See the 1947 US Army video: “Don’t be a Sucker”:

archive.org/details/DontBeaS1947

It’s always been a hypocritical ideal. Even the US Army acknowledged our xenophobic tendencies, and the constant struggle against them. That’s the point.

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…But I think the radical shift of the “attention economy” is what makes it feel like the ideal is finally collapsing. The population is sucked into doomscrolling Fox News (for example) at such scale that makes this US Army video feel quant. If they did the same thing today, no one would even notice.