It's pretty easy to keep believing in an absolute generalization as long as you refuse to acknowledge any counterexample.

They wouldn't be able to treat themselves as good by default, and this is why they simply can't accept it and need, absolutely need, to discount bad people as "Not real Christians".

Unlike, you know, them. Who are real Christians and therefore good people by default.

Which is why bad people being Christian is so unacceptable to them.

People being bad in spite of being Christian is already bad enough, but people being bad BECAUSE they're Christian is just a direct attack to the core of their self-image.

Another story about the Mexican government that might be interesting for you:

www.ejecentral.com.mx/nuestro-eje/...

(They're charging an HIV activist that has spent years denouncing the lack of supply of HIV treatments)

And the reason people have been reacting at you, is because that sentence points at someone more involved in upholding the lie than in fixing the reality.

And yes, you say it's aspirational, but that seems like a fantasy Americans tell themselves to soothe their conscience and set themselves apart from the rest of the world.

What America is supposed to be has always been built on externalizing oppression and lying to themselves about it.

"This is not America", but it has been for two decades for the prisoners of Guantanamo. It has been for over a century for central American nations with governments toppled to favor American corporations. It has been for people in your own country for it's entire existence.

American exceptionalism tends to judge it's country by intentions and goals, as if it's fundamentally different from the rest of the world and built on higher values, when it's built under the same principles and, at best, externalizing oppression and sweeping it under the rug.

Let me tell you why you have been getting such heated responses:

Because, even if you claim that this is aspirational, the aspiration has always been very limited in scope.

The American Dream has always been more about appearances and exclusion tha about reality.

Bold of you to assume that carrying your passport will save you. They can shred your passport and disappear you just as well.

I have only read Redshirts, I probably should take a grab at the rest of his bibliography.