mine is bigger than yours

my response to a facebook post lamenting the loss of unions and, like a million

other posts, calling the United States "the greatest nation on earth":

i am all for unions and hope we can recover them, and save the ones that have survived the capitalist onslaught.  but when i look at this post i think about people like Donald Trump, who believe in this 'greatest' notion (themselves, their nation, their baseball team, their sex, their shade of skin).  it oozes out of the endless stream of propaganda flicks Hollywood has been churning out all these years.  it's pandered to by virtually every politician in every political speech. it feeds the lust for bloodshed and the contempt for the Democracy of people living in other nations (and all the other others there are).  but then there are some of us who think we're just people, like everybody else.  a distinguishing characteristic of being human is frailty, making mistakes so you can actually learn things.  it's in our shared vulnerability that our compassion finds its bearings.  so no, i don't agree that we are the greatest nation on earth.  never have been. evidence tells quite a different story.  persons of color and native americans could hardly call it 'the greatest' without betraying the memory of their friends and family, without denying their own exclusion.  but this is also true of pale-skinned people who recognise their membership in the family of humans, who accept no artificial boundaries within the single human race.  so let's have a go at being a nation of, for, and by human beings.  our brothers and sisters, our fellow passengers on the "greatest planet in the universe" will surely teach us things we never dreamed of.

- Evan Hawthorn,  the 23^rd of September, 2015