July 4th makes me sick

[Ban my account ffs!]

There's a difference between being proud of your country.. it's something completely different to go around thinking you're better than everyone else and that America is somehow by default the best country in the world...

There's a Korean War vet that lives down the road and he has all sorts of war memorabilia in his yard and a big sign with the casualties and wounded soldiers and he had his yard decked out with colorful flowers and lots of American flags... now that's genuine patriotism.

What I cannot stand and it's really repulsive is listening to Republicans try to force patriotism down everybody's throat as they strut around wearing cheap Wal-mart flag imprinted shirts...

Or listening to Republican politicians speak about patriotism and "service to this country" when they've done nothing but ruin this country for the past 8 years... they're up there speaking about the country they "love" while they sell it off to their rich corporate buddies...

Why should we walk around on our nation's birthday trying to out-America everybody else.  What ever happened to a little humility?  Why can't we just take the day off to get together as communities, eat a crap load of food, play some yard games, watch the parade... and derive our pride from that?

[Ban my account ffs!]

Living in a foreign country and having almost no contact with other Americans for 8 months did not increase my negative views of America, but increased the positive ones.

There are just too many good things about this country to trash the 1 day out of 365 that we choose to celebrate them.

But I agree:  We shouldn't go around thinking we're better than anyone else and thinking we're number 1.. because that is time wasted that could be used to prove it.