Glad to see your sentiment. I’m so tired of the reflexive self flagellation of a lot of Americans. It’s often based in ignorance.
America is many things, has done many things. Some great, some not so much. Americans themselves should at least be honest about seeing the good parts even if nobody else will admit it. And if we're going to keep progressing forward we need people to be on board in good faith.
/soapbox rant over
I don't believe in national pride or even of sports teams. My loyalty is always conditional, as long as my ethics align.
I can imagine some Americans feel that way too.
Historically in many places religion has been a primary source of shared mythology. In America, despite prominent Christian religions, a strong historical shared mythology has been of our own founding. It does not matter that it is myth, it matters that it is shared.
What I want is when an American citizen goes into that theater at the US House of Representatives before the tour and watches the short film about the founding of the country, they should come out of it damn near shedding tears of pride in how great we are. Bullshit or not, the American Creed is a source of unity. That is failing, and I am sad to see it.
When everyone becomes strictly transactional, society has failed.
Consider the military. Few wars are actually worth giving one's life for. Since 1945 basically none. If the Communists had won in Vietnam nothing would have happened to America. Iraq was based on false pretenses, Afghanistan accomplished absolutely nothing. My own country was part of some of these misguided adventures and has some of its own wars where it definitely was the evil aggressor.
Or think of the Nazis who exploited the very concept of this nationalism to destroy half the world.
So no. I do think it helps social cohesion but when a state is using that cohesion for evil it does not deserve to be followed.
I think we should outgrow this petty follow the leader attitude and think for ourselves.
They did.
Like, why did America even get involved in that shit anyway? It was a French problem (and really, it was fair they wanted to kick the French colonisers out).
Man I'm an idealist today. Okay that's just about every day, thankfully. But nihilism sometimes tries to consume me too.
I like to work with others to make things better but they have to be aligned in values. I don't do unconditional loyalty stuff.
Sometimes I hear that it is because the right wing is perceived as strong on the economy, despite the facts showing that the left wing consistently performs better. Or that the right wing has better foreign policy chops, despite consistently starting wars. Or that the right wing is about smaller, limited government, despite consistently using government power to push their social agenda.
Maybe it was the pronouns thing.
Well.. some people do in fact fight back. You'll hear it on the Waking Up podcast for example. The issue is that Trump is also, on the surface, fighting back. Except he's destroying America instead of making it great.
I feel like in Europe its much more normal to say, Switzerland is doing X very well, Sweden is going Y very well and so on. Or even the US is doing Z better.