The reason the US is a popular study is that it is large enough and tolerant enough to permit many forms of useful and also eccentric behaviour. So the world can look on and learn and choose bits and pieces to try. Of course not all good things were developed in the US. The Brits apparently developed canned laughter and an Aussie developed the flight data recorder. The US just boosted the use of both. However a lot of its home-developed behavioural stuff is hyper specialised and some would say crazed. The US possibly has a higher per capita rate of uniformed and armed security personnel than any other nation. It has as a favouredl sport a concessional game in which only one person is permitted to think before short start-stop intervals and only one specialist kicks the ball. If any social activity is declared a belief then the rest leave it do whatever it wants. Outside the US few inhabitants of modern societies would consider concealed carry, American football or Jonesville eligible for any kind of support. But the US fought a civil war in part for human right to free choice and a future predicated upon something more than a charter that maintained in part the ‘birthright of kings and their ignoble courtiers’.

What is often unadmitted is that the US employs its concept of human rights as a strategy in international afairs and also as a lever in pseudo-revolutionary warfare. What happened to an elected government in western Ukraine and how was it that its quickly endorsed successor permitted civilian flights to continue over eastern Ukraine ? Is there any difference except ourselves and them between an action-packed US Navy cruiser shooting down an Iranian airliner over international waters in the Persian Gulf and an action-packed separatist or Russian missile post shooting down a Malaysian airliner over eastern Ukraine ?

Every amateur psychologist and sociologist knows what the Greeks said simply and long before they went off to treat themselves on other people’s money. It is possible to believe Voltaire was using more words to say much the same. Even then he left out two groups of predictable words at the end, such as ‘and mine also’ followed by ‘provided I do not forget’. It is allowable and useful to have many but hopefully small groups of enthusiasts and crazies provided society also has forensic psychiatrists able to distinguish eccentrics from psychopaths and sociopaths. Society also needs to provide those psychiatrists with every form of legal support and sanction. And there are two aspects to US exceptionalism which are highly dangerous. Many have possibly heard it being described as “The US believes in its own exceptional omnipotence and that belief is shared by others.”

The Bali bombings and the Twin Towers made it increasingly apparent that world affairs was extending to stages worse than serious. Dire was the appropriate word then and it is more-so today. The inability of the US State Department to get most current WMD powers on side in regard to any proliferation into Iran and North Korea is almost unbelievable but world affairs does attract strange competitors. So the US goes on as lead protagonist in its accustomed way. Many neurotics and others may view that as analagous to a book thumper or a groper from a psychedelic top-less bar often expounding and sometimes trying to impose views on a hapless onlooker. And on the other side is an assorted group of noisy neurotics and psychopaths offended by tolerances and unwanted initiatives they do not understand, plus sociopaths who want to become major vandals. And behind them are cliques of far more dangerous psychopaths and sociopaths. The latter are more clever than those out front and even more determined to build one absolutely conformal and misguided commune. The one thing that unites them all is that they really believe the US is trying to impose things such as classical ballet, nude statues, rock bands, Tammany Hall politicians and everything else when they themselves already have the use of possibly more hectoring speakers, hash, belly dancers and of course young boys and girls than are similarly available in the more populous and sometimes thoughtful US.

Everything about the US offends the psychopaths. The clever ones use simple messages such as the ‘great Satan’ and ‘smaller Satans’ which every primitive believer can readily understand and then use to both arouse and intimidate the bovines who would otherwise be content to just wander around. Frequent use of the word great shows their fear otherwise they would use a descriptor such as gross or monstrous. However many of the secular are intimidated and just leave and move on to distant societies different from wherever they came from. But when away from danger many of the alleged would-be integrees turn out to be fencesitters because they still want to support the less horrific bits of what they left behind. And that in effect makes them fifth columnists although of course they deny the nature of that and pretend it is just an eccentricity.

One way or another the psychopaths and sociopaths in the Middle East are currently managing to have enough supporters to keep their excesses going. A wealthy society can possibly afford to catch and keep its psychopaths and sociopaths for indefinite study by forensic psychiatrists. That luxury does not apply in international affairs however much anyone might hope so. Hence the use of drones which seems justifiable to keep numbers down in both ways. The problem is that drones cannot catch any for analysis and in current circumstances result in much collateral damage. One way to make psychopaths and sociopaths and their unwitting cronies stop and think might be – just might be - to demonstrate that more of the world is opposed to their views than seems possible. So the US with many resources has to be involved again but in a somewhat different way.

That is in effect being pro-American. It is to force the realisation in the Middle East and elsewhere that what is happening now is no longer between two forms of evangelism but rather rational versus maniacal.

It leads naturally to a forceful military ground campaign commanded by parties other than the ‘great Satan’. And a good reason to go hard now is that the psychopaths might become even crazier and the sociopaths might be unwilling or unable to restrain them. The US role should be entirely overhead especially supply of munitions for use by others, and next to nothing on the ground. On the ground should be as many others as practicable and hitting as hard as is reasonably permissable. So a ground force with out-of-area cool, calm and implacable leadership.

Going back to the beginning the main good thing that can be said about the US is that despite everything it is tolerant to an exceptional and admirable degree. What does not kill us makes us strong. And either or both ‘us’ can be alternatively written in capitals. However, many who admire the US prefer to live elsewhere to avoid the tumult and excess. Unreserved US evangelism and belief in exceptional permissiveness can be just as maniacal as the behaviour in some other places. But believe it or not most people are probably on the US side. Just give them something more than bulldust evangelism. Being more focused on underlying purpose and above all using adaptive strategy would be a good way to go on.