Thank you for post #113. But I think your attempt to inspire reflection is a hopeless cause. I don't know where the blowhardism comes from. I wasn't raised around people like that.
I could float a few theories, but they might be just a more refined version of blowhardism.
Perhaps in the midst of this "Last Remaining Superpower On Earth" nonsense there is a terrible insecurity. Or a frightening, not-fully-formed consciousness that it is all behind us; that the things we left behind and threw aside in our drive to "defeat" the Soviets were, looking back on it, too precious. That we should have held onto them because without them there is now--to paraphrase Stein--no "there" there.
Ooops. There I go--"blowhardism" and all that.....
I am glad to get your reaction to what I thought was valid and relevant information. I can't believe (even though I've heard it my whole life) that French people are supposedly cowards because they always surrender without a shot. (Well then who killed 1,700,000 French people in WWI and 610,000 in WWII, both figures including civilians)? This kind of sneering arrogance is also behind the standard response I have gotten when mentioning 20,000,000 Russian dead in WWII: "Oh, thery were all drunk on vodak and shot each other." It makes one wonder about the future of Western civilization when the sacrifices of allies are ridiculed and denied.
In the meantime, I think of you as the Miss Manners of Free Republic because of your style of writing.