We live in an age run by media and propaganda. When something is red, white and blue, it instantly becomes a marketer’s dream.

It’s a fact that the easiest product to sell is pride. The over-commercialization of nationalism makes me gag. I understand the concept of taking pride in one’s country but it makes sense to use some form of logic and realism instead of an everlasting form of denial with ignorance. We market the American dream, a hazy vision attracting immigrants to lands that are not as free and perfect as they thought.

I would like to know: what is the American dream of which we speak so passionately? Is it arrogance? Or apathy? Contradicting morals, perhaps?

Go ahead and boast about being the richest country in the world. Thirty-five million of our citizens are in the sovereign ruin of poverty. The rich get richer on their glittering schemes of superficiality and hidden desires, making the chasm between classes wider. Recouping for losses of over $3 trillion is just one of the inevitable life-long burdens our youth will have to deal with, all thanks to the good old American dream.

I suppose talking about our wealth is not appropriate. Then, I think we should boast about freedom. That is the only reason terrorists could ever want to harm us. They hate our freedom. They hate the fact that they cannot go out in their cars and be bombarded by blatant advertising for food. They are so bitter about the fact that they do not have a Metro Light Rail that they feel forced to slay hundreds in mindless carnage. But it can never be the fact that our method of promoting and preserving foreign civil liberties and peace is nothing more than a discreet, modernized yet primal form of colonization, where we are the ultimate benefactors. The fact that most Americans do not even know the extent of their own rights and liberties, are under the mind-numbing control of the media and government, yet still feel the need to promote their illusion of joy has nothing to do with enmity against Americans. Also, it cannot be the refusal and disinterest of the average American to examine and analyze foreign lifestyles from an open mindset.

As I hope you can tell, the last paragraph or two are extremely cynical and sarcastic. America benefits others when it suits us. We will never drop a package of Happy Meals over disease and war-stricken countries, yet there is no problem calling irresponsible consumption of fast food an “epidemic.” Americans have found a way to enhance male sexual pleasure before curing some of the world’s most morbid diseases. That, my friends, is the mark of a Class-A country.

Maybe once we understand why America’s not all that, we can help improve this country. This is a very good place to live but there is no excuse to let that be the delusional excuse for our majority to market nationalism as one of our most popular products. Until we get our priorities straight, anyone denying the pleasure of the “American Dream” will be an anti-American, communistic, terrorist who despises life, liberty and the pursuit of all things material.