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For quite some time I was suspicious about the idea of patriotism and now I pretty much despise it.

Main problem with patriotism is that by itself it offers no guidelines or safeguards. It is just about blind support of "what's ours" and "us versus them".

Your vision of your nation core values might be fine but for society in general this can change over time. It is not like Hitler always ruled Germany but at some point it became patriotic to follow him and those who resisted (or even questioned) became traitors.

Patriots were in KKK and they were in Soviet NKVD. Nazis of all breeds are patriots. All wars are fought by patriots of their respective sides. Patriots made 9/11 happen. Almost every act of terror or atrocity is seen as patriotic by someone.

This is why I would rather reject patriotism outright and stand for specific values and ideals, not abstract "serving the nation".

#JustSaying #thoughts #patriotism
I agree, I never liked the patriots I met...the were radical in a bad way. It is like being neck deep in a bad religion....
Patriotism is a to nations as religion is to gods. Neither are good things. They are designed and encouraged to create that "us and them" scenario that has killed so many on this rock for the last few million years.
What I find more often than not here in the United States, regardless of location or political affiliation, is deep disapproval for lack of patriotic display. There are several "patriotic" holidays here where I go out of my way to avoid public gatherings since refusal to participate in token rituals is often met with rebuke.

Since "patriotism" is a gentler word than "nationalism", many find it less offensive. I always use the term "nationalism" in discussion, if someone decides to challenge my lack of "patriotism".
@Robert Dinse Yes, the connotations of patriotism vs nationalism are not lost on me; it's instructive and useful to examine these two sides of the same problematic coin.
@pianomad Well there are aspects of my country I love, and aspects I do not. It was founded on the notion of freedom, but that notion was not all inclusive at the time of it's founding. If I were nationalistic I'd go with the non-all inclusive version but I don't like that version, so I go with what I believe is best for my country which is the all inclusive version (women and all skin colors), my view, that is patriotic. I do want the world in general to be a better place but I do not feel the US should play world policeman. I also don't think Agenda 21/2030 is best for the world or humanity.
I am actually uncomfortable around patriotic people or gatherings or displays. The reason being is that this same patriotism has ALWAYS been used by the governments of this world to "fire up" the citizenry in order for mothers to more easily accept the sending off of their children to die in wars.

In the above case, patriotism is simple used as propaganda. The screams of stadiums full of people yelling U S A, U S A, U S A gives me the heebee-geebees.

Sorry... I'm a child of the Vietnam War Era. I saw this up close and personal. I saw how the government manipulated the populace to believe that the U.S. was actually doing something good in Southeast Asia. It was ALL a LIE.
@V. T. Eric Layton I am also a child of the Viet Nam era but I guess my take on things is a bit different than yours. In my view, part of being patriotic is the responsible government of your country to avoid such things. I.e., if our country goes to war and it's not a war of defense, we all share a part of that responsibility and guilt. I was just coming of age near the end of Viet Nam war but have been an anti-war activist since that time. It is difficult though because the "pro-war" folks seem to switch parties about once a decade so who to back and who to oppose becomes very confusing.
...what I believe is best for my country which is the all inclusive version (women and all skin colors), my view, that is patriotic. I do want the world in general to be a better place but I do not feel the US should play world policeman.
I stand with you in this, brother.

"...what I believe is best for my country [and the entire world]..."
If the concept of patriotism can be so fluid as to have entirely different meanings from one person to the next, then I'd rather avoid it as a litmus test for personal integrity.

American athletes taking a knee during the national anthem.

American schoolchildren before World War II reciting the Pledge of Allegiance while doing the Bellamy Salute.

I don't know what it's like in other countries (although I suspect it's similar); at least in the U.S., patriotic grandstanding gives us a free pass to avoid hard questions
@pianomad I don't think it does, I think it OBLIGATES us to ask the hard questions as the well being of our nation demands it.
...in the U.S., patriotic grandstanding gives us a free pass to avoid hard questions.
Sometimes, @pianomad, sometimes. :(
Sadly, the problem with any "ism" is that they are utilized and overseen by humans. Corruption and greed will destroy even the most perfect ism.
@Robert Dinse Unfortunately, your version of patriotism is not common. What I see as commonly accepted patriotism in practice makes me less inclined to identify with it. If, at sporting events, you are largely rebuked for not standing with your hand over your heart during the national anthem, then the hard questions are being overlooked. There’s no advantage in redefining a patriotism that bears little resemblance to what an overwhelming majority regard it to be. Someone is just as likely to accuse you of being unpatriotic for asking these very questions.
@pianomad Hopefully we can just agree to disagree.
@V. T. Eric Layton+1 to all your comments! It is rare when I can't find something to disagree on but this is the case here :)

I don't know what it's like in other countries (although I suspect it's similar); at least in the U.S., patriotic grandstanding gives us a free pass to avoid hard questions
It is certainly popular excuse for that, @pianomad, and I think this applies to many nations. Currently we have clear escalation of patriotism hype - which is especially noticeable right now as 9th of May holiday gets closer and it is when patriotic propaganda peaks.
So I think we need to invent something entirely new
When I think about this, @Robert Dinse, so far I come to conclusion that right now we don't have to invent something radically new. I don't find capitalism and communism unnatural. Capitalism in the simplest form started to happen as soon as humans discovered they could exchange goods and services. Communism happened even earlier and it is still natural form of distribution in small and close groups like families. All attempts to get rid of either completely were traumatic failures at best.

All societies have elements of both. Maybe the key is in finding the right balance and working on ethics and culture in general.
@Alexander@pianomad@V. T. Eric Layton Perhaps and it does seem Soviet Union and China have gone to a mix of both and to some degree we still have totalitarianism in both as we do here.
@Alexander It is helpful to draw comparisons between populations of different countries and realize we are largely alike. Or even between populations within countries. We are conditioned to regard patriotism as healthy and positive, while overlooking this conditioning for the exclusive benefits it provides the ruling class.

@Robert Dinse I don’t disagree with your sentiment; I just think there’s a different category it can be placed, one that isn’t as sullied by all the injustices that have taken place under patriotism’s cause.
@pianomad This brings me to another thought which bugs me for some time. I can't say patriotism is never positive. People do get motivated by patriotic ideas to do good things - there are countless examples of that.

However it seems that everything good people do out of patriotism can also be inspired by other ideals. E.g. when disaster strikes you can help victims because they are your compatriots - or you can do the same because of compassion, kindness or simply uniting for collective survival.

But when something bad is fueled by patriotism - e.g. people are fired up for unnecessary war conflict - it always seems to me that it would be much harder or completely unlikely to happen without this sort of propaganda.
@pianomad@Alexander There is no shortage of labels under which injustices have taken place because there is no shortage of injustices, but perhaps it is the injustices we should be focused on and not the labels?
Of course.

But I think that if we want to understand why these injustices happened it is important to get motivation of ordinary people who were involved. And yes, it is easy to just fall back to labels instead of trying to understand tendencies.
Maybe the key is in finding the right balance and working on ethics and culture in general.
Yes, I've been harping on about this since forever. I feel that all the "isms" have some good points. What the world - and I say world because I do not believe we can do this as separate nation-states - needs to do is gather all the good from the isms of the world and utilize those features to create an ism that we can ALL live peacefully, safely, and happily with.
Yes, I believe we all agree more or less in this thread, but we have different ways of talking about it. I find this to be the case for most things that people find divisive.

Humans across the globe are behaviorally more similar than different, which makes tribal divisions so fascinating to study. From an evolutionary standpoint, tribalism figures predominantly. It would be beneficial at this stage of our evolution to keep a very close eye on our tribal instincts. From tribe to tribe, each person feels just as strongly that they are the righteous.

Were I to be born and raised in Russia rather than the U.S., my patriotism would potentially be just as strong, while being at polar opposites in terms of national objectives as those outside my borders.
@pianomad I think it is simply the fact that modern humans, and for that matter our hominid predecessors evolved for hundreds of thousands of years as small groups of hunter-gatherers, then someone figured out agriculture and suddenly we had spare time on our hands for things other than food. This lead to larger populations and larger groups for reasons of efficiency but we haven't evolved to fit well with our new situation.
It is just about blind support of "what's ours" and "us versus them".

And history shows us that that always leads to isolation and tension, always. I firmly believe in "united we stand", and I see "we" as mankind as a whole. A bit of national pride is fine, as long as it doesn't make you think that your tribe is any better than all the others.

I get that proud feeling when I read in the history books how our little country astounded the world when we built a dike through the sea ("Afsluitdijk") or a dam that could be closed when needed ("Oosterscheldekering"), but I realise that other people in equal situations would probably have come up with something similar.
@Hans van Zijst I think there are things each tribe does well, and things each does poorly. If we could learn from each other to all adopt the good points of the other maybe we'd have something.
Exactly. And for that we should realise that it's basically a zero-sum situation: my tribe can be better at X than tribe B, but tribe B can at the same time be better at Y than my tribe.

The kind of patriotism that @Alexander talks about, it the kind where you firmly believe in your own superiority and look down on the rest.
@Hans van Zijst@Alexander Well this is a problem with getting hung up on labels when the same label means different things to different people.
I'm sure you have a different definition of patriotism ;-)
@Hans van Zijst There are things I think my country does well and there are things I think it does not do well. The two party system which switches who is in charge every 4-8 years is a good example of what it doesn't do well, because when each party undoes any progress the other made, well the net result is no progress.
In theory, the two parties were supposed to be independent. . . practical reality does not live up to theory.

the media and the Democrats have been pushing a lot of terminology around, labeling anyone who disagrees with them "patriot" or "white supremacist" (along with some Afro-American celebrities who are now "multiracial white supremacists"), anyhoo, I would like to take this opportunity to say I never liked Mr. Trump. Didn't watch his TV show. I think he is loud, boastful, and unrefined. But I voted for him. He is one of the few political outsiders to have made an impression in the gray putty-like stinking bureaucracy that is Washington, in my life.

I do not suffer from "TDS". So now, I am a Nazi, a patriot, and also someone who spreads "Russian disinformation" on the web, because I chat with people who are known to live somewhere in the RF.
@BR 549 ☎ Well I feel pretty much the same way. But I'd rather someone crass who tells us what they're thinking than someone who lies through their teeth to achieve their agenda.