The Glade 4.0

And the other thing ---->

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In time, this too shall pass.

What the heck does that mean, exactly? America *is* foreign culture tossed into a bag and shaken, then baked. It's Irish and Mexican, Italian and African, Native American and British. And who is coming and insisting that we let their foreign culture "rule the US", anyway? Xenophobia is bad, mmkay?

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

That's not completely true. We do include a huge bunch of foriegn cultures, but over time a great deal of uniquely American culture has developed as well. Where do you think things like the Wyeth family of painters, Jazz music, and Southern/Cajun/Southwestern/BBQ-styles of cooking come from?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

FAIL!

For some reason you seem to have this warped view of American culture as a mosaic rather than a melting pot.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

/boggle So unless I'm prepared to "engage in serious debate or discussion," posing a food-for-thought kind of question is trolling? As I've said before, Khross, I'm not sure how or when I pissed in your Corn Flakes, but you really need to get over it.

Yes, you're trolling. This is a discussion forum. If you think the people on these forums are sufficiently "un-patriotic", then make an argument, cite examples, and indicate why. Don't hide behind your lame excuse of a "food for thought question". That said, I'll stop calling you out on your pretentious little douchebaggery when you show the rest of the forum participants enough respect to actually engage us in conversation instead of preaching sideways at us through slippery rhetoric and malformed presuppositions of correctness.

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Posing tangential questions challenging credibility based on a few select criteria... without making a personal contribution in the conversation ... I've seen (and undoubtedly done) worse, but I'd say it meets the qualifications.

Unless you think challenging someone's credibility ISN'T designed to evoke an emotional response.

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In time, this too shall pass.

That said, I always intended to post my own thoughts on the subject. I just posed the question when it occurred to me, i.e. before I had really thought through my own feelings. So, here's my view, subject to change as I, you know, process and learn from the conversation (shocking!).


I don't oppose the American government. I disagree with some of its policies at various points in time, but I think the system itself is just and workable, and I think American policies on the whole are generally as good or better than those of most other countries.


I have some trouble with this one. I think urban black culture mostly sucks; I have mixed feelings toward "redneck" white culture; I find artsy-fartsy liberals annoying; etc. But then when I think about "American culture" all the rough edges of the individual sub-cultures get smoothed over, and the mixture ends up being pretty great. I think other cultures get certain things more right than we do, I suppose, but taken as a whole, I generally prefer American culture to others that I'm familiar with.


I don't think this. Most Americans are pretty uninformed about government policy, global events, etc., but so is most everyone in the world. And I think Americans' morality is at least on a par with the morality of people from any other country, and far superior to that of people in many countries considering the amount of violence and oppression around the world.


Regarding this, I think DS is onto something when he talks about the theoretical principles of this country. As I said, I'm actually pretty damn impressed with the reality of the United States, but even when we aren't acting particularly nobly at any given time, the basic concepts, the animating myths perhaps, that underlie the American self-perception, are fantastic and are always there to appeal to.

Hm, it didn't strike me as tangential, given the discussion (prior to the WWII history stuff) was touching on the meaning of patriotism. And I have no idea whose credibility I was supposedly challenging. I get that I'm one of the few liberal posters here, so my comments/questions can easily be misperceived as directed solely at conservatives, but that's why I deliberately worded my question to be politically neutral. After all, people on both ends of the political spectrum can be accurately described as opposing the government, disdaining the culture, and thinking poorly of most people in the country.

If a spotlight were shined on any nation on the face of the earth, warts that may have been hidden will suddenly be exposed. I'd also say that there are few nations that has the spotlight more often than the US.

If I focused on the things about marriage I didn't like, if I tried to express my love in negative terms, I doubt I'd be married long. It's not the differences my wife and I have that anchors us within our marriage, it's the positive, expressed positively and acted upon positively. Negative feedback loops need not apply.

My relationship with America works the same way.

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In time, this too shall pass.

You rarely get around to posting your own "feelings" on a subject these days. When challenged, you cop-out and say you don't have enough time. Next time, you should answer your questions first, as a matter of courtesy.I think you have a questionable understanding of the word culture. Perhaps you can nail down what you mean by the term, since you're conflating several different uses into one that's neither academically nor intellectually correct. There exists no single American culture, at least not in the sense one can identify a culture among a most homogeneous ethnic group or national demographic. In fact, the only real truth about "American Culture" is that it is the aggregation of many cultures behind an ideology that may or may not be present in the "sub-cultures" you mention. I use quotes because the terms are insufficiently accurate. More to the point, you're only commenting on stereotypes filtered through your experience and calling those stereotypes "culture." So, I need some clarification here, because as I understand it: you like the Myth of America and are willing to forgive the realities, as you see them, in favor of that Myth.This is a dangerous argument; it is, in fact, the kind of argument that leads to xenophobia, cultural misunderstanding, and a general failure of communication in the world. And that's a problematic position to take, particularly given your disdain for certain obvious elements of the Constitution and those myths. But, that said, the language still speaks to a self-centered view of the world. You're judging everything else through your lenses without considering that the filters themselves are part of the problem. Quite honestly, I'm surprised to see the implicit nationalism in your statements. You want to judge the world by our systems, our values, and our behavior.

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Which was itself a tangent from the topic of a Comic book character, but I don't want to discourage tangents, I'm just identifying that one occurred.I'm not either... who's credibility WERE you challenging? I can only believe that it's the folks that felt your previous criteria accurately described their position.Challenging the "you"s here on how they can still credibly claim to love America based on any criteria may not be understood to be politically neutral. As probably one of the more verbal advocate of patriotism here, I didn't detect neutrality...but I didn't take offense either, since I don't find any problems of sufficient magnitude here in the US to challenge my patriotism.

Khross may thing there's this "Myth of America", but the REALITY of America is what people wake up to every day, what they're exposed to from that moment to the time their head hits the pillow, 367 days a year. It's the experience one has, and while I understand where he's coming from, in the end, we only know what it's like to walk in one pair of shoes. Someone telling me what they think the blisters are like when walking in shoes they've never walked in, well, I take it with large grains of salt.

Folks need to realize they can only talk using one voice.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Khross - You raise very interesting points in your substantive reply, but given that you just finished calling me a pretentious, trolling douchebag, it's kind of hard to pivot into a civilized conversation, so I'm going to leave it there.

Taskiss - Sorry my question came across as targeted and/or accusatory. I actually thought about saying "one" instead of "you" to avoid that risk, but it just seemed too formal. At the time I wrote the question, I honestly wasn't trying to call anyone here out, and I don't think conservatives are any more or less prone to the kind of attitudes I described than liberals are. Again, I apologize for not making that more clear in the original post.

Is OK.

Like I said, I'm not feeling any sting. Seems so many folks thing patriotism is something one should reward their homeland with if it does the stuff they like, and withhold it if it doesn't. Makes as much sense to me as rewarding one's spouse with fidelity or withholding it one feels slighted.

Oh, and formal is the way to go - people in on-line forums look for reasons to take exception, I have found. Being formal virtualises one's expression as much as possible.

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In time, this too shall pass.

And, as I said, when you manned up and made a substantive post on the issue, I'd give you a substantive reply. I called you out on a pattern of behavior that is quite frankly beneath you. If you change that behavior, I'll engage you in conversation. If you don't, then you're belittling your own value as a community member, and I'll have to smack you around a bit.

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Still kind of being a dick about it, Khross.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

"Fidelity" is an interesting choice of words. When I think of patriotism, I tend to think primarily of love, pride, a sense of belonging, and a desire for the country to succeed and prosper. Loyalty and fidelity (in the sense of supporting/assisting its actions and favoring its interests over those of other countries) are more like secondary effects that flow from those things. As a result, when the country does something one strongly disagrees with on a moral level, the pride and the desire for the country to succeed are reduced, at least with respect to the particular action in question, and if that happens often enough or on serious enough moral issues, even the love and sense of belonging could fade over time. Loyalty and fidelity, being contingent on those primary elements, would therefore also be subject to diminishment.

We've got 2 discussion forums here for politics. One is for Miss Manners posting, one isn't. This is the "isn't" one.

Quite frankly, whether someone is being a dick or not has nothing to do with the validity of their point.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Given how frequently your posts consist solely of leading questions and critiques of other people's comments, rather than statements of your own views on the subject, you might want to reconsider casting that particular stone. Heck, you're doing exactly that right now - instead of answering my question, you just turned it around on me and then critiqued my response instead of posting your own thoughts! Pot, meet kettle (with bonus points for the rudeness).

Perhaps not technically, but in practice I find that people who can't make their point without being rude and/or loud usually don't have much of a point to make.

I find that people who make this excuse are really just unwilling to deal with the other person's point, and using their dickishness as an excuse not to.

If I tell you that you're a worthless cocksucker for driving drunk (not that you actually do) and only a worthless turd would do something like that, is it any less true that driving drunk is a bad idea because I'm being a dick about telling you so?

People may be less willing to listen to a person who is being a dick, but in a lot of cases they're equally guilty of being a moron, and if they were less of a moron the other person would be less of a dick.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Then go play in the be nice area and stay the **** out of hellfire.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

That's where we differ then. I don't always "like" my wife, and I don't always agree with her, but that's usually due to transient emotional discord or just plain differences of opinion. I'll always love her and I'll always be loyal and faithful to her for as long as she's my wife.

I'm not subject to diminishing returns where fidelity, love and loyalty are concerned, and I can't imagine any impact to my patriotism - it comes from me as my contribution to my homeland, just like my love and loyalty to my wife is my contribution to my marriage. It's not contingent on what I get in return.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Yeah, I can see that too. I know I find it incredibly frustrating when I realize that someone I'm arguing with is both right and an a**hole. It would be dishonest to keep arguing the point, but it grates to have them succeed despite their dickish behavior. Whenever possible in such situations, I try to separate the two by conceding the point but explicitly calling out the behavior.

That said, I think rudeness and aggressiveness are often part of the point being made. For instance, politely saying, "I think you're wrong to claim X, because of Y," simply indicates that you think X is wrong, whereas, "How the f*ck can you think X?! Seriously, the only way you could possibly think X is if you're a f*cking moron who has no idea about Y," implies that X is not only wrong, but clearly and obviously wrong, which is a qualitatively different point.

In some cases that's true. In some cases the person is clearly and obviously wrong and simply obstinately refusing to acknowledge it, in some case it may not be so clear but the person is refusing to address the cricticisms of their argument despite it being stated umpteen different ways.

Perhaps another way to put it is that refusing to engge in reasonable discussion is just as dickish as using a lot of abusive language, just in a different way. Hiding your dickishness behind a veneer of civility doesn't make you less of a dick.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."