A lot of the places basically just said “fuck it, we’re not letting them own this” and kept using the terms and symbols the Nazis co-opted. One of my favourites is a town here in Canada.
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Don’t forget the Mace of the United States House of Representatives.
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Weird that the salute was perceived as the only problem and not the whole disturbing ritual.
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I don’t personally have any issues with a national pledge or singing the anthem, as we did every morning in Japan. I am trying to understand the idea of globalism, as far as seeing it as a belief that every place is more or less equal. And that any sort of nationalism is bad. I can’t quite get there, but I also can at least understand that the things that we value might be a part of our national identity.
I don’t understand why you’d want to pledge allegiance to an accident of birth, even before the religious addition, but I’m a bad nationalist. Maybe people who’ve chosen to change a nationality, but I’m likely to do that, and it’s really only for the legal convenience.
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The Basque cross (Lauburu) is also very close.
Basically, those are all spirals.
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I don’t get the idea that I should care more about someone thousands of miles away in Massachusetts than someone 15 miles away in Mexico. I might feel more cultural affinity with other USians, and I appreciate all the ways in which I’m lucky to have been born here, but that appreciation is based on my own thoughts and deductions, and is constantly subject to revocation should conditions change. I dislike the blanket unconditional love for country, in favor of liking it when it does something good, and disliking it when it does something bad. The “my country right or wrong” flavor of nationalism means I’m supposed to turn off my brain, and I just don’t think it’s right to do that. That is enabling for bad people to do bad things. Politicians and hucksters are forever eager to exploit nationalism for their own selfish ends.
And I also dislike anything that smells of indoctrinating citizens with a militaristic mindset. If someone wants to ask how high when sarge says jump, that’s their business, but I don’t think that’s healthy behavior for normal people.
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The daily recital of the pledge of allegiance in public elementary school. Of course, I had no idea at the time I was being taught a ritual of American civil religion. Sure, prior to the late 1930s, the Bellamy Salute was a thing with a bit less connotation. I’ve read the 1954 “Under God” clause was added to emphasize the point we’re not “Godless Atheists” (“Like the Soviets”), which almost seems to make it as shallow, vacuous, and divisive a change as “Freedom Fries.”
When you throw enough ideologically-backed things like that behind the purpose of a public ritual it potentially becomes more of an element of political religion. The article suggests American Civil Religion is in fact a “Political Religion,” and I can see its point for saying so when taken to some familiar extremes. Is this what some aspire to make of the US system?
I think the reality is harder to characterize on a national level. Anyway, at the civil religion end of the spectrum, you perhaps have a shared sense of identity. At the political religion end, you have something that’s (at best) bitter, divisive, intolerant, depersonalizing, and mean.
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I don’t think the placement of the limb is an important aspect of children being coerced into routinely taking a loyalty oath.
How many elementary school kids know that they don’t really have to pledge allegiance to the state?
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I am pretty sure that we think in fundamentally different ways, but it is hard for me to articulate exactly why that is. Even if we leave the idea of colonialism out of the discussion, it is not unreasonable to recognize that some cultures thrive even in adversity, while others fail despite natural advantages. And it is the citizens of those places that make those things happen, working cooperatively in the positive cases. It does not seem to me that pride in being part of such a system is necessarily wrong.
I grew up and spent 8 years at an SDA school. I remember saying the pledge of allegiance daily in school. FWIW. Seemed like they were more concerned about Sunday becoming a legally enforced day of worship.
+12 Patriotism
Effects: “Congressional Gridlock” Entitles the bearer to immediately and purposefully get nothing done.
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Ooh, tell us which cultures are failures!
No, wait, let me guess …
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I never forget Clara Bow.
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I would rather focus on what some do right, which is a positive aspect of patriotism. I would say Iceland is a good example. Their natural resources include rocks, long winters, and geothermal energy, which is a nice way of saying that they have volcanoes. And even with economic ups and downs, they have a safe and egalitarian society, with a very high standard of living. Also one of the highest life expectancy of any European country. Universal literacy, almost zero violent crime, and universal pensions.
There are negatives, like any place, but those are some pretty good positives.
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My great grandfather had a left-facing swastika animal brand that he retired in the 30’s for the same reason.
You know, I think the dichotomy of good and bad nationalism is interesting. I honestly think a HEALTHY dose is a good thing.
It seems to me the people most resistant to something like this are also people who encourage sharing and cooperation and working together. But stuff like patriotism and nationalism actually ENCOURAGES all of those things. To do your part to make the country as a whole better.
Even though the communist nations of Eastern Europe and Asia more or less failed, and were oppressive, their propaganda encouraged everyone to do their part to make everyone’s lives better. They celebrated not just the famous cosmonaut, but the factory work who made the capsules, or the farmer who made his bread.
Note I said a “healthy dose”. Clearly one can go too far. But I always liked doing the pledge of allegiance as a kid. I said it with gusto! I felt like I was part of something bigger and better.
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Even though I swallowed whole the concept that the U.S.A. was the greatest and best nation on Earth when I was a child, and fairly unquestioningly absorbed the ideas of Manifest Destiny and the more-or-less virtuous necessity of westward expansion, even at my most jingoistic age, I was never comfortable with pledging allegiance to the flag, and to the republic for which it stands. I was raised as a Methodist, and as far as I know I never was taught that the Pledge of Allegiance was particularly idolatrous; nevertheless it always seemed wrong to me that we kids would be effectively worshipping a piece of cloth and promising to support the nation it represented, regardless of whether or not said nation was currently operating in the best interests of humanity at large, let alone its own citizenry.
Starting in kindergarten I’d stand during the Pledge, facing the flag with my hand over my heart, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak the words out loud.
I’m all for encouraging community and cooperation, but I think tribalism and jingoism cause way more trouble than they’re worth. I will support “my” country while its leaders steer it in a direction with which I agree. I will oppose it (or, more accurately, endeavor to re-direct it) when it disappoints or disgusts me.
Public rituals of patriotic displays strike me, as often as not, as sinister systems of control rather than joyful celebrations of community. But they really work in their guise as such celebrations. I get misty at even the most hamfisted Norman-Rockwell-meets-Michael-Bay rah-rah movie montages. I like parades and fireworks and even some Sousa marches.
But I can’t make myself like or love the flag itself.
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On the other hand, there are practices the Nazis pioneered, that we’re unashamed of mimicking:
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