we

Over the last couple of years I have become extremely sensitised to the word 'we' when used in relation to nationality/ethnicity (or even all of humanity). I really battle with it, and of course it's so incredibly ubiquitous I also often find myself using it, too, and as often as I notice that I correct myself, but it's not always possible.

I think 'we' is a massively exclusive term, which looks absolutely inclusive. 

I have particularly noticed it in all the anti-US fb groups I've joined in the last year or more. I'm not anti-US per se but I am anti-US provincialism, and like others in the group I have a hundred examples of times when Americans showed themselves to be extraordinarily ignorant of the world outside the US, which is the point of those groups ('This just in - The US is not the only country', 'Sounds like outlandishly misapplied USA-centrism but OK', and so on; all these people, presumably Americans, responding to fb posts/comments with 'this is the USA' or, and this is one that posters in these groups particularly love, Americans responding to posts or questions specific to other parts of the world with 'in Connecticut, we eat crayfish' or 'a beer at 18? You wait three more years like everyone else!' etc). 

But the non-US people in those groups can often be as bad. We helped the US win WWI, and so on. Ridiculous stuff about amorphously conceptualised racial/national constructs, which never stand up to scrutiny for a second, but they're so endemic we don't scrutinise them. My antenna hum even over stuff about 'in Australia, we take the attitude...' ie not even historical stuff substituting for what our ancestors (or people who used to live where we live now) thought or did, but generalisations about 'us'. 

Look, I am always up for talking about collective benefits but I think that the use of that terminology is damaging. Certainly 'we' don't believe anything, if it's a 'we' bigger than three people (even then, take it with a grain of salt). There has to be a better way to do this. Perhaps, it's a variation of the weird and somewhat irritating device of defining yourself as part of a particular group, so as to explain your position: most notorious is 'As a mum...' but also for men 'As the father of three beautiful daughters...' etc. So, 'as an Australian, I have been allowed to drink alcohol since I was 18', very specific (and also not about what Australians think but what law applies to them). 

More to the point, people talk about (for instance) Australians as a 'we' but even within that 'we' they take an exclusive viewpoint: 'we accepted Vietnamese migrants in 1975...' in terms of government acceptance, but of course now those migrants and their children are part of 'us'. The only thing that stops it being as legitimate to say of all Australians 'we migrated to Australia as refugees after 1975' is numbers. But it's true of 1.4% of the population, except those are both migrants and their descendants, so a lot of that 1.4% were born here and were part of the population putatively 'accepting' subsequent migrants. I appreciate that the word 'accepted' is dodgy, because of course a lot of Australians didn't accept certain migrant groups, and I suppose there is a weasel word 'we' in this regard - we, Australians, voted for our government who then acted on behalf of us. Although of course most Australians alive now were either not alive in 1975 or too young to vote (that's a guess but surely it's true). 

Am I right? Is 'we' stupid and wrong? It really feels like it.