You know, I like to think that showing why the horrors of war should not be gloryfied is a universal thing... but then I remember that one of America's biggest hero is a psychopath who bragged about killing hundreds of people just because they had brown skin and the government told him to do it.
If he slaughtered innocent civilians for kicks, you'd have grounds for calling Chris Kyle a psychopath, but he was just a soldier doing his job. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure he was never diagnosed with APD. As for his alleged racism, I'm not sure whether it's actually true. I've heard conflicting things.
If you're going to criticize him, be my guest, but I'd appreciate it if you'd focus on stuff he's known to have done, such as lying about what he did with the proceeds of his book.
Besides, American movies don't exactly shy away from showing the horrors of war.
Glory,
Saving Private Ryan,
Apocalypse Now, and
Black Hawk Down come to mind.
And even then, Grave of the Fireflies isn't even anti-American. It's just an all around message of "this is why war fucking sucks."
Depending on who you ask, that could easily be construed as being anti-American.
The internet keeps showing me that US citizens have a really fragile ego. Naturally every criticism of USA is seen as an attack that must be avenged. Often not by defending from the claim or disproving it. No, the usual answer is to make a hostile comment about the other person's country. But that isn't enough, even when no one means any ill will or hasn't insulted USA there are americans who look for reasons to be outraged.
Last week there was this one history discussion and when civil wars were mentioned someone started ranting that the US civil war was the most important civil war in the history and that is why every country in the world teaches about it during history lessons. When quite reasonably this was countered by saying that the French revolution and the Russian revolution were in fact more important and had global effects by giving birth to new politics (Modern democracy and communism gaining their first foot holds with those civil wars.) this caused a massive outrage with people complaining that Europeans were just butthurt and acting Anti-American because it is fashionable. Seriously, the only notable thing about the US civil war is that it was fought to preserve slavery as an institution at a time when most modern nations had given up on it. And we are taught about other civil wars and wars as well. I'm sure that the schools in USA talk about Pancho Villa and the civil war in Mexico don't they? I mean, knowing the history of your region and notable things on Earth is why history lessons exist.
Jingos are a fucking embarrassment. I think that a happy medium is best when it comes to patriotism, as is true with most things in life.
And I can't speak for the rest of the country, but I learned about the Mexican Revolution in high school.
