Pop 89: As humble as American pie
By Madonna Hamel
Lately, America’s cultural heroes are bumping up the “greatest ever” language about itself. Apparently the whole world, not just America, is blessed by its national documents and decisions. And while I’m not suggesting they could be “nice” like us, a bit of humility wouldn’t hurt.
In 2018, columnist Jack Holmes wrote, “Few things are more quintessentially Trumpian than using superlatives. It is an obsession.” He’s claimed to be “the greatest job creator” and “the greatest president that God ever created,” and, hell, “the world's greatest person.”
But the “best ever” obsession isn’t his alone; it’s a national obsession. And a compulsion. And it won’t be reined in, even — especially, it seems — when the evidence is to the contrary.
Promoters of American culture have long been feeding their fellow citizens, and the rest of us also-rans, the story that they are “the greatest nation in the world,” the place “where everybody wants to live,” “where nobody gets left behind.” If you haven’t watched Jeff Daniels playing a newsman in a YouTube clip from the series The Newsroom explaining why America isn’t the greatest nation in the world, you may want to, just to hear him rattle off the latest stats.
According to a recent report by the health-equity Commonwealth Fund in the States: “The U.S. has higher rates of preventable deaths and lower life expectancy than peer nations.” And according to the 2025 U.S. News Best Countries to Live report: “The U.S. has the fifth-highest incarceration rate globally at 541 per 100,000 people, just behind countries like El Salvador, Cuba, Rwanda, and Turkmenistan. The U.S. incarceration rate is significantly higher than other independent democracies.” And it’s ranked 35th in the overall 2024 Environmental Performance Index, which scores countries on environmental issues. And as for prosperity, to paraphrase Jeff Daniels’ character: where once America fought a war on poverty, it’s now fighting a war on the poor.
Every addict’s drug of choice is: more. Recovered addicts will tell you that one way to spot an addict is by their use of all-or-nothing, always-and-never, nobody-and-everybody talk.
Most addicts don’t recover from their obsessions and compulsions until they “hit bottom,” fall to their knees, and get humbled by a crisis that often has to happen. In 12-step rooms you’ll hear “getting humble” referred to as “getting right-sized and teachable.” But in America, it seems, when humiliations happen, the boasting just gets bigger and bigger — and on both sides of the aisle and the culture wars.
Ken Burns, in promoting his new documentary on the American Revolution, calls it “the most important thing to happen in human history since the birth of Christ.” And author Walter Isaacson named his recent book on the American Declaration of Independence “The Greatest Sentence Ever Written.”
The splashy talk gets attention, but it also adds to the “society as spectacle” ersatz reality that Marxist cultural theorist Guy Debord warned about in 1967, and Christian cultural critic Chris Hedges wrote about 42 years later in Empire of Illusion, where he describes American politics as resembling the Wide World of Wrestling.
Stubborn insistence on seeing oneself or one’s country as the “best ever” is the worst kind of blindness. It’s a myopic vision that can, in turn, support the kind of unfettered growth required for becoming and staying No. 1 — the kind that will force the wrong peg into the wrong hole until the whole effort crashes, and the whole structure crumbles.
My problem with “the greatest sentence ever written” is the phrase “the pursuit of happiness.” It is one thing to believe one has the right to happiness. It is another to make “pursuit” the focus of the enterprise. “Pursuit” conjures images of dangling carrots, of thirsts never quenched, of short-lived pleasures requiring newer, faster, bigger pleasures to replace them.
Addiction is as much about pursuit as acquisition. In fact, when it comes to sex and food addiction, neurologists say that anticipation and pursuit of the desired object are where the biggest hit comes from. And once the chase is over there is only emptiness (in terms of bank account and relationships), so the pursuit begins again. It’s how the brain is wired. And greed and gambling work the same way — they’re more about getting the money — at any cost — than having it.
Sometimes America seems like a country in hot pursuit of its fantasy self, which is a nation that is welcoming to all, yet at the same time proud of its “rugged” hyper-individualism. But you can’t be both. You are either a community that says, “Everyone is welcome, everyone belongs,” or you put all your energy into your right to achieve your singular, particular brand of happiness, at all costs and at anyone’s expense. You even have a right to be an addict, if that’s what makes you happy.
There’s a kind of sweaty, manic quality to the word “pursuit.” What would happen if you slowed things down a bit and replaced it with “process”? Process implies a journey, a pilgrimage, a sojourn. Pursuit implies a chase, a mad dash to the end and a belief that the payoff is what life is all about — product over process.
In fact, obsession with product is how AI became so appealing. The product is instant, the process invisible and non-participatory. Recently, Pope Leo beseeched AI technicians to slow down and use “moral discernment as a fundamental part of their work.” Tech mogul Marc Andreessen ridiculed the pope for his remarks and was promptly criticized by techs and non-techs alike. So, perhaps, the pope will be the sobering presence his fellow Americans need.
Wait a minute! That’s it — “Presence.” Instead of “pursuit” of happiness, how about: the “presence” of happiness? Be present to the simple pleasures surrounding you now, and save the “best ever” praise for mom’s turkey stuffing or your kid’s 100th dinosaur drawing, where hyperbole belongs.