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I got two e-mails tonight, that had political themes.
One was a collection of quotes about patriotism. Like these:
I dislike the sort of patriots that the speakers above complained about. Those "patriots" are just blind flag wavers. America: love it or leave it.
The other e-mail was a grouping of "support our troops" messages. The last part was a photo of a Marine unit standing in a formation spelling out "9-11 - WE REMEMBER." You know that in order to be effective, our troops must have an enemy that they feel is worth fighting, right? Given that the proud troops pictured were in Iraq, what does that say about them? What did Iraq have to do with the attacks of September eleventh? Remember after U.S. troops entered Bagdad, and one guy placed the flag over the face of a statue Saddam? What was the story of that flag? It had come from the Pentagon on 9-11-01.
The message sent by our troops is clear: you ragheads better not fuck with us, and if you don't we're going to eradicate you.
One was a collection of quotes about patriotism. Like these:
Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate aboveI consider myself a patriot, but only so far as to say that this is a great country. I will not hold it above other nations. I will do my to keep this nation as it was intended to be, because that is why it is great. It is not great because Americans live here, it is great because it made us who we are.
principles. ~George Jean Nathan
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other
countries because you were born in it. ~George Bernard Shaw
A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by
common hatred of its neighbours. ~William R. Inge
I dislike the sort of patriots that the speakers above complained about. Those "patriots" are just blind flag wavers. America: love it or leave it.
The other e-mail was a grouping of "support our troops" messages. The last part was a photo of a Marine unit standing in a formation spelling out "9-11 - WE REMEMBER." You know that in order to be effective, our troops must have an enemy that they feel is worth fighting, right? Given that the proud troops pictured were in Iraq, what does that say about them? What did Iraq have to do with the attacks of September eleventh? Remember after U.S. troops entered Bagdad, and one guy placed the flag over the face of a statue Saddam? What was the story of that flag? It had come from the Pentagon on 9-11-01.
The message sent by our troops is clear: you ragheads better not fuck with us, and if you don't we're going to eradicate you.
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Date: 2004-01-22 02:33 pm (UTC)From:Flag waving is on the increase here. English sport fanatics have finally noticed that England has a flag and that it's not the Union flag that people used to wave on the odd occasions that people used to get the urge. This is good, because the only group who previously waved the Union flag was racists and now we don't feel bad about it, but it's also bad because flag waving is pretty pointless.
The down side of having a clearly defined nation (a written constitution, a short and well understood history, etc.) is that it does lead to the "love it or leave it" attitude - you know what the "it" is. In an undefined country (and we're undefined in an alarming number of ways) you have to reach a concensus, or at worst sweep the issues under the carpet, and no one's getting worked up over the big idea because we don't have one.