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It's Time For Progressives to Reclaim the Fourth of July
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this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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I have an American flag hanging in my car. Friends of mine are so surprised by it that some have gone as far as "Hey, that's mo_ztt's car! Oh wait... it has a US flag and he's definitely not a Republican. Huh, I thought that was his car." They told me this after the fact and I was a little off-put by it (like naw dude, I'm allowed to like this country and dislike Trump both at the same time.)
No, actually, you aren't allowed to like this country.
Actually think about it. This nation was built by slaves on stolen land and it has never stopped committing atrocities. Why the fuck would you like this country?
Every "great" nation has committed atrocities. There are always evil men, there are always structures of power for them to grab the reins of. That's true in modern China, it was true in Washington then as it is now, it was true in the USSR and it's true now in Russia, as it is in the government in Ukraine.
Every body of people also has great and selfless people who rise within those structures, or in opposition to them. Martin Luther King was one, Gandhi was one, Abraham Lincoln was one.
To me, morality assigns on an individual level. It's not an excuse for any systemic evil or a reason not to fix it. Absolutely we should fix the problems and punish the evildoers as individuals. But refusing to acknowledge the many great things the US has done, because it's also done great evil, seems unfair to all those people who tried to work for good with whatever time they had.
America should not exist.
Do you know what a thought-terminating cliché is?
Well am I supposed to argue with your liberal idealism point by point?
tbh I didn't feel like it and still don't, but I'll say this
"America" is not "Americans". We just live here.
The reality is America was founded on atrocities and committed atrocities throughout it's entire existence and is almost certainly going to commit more before I get put into DeSantis's concentration camps or whatever. Don't fucking tell me how much you love this demon country when I'm looking down the barrel of fascism.
It's up to you. I genuinely didn't come in here aiming to argue with you or tell you you're not allowed to dislike this country or anything like that.
I do get it, to a certain extent. I'm just saying that there are plenty of people here who are trying to support and protect you. Slavery used to exist, women couldn't vote, police who killed people used to never go to prison, lots of things used to be true before they changed. You can either support and try to join with the people who are now trying to change things further, or you can leave for a place that really doesn't have a government and see how that works, or you can get ready for things here to get worse. Maybe way worse, yes; I won't argue with you there. Complaining and cursing at me on Lemmy won't affect that outcome though.
All of those things changed because people fought against this country. It had to be dragged kicking and screaming every step of the way, and until there is a fundamental rupture in America that is always going to be the case. I'm certainly not leaving, though! I'm right where I need to be. I just don't want to be told how great or good or likeable America is. It's not, and it's our job to make it so.
Right, I agree with pretty much all of this. I identify the people who did the dragging as "America" just as much as the evil they were fighting, so I talk about it differently, but I like what you're saying. If it makes you feel any better, I think we're coming to that fundamental rupture now, ready or not.
These people were also Americans though. They weren't outsiders. Both bigots and minorities are Americans. We can celebrate the Americans who fought repeatedly to achieve equality while condemning the bigots they had to fight against
America has in-groups and out-groups of "real" Americans and outsiders, and this stems from its legacy as a settler-colonial state; internal colonies of oppressed peoples and settlers that benefit from oppression. We have never achieved equality because this fundamental contradiction within American society persists, because it's foundational to America's government.
Of course, but it's also foundational to America itself, from the very beginning. Over time we've even seen waves of immigration go from out group to in group, like the Irish.
I just take the viewpoint that patriotism isn't blindly supporting your country. I see that as nationalism. To me, patriotism is celebrating strengths and progress, recognizing and condemning our faults, and advocating to fix those faults. It's looking out for other Americans and fighting for their rights.
Too often, I think we see America for its faults -- and there are very many of them -- and we forget that there's another America that's always tried to fix and address those faults. We can celebrate that as the true American spirit.
The "America" that's always tried to fix and address those faults is always at odds with the American government. American society only ever improves when American institutions and American society are challenged. You need to resolve that contradiction.
Stop clinging to your identity as an American. It's just lines on the map. You have more in common with a worker in Canada and Mexico than you do with your American boss.
There is ironically nothing more American than a group at odds with the government. The country was founded with great mistrust for government and an executive, to the point that the first iteration of the constitution had to be completely redone.
Yep. The founding fathers were extremely anti-government. Jefferson famously supported Shay's Rebellion; I think it's literally true that if they were around today, most of them would advocate for revolution, not protest. I think in their farmer-centric view, they would view the vast majority of modern Americans as de facto slaves, too timid to end their slavery.
It's not just ancient history, either. Something changed after the 80s, but as recently as one generation ago a lot of classically American things like "Rambo" and Bruce "Born in the USA" Springsteen actually got popular specifically because they were expressions of pure disgust at the American system. John Rambo was a homeless, psychologically destroyed veteran, abused by corrupt police, who literally fights a guerrilla war against the system. The end of the movie, if you haven't seen it, is him breaking down in a babbling, hysterical flashback to his traumatic experiences from the war, and then presumably getting arrested. There's no victory, and nothing good about the America that's represented, at the beginning, middle, or end. That's what resonated with people and elevated it to blockbuster status.
The enemy recast Rambo and "Born in the USA" as something else, so successfully that the origin is mostly erased. But the origin that America got so fiercely behind was fundamentally "anti-American," if you want to define that as meaning "against the system."
So what about the people who don't want to waste their lives trying to squeeze blood from a stone and who want a better way? Why are they not allowed to say no?
I think what I'm advocating for is the better way that you're talking about. I think. What do you mean by saying no / working for a better way?
If you're going to be that arrogant, why even bother? You already know what's best for all of us, and you'll use talking point after talking point and refuse to concede or acknowledge any good point we make to bully us into submitting to your opinion. Nah, we're good. I say no.
Why are you getting combative with me? I'm trying to agree with you right now. The ending to the argument I had with the other main interlocutor here was when I said, "I agree with pretty much all of this ... I like what you’re saying."
If you're upset because you want an argument, and for me to lose the argument, and me agreeing with you cuts that whole thing off at the pass, then IDK what to tell you.
To be honest most countries shouldn't. The problem we face ultimately is where do we go from here now that they do.
I'd rather they didn't tbh
Just about every group of people living in just about every country in the world "stole" it from the people who came before them.
Usually what happens is a sort of "new boss, same as the old boss" situation where the leadership changes but the people stay the same. Colonialism is a more recent invention and is especially insidious, because it seeks to replace the native population with an imported population through ethnic cleansing. Every colonial state contains within it the legacy of genocide - fascism is simply colonialism applied to the people within a country, instead of to foreigners.
Because America is the best country on Earth