Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooal!

Someone with less than perspicacious timing posted this meme today.  I commented: "By contrast, the rest of the world is excited about ... soccer."  (At first glance, in fact, I thought that the topmost image in the meme was of soccer fans celebrating their team's victory against another team.  The flag-waving is something you often see in the stands at sports events.)

Most other commenters objected indignantly that they were Americans but they weren't asleep, they "can't stand Kim Kardashian and her big rump," and:

Can you blame us, we are so indoctrinated, fed so much bullshit, and removed from the truth in our mainstream media that it's hard to wake up unless you were born naturally more questioning, or have good friends that steer you where you need to go to think for yourself.

Ooh yes, without my friends to "steer" me I wouldn't be able to think for myself either!  A Latin American commenter replied that people are also indoctrinated there.  I'd add that people around the world are also obsessed with video games, cell phones, cars, TV shows and celebrities, sex scandals, etc.  The popular assumption that Americans are worse in this regard -- which, if it's true at all, is a matter of degree, not of kind -- is to my mind just the obverse of American exceptionalism: We're not the best, we're the worst!  Which is an equally pernicious form of indoctrination.