Loving This Country

People who like to proclaim they love this country have a lot of funny attributes.

I'm not talking about the average citizen who goes about his everyday lie, pays his taxes, possibly serves in the military and exercises his right to vote.

I'm talking about those who feel the need to yell it out, generally implying that anyone who disagrees with them doesn't love this country.

First if you do love this country you would realize it is a land of free speech and free opinions, meaning not everyone has to agree with everyone else.  Failing to recognize that is hardly loving this country.

Second we are a nation of immigrants.  Very few of us are native Americans which means we are all immigrants or descendants of immigrants.  Attacking the more recent immigrants who are no different than earlier waves of immigrants is not loving this country, its attacking its very nature.

Third, our history is not all rosy.  Things happened that resulted in the near annihilation of Native Americans and the enslavement of millions.  We also saw a part of the country try to secede over the second issue, among others.  Not accepting our history is not loving this country, it is who we were, if not who we are.

We are clearly not the best in many areas, even if we want to claim we are number one in everything.  Many of our schools are sub-par and it shows in standard tests.  We have a lot of people who can't get satisfying work.  many of our citizens are effectively denied the right to vote.  Not everyone has access to adequate health care or the means to pay for it.  Our seniors do not all have comfortable retirements.  We could do a lot better and some countries do.

Love of country does not mean denying who we were, or who we are.  The country is the people in it, not the rocks.

The Nation's Soul

Politics for the most part used to be pretty simple, who was likely to make our lives better was the better choice.

This was primarily measured in economic terms since for the most part we agreed on some fundamental social policies.  Not everyone, but the mainstream believed in most of the same values, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Not universally but enough that we didn't see those values questioned openly.

A number of years ago, theories that used to be associated with fringe groups started going mainstream.

This coincided with the advent of cable and the internet, which allowed many more avenues for these theories to be publicized.

Whether it was simply an internal expansion or one fueled by external enemies trying to disrupt our society is something for the historians, but we started to see an us vs them set of values.

In fact one side was quick to argue that our values were under attack by forces and that "true" Americans had to stand up to those who wanted to destroy religion, patriotism, and ultimately America.

Many incidents, either real or imagined were highlighted to show how school prayer, gun rights, the Flag, and innocent unborn were under attack by mysterious forces.

Villains were identified, the liberal elite, the illegal immigrants, socialists, progressives and all those who didn't "fit" into their image of an American.

Our national soul was put in question.  As a nation of immigrants we once celebrated out differences, at least some of us did.  Now we started taking sides.

We need to restore our values and our national soul, however it doesn't seem like an easy task.  The first step would be to reject anyone promoting hate and an us vs them agenda.

All Americans and all people should enjoy our American values, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  How they do that is not cookie cutter, its what they want.

Send Her Back? Send Him Home!

One of the things that people who gather in large group like to do is chant.

Not being a psychologist, I can't explain why, but its fairly easy to get a large group of people to join in a chant.

This has been a staple at Trump's rallies with "Lock her Up" being the popular chant of last year.

While of course there was no real chance of that happening, the chant was popular being rhythmic and it at lest had some relevance in terms of the accusations related to the e-mail server.

We now see that chant replaced by an un-American and racist chant of send her back.  The fact that the chant is directed at an American citizen who happens to have come here as a child and at American Women who were born here is despicable.

All Americans have the right to criticize the Government and speak their minds, its part of free speech and freedom of assembly.  To incite a mob to demand citizens be sent away is just wrong.

The pretense of being non-racist is gone and we now have a clear picture of the underlying evil of the man.

I think we should adopt the more appropriate chant of Send Him Home.  It is just better in every way.

Nationalism

Nationalism serves the interests of the rich and powerful, not the people.  There is no real difference between a person based on the location of their birth, the differences relate to wealth and power.
 
Human history is really rather brief.  It wasn't all that long ago that the very idea of a nation simply didn't exist.  Going back to pre-history is of course fairly speculative, but we have examples from the historic period that confirm that we originally coalesced our groups by clans or extended families.

This is fairly obvious since the essential thing almost all humans share is being part of a family.  In fact in those times, not having a family to protect you most likely meant you died or ended up as a slave.

Of course over time the need to survive led to clans becoming tribes large enough to provide defense or in some cases expansion for their members.

Now tribes require leadership and a certain amount of loyalty.  It was loyalty that required you to consider people not directly related to you in a manner similar to the way you viewed your kin.  Of course one element that made that somewhat easier to do was that tribes tended to be self contained, where over time many members had connections through blood or marriage to most of the other members.

Now nationalism is generally viewed as an outgrowth of tribalism where the tribe becomes expanded and the loyalty for the tribe gets transferred. 

Nationalism because of its scope encompasses quite disparate groups, all of whom end up being loyal to some central idea.  At one time this was embodied in a king or prince who became the embodiment of the state.  However, whatever the symbol it represents something greater.  In fact its the very essence of this relationship that we acknowledge a greater good.

Now every member may have their own view of what the greater good is.  Its the loyalty that matters not the object to which the loyalty is given.  In fact nationalism prefers blind loyalty, my country right or wrong is preferred.

Maintaining such loyalty requires constant effort to convince the citizens that they are better off in this particular country.  In many cases the lives of a citizen in country x and country z are indistinguishable, but they are frequently told how much better off they are to be where they are.

It is also important to define a common enemy against whom the tyrant can offer protection. 

It is this us vs them that allows soldiers to sacrifice themselves for essentially strangers.  They serve the greater good, or at least they are convinced they do.

The horrible wars of the last century were in general caused by extreme nationalism and millions upon millions sacrificed their lives.  The actual differences between most of the countries at war were minor in that they shared common histories and religions as well as traditions.  Yet they vilified each other.

We are seeing a rise of extreme nationalism as some people feel that they are losing their national identity and view that as a negative thing.

It isn't, the ideal state of the world would be where we treat each other as brothers and sisters working for the common good.

The idea that we are playing a zero sum game is what allows them to continue this illusion, "they" are after what you have.  Yes, assuming you have more than them, they might want to have the same, but they want their own, not yours.

We ultimately need to be loyal to humanity and the earth as a whole, it is really a spaceship and we are all in it together.

Nationalism and Loyalty 3

One of the main cornerstones of nationalism is convincing your citizens that they are better off in your nation than in others.  Now we live in a world where there are quite disparate standards of living so its fairly easy for the rich nations to point out how people from poorer nations want to come and take your jobs and money.  It has also been fairly easy over the years to talk about how in other nations they don't have the same values as we do here.

Whether these arguments have any validity varies widely but they have been effective.  People want to feel they belong and the great appeal of nationalism is exactly that.  This is who I am and who I want to be.  The fact that for most of us is a matter of pure chance doesn't enter into the equation.

We all share the same human experience but as evidence in the many wars that have been fought is is fairly easy to decide that your national identity is more important than your humanity.  It is even easier to stir up hatred for complete strangers because they "want to destroy" your way of life.

After the horrors of the two World Wars there was some moves to globalization with the founding of the United Nations.  That organization continues but the degree to which it has succeeded is a matter of debate since nations remain fully sovereign.

We are actually seeing a rise in nationalism in many countries as a reaction to the globalization of trade.  We see the British vote to leave the European Union although the vote was close.  In the recent US election, one factor was that certain areas felt that globalization had led to the loss of jobs and opportunities and immigrants and refugees challenged our way of life.

It seems to me that the ultimate end of all this has to be more globalization.  It is clear that humanity needs to learn we all share the same basic issues and have the same basic needs.  It is not going to be a smooth path.  There are too many people who thrive because of the things that divide us.

As was demonstrated many times over the years, nationalism can also lead to internal cleansing to get rid of those who aren't like us and don't belong.  The idea that all people are created equal is unfortunately not a credo that most follow.

There is a saying that a stranger is simply a friend you haven't met yet.  

Nationalism and Loyalty

Convincing citizens to sacrifice for the good of the nation seems like it would be a difficult task, but between early indoctrination, constant propaganda and peer pressure it has a successful road map.

Consider the concept of sacrificing your life thousands of miles away from your home to help one group of people you don't know defeat another group for goals which are often ill defined.  If you survive you may get the privilege of killing complete strangers because they are "the enemy".

Now this is called serving your country and that is the noble purpose that inspires the action.  The fact that so many have died on all sides for this noble purpose is a testament to the success of the indoctrination road map.

If you simply consider the human condition it is the same for everybody, whatever your nationality or location.  We are born, struggle to survive and eventually die.  However there are perceived differences based on skin color, religion, wealth and politics that feed into a nationalistic story line.

They are different is the primary argument, how they are different varies.  In a country such as America, forged by immigration that means we encapsulate so much diversity, this adds a dimension to the argument.  However, the appeal to the dominant group and those who want to be part of that group can be successful.

We create myths about the past, like how every previous group of immigrants immediately dropped all their cultural norms and languages to assimilate.  Clearly there are areas in most major cities and towns in parts of the country where this lie is obviously false, but it persists.  In fact the typical path is based on a number of generations before assimilation is complete, although complete is a bit hard to define since certain cultural preferences persist for many generations.

Why and how the nation state arose is of course debated by academics and some theories are discussed in the link below.

http://www.columbia.edu/~aw2951/WimmerFeinstein.pdf

(to be continued)

Nationalism and Loyalty

Human history is really rather brief.  It wasn't all that long ago that the very idea of a nation simply didn't exist.  Going back to pre-history is of course fairly speculative, but we have examples from the historic period that confirm that we originally coalesced our groups by clans or extended families.

This is fairly obvious since the essential thing almost all humans share is being part of a family.  In fact in those times, not having a family to protect you most likely meant you died or ended up as a slave.

Of course over time the need to survive led to clans becoming tribes large enough to provide defense or in some cases expansion for their members.

Now tribes require leadership and a certain amount of loyalty.  It was loyalty that required you to consider people not directly related to you in a manner similar to the way you viewed your kin.  Of course one element that made that somewhat easier to do was that tribes tended to be self contained, where over time many members had connections through blood or marriage to most of the other members.

Now nationalism is generally viewed as an outgrowth of tribalism where the tribe becomes expanded and the loyalty for the tribe gets transferred.  The link below has some discussion of this.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-relationship-between-tribalism-and-nationalism

Nationalism because of its scope encompasses quite disparate groups, all of whom end up being loyal to some central idea.  At one time this was embodied in a king or prince who became the embodiment of the state.  However, whatever the symbol it represents something greater.  In fact its the very essence of this relationship that we acknowledge a greater good.

Now every member may have their own view of what the greater good is.  Its the loyalty that matters not the object to which the loyalty is given.  In fact nationalism prefers blind loyalty, my country right or wrong is preferred.

Maintaining such loyalty requires constant effort to convince the citizens that they are better off in this particular country.  In many cases the lives of a citizen in country x and country z are indistinguishable, but they are frequently told how much better off they are to be where they are.

It is also important to define a common enemy against whom the tyrant can offer protection. 

It is this us vs them that allows soldiers to sacrifice themselves for essentially strangers.  They serve the greater good, or at least they are convinced they do.

The horrible wars of the last century were in general caused by extreme nationalism and millions upon millions sacrificed their lives.  The actual differences between most of the countries at war were minor in that they shared common histories and religions as well as traditions.  Yet they vilified each other.

We are seeing a rise of extreme nationalism as some people feel that they are losing their national identity and view that as a negative thing.

It isn't, the ideal state of the world would be where we treat each other as brothers and sisters working for the common good.

Nationalism serves the interests of the rich and powerful, not the people.  There is no real difference between a person based on the location of their birth, the differences relate to wealth and power. 

The idea that we are playing a zero sum game is what allows them to continue this illusion, "they" are after what you have.  Yes, assuming you have more than them, they might want to have the same, but they want their own, not yours.

We ultimately need to be loyal to humanity and the earth as a whole, it is really a spaceship and we are all in it together.