Selfish and unwilling to improve myself at a measurable rate <| sep |> Might be useful to make it clear that he doesn ' t need to be in your party for his motes to drop . <| sep |> I ' m in the other boat . I know their brilliant . Still hate South Park . Not a fan of the medium of delivery . Saw Book of Mormon was amazing . The two are without a doubt masterminds of satire . <| sep |> Oh man how can they get the fatiha wrong ? <| sep |> Americans identify very personally with their country . It seems that in other countries people don ' t get all that nationalistic . Do Belgians get worked up over Belgium ? I don ' t think they do much . Here we fly the damn flag all the time and everywhere . And if you don ' t stand up and sing the stupid song every time it ' s played which is at every sporting contest , every school assembly , every time anything important happens , while at the same time saluting the flag or at least taking your hat off , people hate you . We drip and ooze nationalism . It ' s a kind of American obsession most of us never think about . Burning the flag is legal , but you ' re going to get assaulted by someone if you do it . We fucking worship this piece of cloth . You could burn a hundred copies of the U . S . Constitution and shoot up pictures of the president , and no one would care . But burn the flag and they go absolutely berserk . It ' s basically because it ' s all we ' ve got . We have no king and no national symbols that unify us do we worship the eagle , Lady Liberty , the Indian on the dome of the capital building , what ? . So the flag is our imperial symbol . I imagine it comes from being a nation of immigrants , all of whom want to be accepted by those already here , but it also comes from some kind of deep sick insecurity problem , I think , that if we ' re not Number One okay , everyone , let ' s chant We ' re Number One or USA , USA , USA over and over again sigh , then we ' ve fucked up . It ' s a do or die , success or failure society where lots of people most of them , actually never succeed much beyond a kind of modest level of success even they they are bombarded with propaganda about working hard and climbing the ladder of success and anyone who works hard enough bullshit . So , work hard and succeed modestly , and you are a failure . Death of a Salesman addressed this problem . It ' s not easy being American . But , somehow , I think being hyperpatriotic tells each of us that we ' re all on the same team , that we ' re part of the greatest nation , blah blah blah . So we do it very aggressively . It really is a national obsession , one we hardly think about . I ' d even call it a kind of national sickness . I mean , we ' re not Nazis or anything , but you ' d be hard pressed to prove we ' re less nationalistic than just about anyone else . I hate it .