Why is patriotism something to be incredibly proud of in the US (and any hint of being unpatriotic almost a hanging offence ) while in some other countries it's almost a dirty word?
My impression is that the current climate (especially given 9/11) and the successive issue of immigration has tossed "patriotism" into the fore maybe more than it has been before. Look into histories of other nations and I'm sure patriotism will show up at different moments depending on what was happening. Maybe a recognition of "been through that, didn't work so well" in other places has a lot to do with a possible repudiation (for instance in Japan, its only recently that there's been a growth of explicit patriotism and the reason has a lot to do with North Korea...).
Where I come from the patriotism is demonstrated similarly to that in the US (maybe even more explicitly), so the rhetoric here doesn't surprise me, even if it does make me uncomfortable. Patriotism and nationalism are close if not straight up interchangeable and just as irrational. It's just a matter of degree. What I mean by this is that there's nothing logical about love for one's country. So
the greatest country in the world makes as much sense as the best mom in the world or the best dad in the world. It strikes me as a naive statement and given the rampagnt anti-intellectualism in the US, I'm not surprised at its currency.
Naivete can be brushed off easily, but when you're using that label "patriotism" to coerce people into agreeing because if not you somehow "don't belong," then it becomes a powerful tool for manipulation. I'm not a fan of that "us versus them" mentality.
ETA: Now I'm feeling guilty for the thread drift--so to give my .02
Is it like this in other countries?
How much is the media, and how much of the election is actually going to come down to trivialities and hearsay?
Or should these things matter, after all? How much does presentation count? Are issues like this really superficial?
What do you guys think?
I've spent a substantial amount of time in two countries apart from the States and in those two countries I've noticed a somewhat similar popularity contest based on trivial matter, mudslinging and corruption.
I can't speak from anything but my experience witnessing elections when I say that superficial things seem to matter in that they connect the candidate to the people and increase that person's overall likeability. I've seen dislike quickly turn into mistrust and that translates into less votes.
It's just hard to think of how people relate in a mass to what is essentially a constructed image of someone (b/c we don't *really* know the candidates right? It's all politics).
alcyone
(whose brain hurts from all that rambling)
