Nationalism means so enormously more than waving the most flags and killing the most people but it's not in the state's interest for anyone to see that so instead you are taught the Pledge of Allegiance rather than appreciation of the nation and its culture for its own intrinsic value. The result is now America is not a peacekeeper but a bully for improbable values, all the more improbable because the country isn't even really sure what they are.
In talking with people from anywhere, their cultures feel so vibrant and alive with the traditions and histories unique to them and fascinating to us because of finding whatever parts we are around the world. In Germany just now they are celebrating Pentecost for the next one or two weeks. It's not something which receives much attention in America and this tradition or any other has more or less equal value for defining what people are so forgetting it is rather a loss and seems a clear diminution of the culture.
There's so much a drive for everything to be the same, be equal, want the same things, etc but that means giving up many of the things we value the most. Jazz rarely gets a wide audience but forgetting that aspect of American life because not enough people live it is a singularly poor reason to let it go. In sum with every other aspect of uniquely American tales, it makes the culture and the real source of national pride.
Everyone must speak English and you can demand that all you like but the fact remains everyone doesn't so you can either roll with that or spend the rest of your life banging a drum for the stiff prigs who will probably never get laid. Oh yeah, let's hang with him, he will be hammering politics in your ear all fookin' night.
This is easily dismissed as an old man's rambling but old men have time to look deeper than whatever flash bang Megyn Kelly thinks is important. She won't just interview Trump, she will have a show to talk about interviewing Trump. Kee-rist.
So we look beyond.
America has had some of the most famous criminals in the world and I mean the ones which became legends rather than the serial-killing monsters in pseudo-legends but really simple horror stories today. Jesse James is one of the biggest, Bonnie and Clyde were others, and other countries have their own favorites as Australia has Ned Kelly and all of them love that brigand.
(Ed: secret love of anarchism!)
Maybe plus they really loved robbing banks.
Sometimes there's national pride in the bad guys but they have to be cool bad guys or we loathe them. The modern bad guys are evil, hateful, and gratuitously malicious; that goes all the way up to the Bank Kings in the CEOs. But, Jesse James, practically everyone digs this guy.
There are many, many more reasons for national pride beyond the simple acts of flag waving and shooting guns. The tragedy is so many are forgotten, particularly in America, in deference to flag waving and shooting guns. You will hear so much about religion in this spiritual wasteland but you will see relatively little celebration of it. We are not religious but we lament the dismissal of things which have been important possibly for millennia.
In talking with people from anywhere, their cultures feel so vibrant and alive with the traditions and histories unique to them and fascinating to us because of finding whatever parts we are around the world. In Germany just now they are celebrating Pentecost for the next one or two weeks. It's not something which receives much attention in America and this tradition or any other has more or less equal value for defining what people are so forgetting it is rather a loss and seems a clear diminution of the culture.
There's so much a drive for everything to be the same, be equal, want the same things, etc but that means giving up many of the things we value the most. Jazz rarely gets a wide audience but forgetting that aspect of American life because not enough people live it is a singularly poor reason to let it go. In sum with every other aspect of uniquely American tales, it makes the culture and the real source of national pride.
Everyone must speak English and you can demand that all you like but the fact remains everyone doesn't so you can either roll with that or spend the rest of your life banging a drum for the stiff prigs who will probably never get laid. Oh yeah, let's hang with him, he will be hammering politics in your ear all fookin' night.
This is easily dismissed as an old man's rambling but old men have time to look deeper than whatever flash bang Megyn Kelly thinks is important. She won't just interview Trump, she will have a show to talk about interviewing Trump. Kee-rist.
So we look beyond.
America has had some of the most famous criminals in the world and I mean the ones which became legends rather than the serial-killing monsters in pseudo-legends but really simple horror stories today. Jesse James is one of the biggest, Bonnie and Clyde were others, and other countries have their own favorites as Australia has Ned Kelly and all of them love that brigand.
(Ed: secret love of anarchism!)
Maybe plus they really loved robbing banks.
Sometimes there's national pride in the bad guys but they have to be cool bad guys or we loathe them. The modern bad guys are evil, hateful, and gratuitously malicious; that goes all the way up to the Bank Kings in the CEOs. But, Jesse James, practically everyone digs this guy.
There are many, many more reasons for national pride beyond the simple acts of flag waving and shooting guns. The tragedy is so many are forgotten, particularly in America, in deference to flag waving and shooting guns. You will hear so much about religion in this spiritual wasteland but you will see relatively little celebration of it. We are not religious but we lament the dismissal of things which have been important possibly for millennia.
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