Trope-a-Day: Cultural Posturing

Cultural Posturing: All the Great Powers of the Worlds are prone to this – with varying degrees of justification (see, for example, Can’t Argue With Elves, when their sensibilities are particularly offended, and remember that these are the people who consider pride a virtue) – and have been since before your ancestors first oozed out of your homeworld’s primordial slime, so there!  (Also, specifically, the variant that runs, approximately, SOMEONE IS WRONG IN THE GALAXY.)

(In fact, it’s probably a substantial amount of the dialog at the Conclave of Galactic Polities, on a good day, and much of the rest is trying to shame people into doing things based on their Cultural Posturing.)