On Patriotism

[melon]

I really no longer see the point to talking about the war on this forum. Anyone who criticizes the war is quickly dismissed and no one even looks at the original posts anymore. I think, from now on, I'm just going to cut and paste the expected responses.

Can people perhaps get it through their thick skulls that not every post criticizing America is done by anti-Americans? A year ago, conservatives believed the government was evil and needed to be restrained to prevent it from infringing on everyone's rights. But now that we have a Republican in office, I see that big government is okay. However, that "big government" has done many questionable foreign policy actions during the last few decades, and, rarely, is it for anything else than selfish reasons--meaning that as long as the enemy is killed, it doesn't matter what happens to the nation we targeted afterwards.

Sept. 11th hits and now the revisionism starts. Vietnam, suddenly, is glorified. America is now the world's moral crusader, protecting the world against evil. Now it has never been wrong. And if you question that, you're evil. You must love terrorism. You must hate America so much that you should move to another country. And it's attitudes like that that have been turning me off to this forum as of late. No shades of gray it seems; just black-and-white extremism.

I've survived through many ideological shifts on this board, but this one is quite the most disconcerting. I think I know why I've disliked patriotism in general most of my life. It's not the fact that one loves their country; it's all this baggage that comes with it: intolerance, revisionism, supremacism, etc.

To quote a line thrown at me, "Get over yourself!"

Melon

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"He had lived through an age when men and women with energy and ruthlessness but without much ability or persistence excelled. And even though most of them had gone under, their ignorance had confused Roy, making him wonder whether the things he had striven to learn, and thought of as 'culture,' were irrelevant. Everything was supposed to be the same: commercials, Beethoven's late quartets, pop records, shopfronts, Freud, multi-coloured hair. Greatness, comparison, value, depth: gone, gone, gone. Anything could give some pleasure; he saw that. But not everything provided the sustenance of a deeper understanding." - Hanif Kureishi, Love in a Blue Time

[Matthew_Page2000]

Yes but Melon, the only reasonable response to intolerance, revisionism and supremacism is to state you opinions all the more forcefully.
The folks who are glorifying Vietnam are the same people who were always in favor of that sickening bit of American history. And haven't you recognized that a great deal of what passes as patriotism is in fact frightened and hurt people trying to find something to hold onto? And that a vast majority of the people for are showing their "patriotism" aren't doing it in the ways that you are most concerned with?

Two disturbing bits of fallout from the 9/11 attacks:
1.) the zealotry that you are concerned about.
and
2.) People taking this moment as an opportunity to take pot shots at America.

MAP