies in no way accurately describes it?

But that chauvinism is a relic of an era where people were unconnected. When Other Countries were a thing you read about briefly in a book or newspaper. When you might be reasonably expected to never set a foot outside your country (or even the general area where you live) in your entire life. The world has changed since then, and these behaviors are an echo of what they once were, kept alive by the desire to return to that simpler world. A world where indeed, Your Country was the Greatest Country, and the things it did are the very best things. The wars it fought were the most glorious wars. And the people that make up this country are all like you, and all truly great people. But they are never able to, because they are constantly confronted with those pesky Other People. Treating them as Americans treat the rest of the world results in swift retaliation through the media and the internet. Have you heard what the Dutch believe about us now? Fools. Their Prime Minister ought to clear this up, if they want our fruitful economic partnership to continue.

But our relationship to America is different. The two-dimensional America we are shown that distort our understanding is not of our own making. It is yours. To your media, we are a Market. A passive audience for who it does not really matter whether they know some valuable context without which what they are shown about your country becomes incomprehensible. All that matters is that wealth flows back to you as a result. It has never actually mattered what we think of all this, because we are not Real People. And we had best sign your ridiculous free trade agreement, which allows your incompetent businesses to sue our governments if they have the gall to diminish their profit in any way.

And this is unacceptable.

For Americans the desire for old-fashioned chauvinism is realized. Despite being the godhead of global media, having the internet, a global tourism industry, and a military presence so staggering that there is no simple answer as to how many countries you have bases in, or how many there are in total; America still lives in that simpler world. But because of all those things, we get to hear you talk about living in it.

Consider even your neighbour Canada. In many ways it is similar to you. It also is a British colonial venture. It also committed genocide against the people to who the land actually belongs, and continued doing so far longer than is generally accepted (the Residential Schools, a government program to extinguish the culture of first nation peoples, continued well into the 20th century. The last of these was closed in 1996). The restitution paid to the still very much alive First Nations peoples of Canada? A Sorry.

But Americans have a Canada Myth, that it is the promised land where all of the ills that plague America do not exist. This myth gained prominence during second term of the Bush Jr. regime. In a cruel irony, while Americans were praising Canada; it was (but has since the writing of this article ceased being) under the control of the vile demon Stephen Harper, who’s personal project appears to be to turn Canada into America.

Consider how it actually feels for Canadians to hear you talk like this. “Oh, Canada. Its great there! They have… healthcare”, while a man is working tirelessly to break down every single thing that made them different from you in the first place. This is beyond insulting. And it is like this every time you have a friendly conversation with the ghostly people who exist beyond your borders.

And this is unacceptable.

It appears that you do not understand that you are doing this. When you engage in conversation with us, we brace for the inevitable moment where you, apparently unaware you are doing this, raise your voice in response to a statement to claim that either America has something even greater than that, or that it is all far too horrible for us to understand, and unfixable. The latter is said with the insinuation that if Americans are terrible; everyone else is also, secretly, terrible in exactly the same way. Really, we just ought to see the humor of it all, as you do! It’s really extremely funny that you cannot help but commit atrocities every single time you interact with the outside world. But hey, hasn’t everyone?

Americans believe that this ironic acknowledgement of their identity as the empire that shits on our planet absolves them. In this act, Americans have done as much as they could reasonably be expected to do for people who are not solid and real in the way that they are.

And this is unacceptable.

It is a matter of public record in the United States that its government pursues the policy of being the only superpower in the world. Americans interpret this with the same detached irony as everything else. Haha, rascally Uncle Sam! No matter who we vote in, he’ll do this! Oh well, anyone would if they had the chance! But they never actually think about how you go about sustaining the situation where you are the only superpower.

What it actually means is that every single nation that is not you has had a cap on its development ever since the post-War era. That if we are to do anything great at all, it had better be for you. Being on friendly terms with America means that you are a subject nation of it, with only limited autonomy. This is very hard for Americans to comprehend, because they are of the few states in the world which has not had this experience. They BELIEVE they were once ‘occupied’ by the British Empire, but as we have established, this is nonsense."