We Americans take a lot of pride in being optimistic. It’s part of our national creed. The future is bright and there’s always a happy ending. Just compare Hollywood films to European films. We always have a happy ending here.
And often times, those who aren’t optimists are ridiculed and laughed at, as if they are unpatriotic or completely foolish to doubt America’s supremacy. We’re such a young country, and a country that takes pride in throwing off the cultures we came here with as immigrants. When we throw off culture, don’t we often throw off the lessons of history? America is all about progress, and we take pride in that progress, but can’t our pride be blinding? And can’t that blindness get in the way of progress?
How many great losses will America suffer before we face the music of our own trumpets? 9/11, if anything, seems to have made us more arrogant, as if our pride was assaulted. How dare someone attack US–the leaders of the free world? If we don’t learn some lessons and check our pride, we may be in for many more falls.
Here Peter Schiff seems to be the only one facing reality a few years ago before the sub-prime crisis came to a head. He was repeatedly laughed off shows by media pundits and other financial “experts.” Is there anything to what he’s saying about our consumerism?