Nations who have the capacity to make fun of themselves and take derision in stride, take away the potency of such attacks. Caring about inconsequential stuff is what makes it meaningful.
Furthermore, the Venn diagram of these types of nations is a circle when compared to the type of nations who are capable of compartmentalizing hostility and objectivity, in the sense of commending their adversaries for correct decisions, rational strategy and laudable achievements even in the case of being in the receiving end of it even so far as to confer the honour of according them the highest form of flattery, i.e. imitation (an act which obviously constitutes studying and learning which are diametrically opposed to the reaction of illiterate societies to defeat, literal and figurative, which results mostly in them burying their head in the sand and caricutarizing their adversaries, thrice slaying their foe in their imagination as they are left in the dustbin of history).
P.S. notwithstanding the fact that the latter attitude sometimes has the psychotherapeutic effect of consolidating a community in defining itself more rigidly, making them more resilient in exilic situations (cf. The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein); but it has to be said, this doesn't seem like a reliable strategy.
