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I've never been a patriotic person. On the Fourth of July I'd get drunk and accidentally set my cousin's tree on fire with black-market fireworks like our forefathers probably wanted, but beyond that, I didn't really see the point of patriotism. Likewise, now that I'm back in America and with a generous prescription from Dr. Hindsight, I'm absolutely bewildered by how patriotic I got while abroad.

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I'm starting to regret all those tattoos.

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And that's the thing: I got PATRIOTIC. Like, animated-gif-of-a-bald-eagle-crying patriotic. There were some ways in which America was obviously superior to Australia; for example, they don't have Netflix or Hulu Down Under, which, in addition to forcing me to buy TV shows on DVD like some kind of medieval farmer, meant that I had to interact with humans a lot more, which isn't really in my wheelhouse. But there were a lot of dumb things I suddenly would have defended to the death: aerosol cans of cheese, Honey Boo Boo, the endless frozen food section at Safeway.

America, to me, is like a sibling: You don't have a ton in common and you keep hoping they'll grow out of this libertarian phase soon, but if someone else makes a joke at their expense, get ready for a good neck-punching, because no one's allowed to make fun of them except for you. And boy, does everyone have some jokes about us. Each one feels like a personal insult, and against your rational judgment, you'll leap to America's defense, because if we as a nation weren't there to answer the question "Can we deep fry and speed eat this?" who would?