literally no, have you been to turkey or china
I do get what you're saying. I'm far from a Ukraine booster, but there's a marked difference between talking to a Russian dissident and a Russian partisan, and when I've had the opportunity to meet the latter...well, it's certainly an experience! And I'd had that experience and noted it a few times long before the current war. Or an example that might resonate with quite a few antisemitic lunatics here, Zionist Israelis. I'm not going to go into the whole thing, but that attitude of "if they wanted peace they could have signed the whatever accords in 19XX [NB there are multiple solutions for XX], but they didn't so now everything we do is self-defense, don't we have a right to exist"; but there's enough terrorism and such in Israeli history that as an outsider it's not hard to see why maybe Palestinians will largely never want to forgive you or be neighbors; maybe you just ethnically cleanse them, it's not like you'll be the first ones in history to do it, but it's just kind of gauche to act like they one-sidedly forced you into it and blame them for not having forgiveness.
I've accused WelperHelper of purposefully acting dumber than he is here, and I think it's a kind of performative version of the exact American jingoism you're cautioning against. In a way it's smart, you're never going to carefully argue him around into a contradiction and force a concession because he preemptively cuts every Gordian knot he can find and justifies his positions with circular reasoning on purpose. At least he knows what side he's on. That said, this kind of performance and the pushback you're getting to your argument I think are happening as a response to the fact that not only are there genuinely damaging anti-American concepts being pushed in our society, they have taken root in many key institutions throughout the country.
Further, to take just one example that is pushed as the most salient American flaw, after the question of slavery was decided in the single deadliest war per capita the US ever fought, we achieved a huge number of great things, all while not treating black people very well and not giving a huge shit about it. It was a continual topic, but not really until the civil rights movement did we grapple with the contradictions of our self-conception and flaws in our history as you wisely advocate (also we pretty much let fucking commies shame us into it so we could better talk people out of
destroying their countries with communism joining the other team). However, it's not that hard to argue that meeting that challenge head on was detrimental
to black communities, putting aside any question of impact on the country as a whole. We are still segregated, there is no color-blind utopia or melting pot, but removing the legal basis for it has only destroyed the parallel black institutions which formal segregation necessitated, leaving a still-distinct community but destroying any independence it had and in at least some ways worsening its outcomes. It is quite possible that openness about ones own flaws can lead to detrimental and misguided attempts to fix them, when not paired with wisdom which is so uncommon that it may as well be said not to exist at a population level.
I can grant that it's highly likely that if the pendulum does swing away from the ascendancy of broadly anti-American ideology (which we may not have adequately defined in this discussion), it will overshoot some theoretical ideal balance towards patriotic fervor. For the reasons I laid out in the previous paragraph, I'm not sure I care a ton, and frankly I'm just not going to try that hard to avoid it; but I do appreciate your commitment to trying to dampen that overswing (not being sarcastic).
