Do people in France have flags on their cars? Do they sell clothing with the flag for Zimbabwe everywhere? Do people dress as their country’s mascot for every day events?
I’m American but I’ve travelled a lot and the only place I can remember seeing anything close to as many flags was Greece. And it wasn’t that close. Americans are absurd about flags. Plus, the Greek flag is aesthetically lovely and the American flag might be bottom 5 on pure design principles.
No one get offended. I’m not insulting my own country’s flag. I’m just saying, 50 fucking stars and 13 stripes is a design nightmare. The Greek flag is simple and nice looking in lots of contexts. This isn’t a comment about honoring the flag. It’s a comment about vexillology and design.
Don’t confuse patriotism with nationalism. Patriotism is love for one’s homeland, nationalism is a delusion of blood and soil.
Yeah, I’m a patriot, but I hate nationalists with a passion.
Patriotism: “What can I to for my country?”
Nationalism: “What can my country do for me?”
I see nationalism more as “My country is better than your country”
Which generally comes with “I am more important than those forigners and hence should be treated better than them” which is just another form of “what’s in it for me”.
Certainly my experience from living in Brexit Britain is that the kind of people who couldn’t accept criticism of Britain were also the kind who though they were superior to foreigners because of being Britons and expected to be better treated than foreigners for it, and that wasn’t just in their own country but also for example when on vacations abroad.
Although the former seems like it will inevitably slide into the latter.
We should aspire to be a good person in general first, and then decide if our nation is awesome or “we’re the baddies” after that.
Only when there are modern overpaid gladiators from different countries try to kick a plastic ball into the oponents net.
A.k.a. “Football World cup” and “Football Europa cup”.
OK, also when there are olympics.
And there are those eternal yesterdays that again would like to fly a red flag, with a white dot and a black swastica… those are still a growing minority. Lets hope ot stays that way.
Is Eurovision super patriotic? Never watched it but I get the impression
Eurovision… Oh, the singalong with the stupid outdated concept. Only when the german clown wins and when we give austria zero points.
Just kidding… I haven’t seen the pathetic nonsense for years.
In public spaces and every day life no.
Sports yes.
Pledging allegiance to the flag in school? That is absurd.
Yes! Every country has its own brand of nationalism. It just so happens that different country have different flavors of it.
Here in the Netherlands it’s definitely not as crazy as in the US. People will fly the flag on national celebration days or on remembrance day. And during international soccer tournaments the country will turn orange. But the only flags I see on cars are upside-down ones from angry farmers protesting against environmental regulations and from nutjobs who still think that COVID vaccines contain microchips.
People do tend to fly provincial flags and municipality flags sometimes tho. Especially in the best province, Fryslân (I’m not biased at all).
I think Americans should go answer that for themselves. As an exercise.
Most Americans can’t read. The rest you lost at ‘exercise’
I should be offended, but this is just too damn funny.
Generalize much?
OP’s being a smart ass, but I recently learned that their statement is true, for a certain value of “read”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States
There is much literature (heh) that quotes the same numbers, or near enough. So yeah, I’m going to say most Americans can’t read. And BTW, this is one of the most shocking truths I’ve learned in life.
Yeah, the US has reached an incredibly low standard of literacy for what is supposed to be a developed nation. The numbers on reading level are scary. Also look at how much people read as adults. We just don’t learn how and then we don’t practice during our lives. It’s a nation of partial literacy being kept together my hyper nationalism and smart phones to distract us with 6 second videos.
Yep, this is generations of slowly gutting public education at work.
The privileged kids get to go to fancy private schools, many of which are ironically now funded by the public (who don’t get to send their kids there). Everyone else goes to underfunded public schools, which have tragically underpaid teachers who run the risk of losing their jobs if they don’t give every student a passing grade. Teachers in struggling school districts are just shoving their students’ deficiencies onto the next grade up, which continues to snowball until you end up with a majority of high school seniors graduating with a 7th grade reading level at best.
In saying that, it’s not all doom and gloom, but it highlights a key disparity that affects some parts of the US more than others. Some US states actually have very good public school systems, up there with high performing countries in Europe and Asia. But when considering how bad the average is in the US, it means that there are a lot of states that are substantially worse than that, where things are just incredibly dire.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the lowest performing states are mostly in the southern US.
Removed by mod
France is particularly patriotic out of Western countries I’ve visited. Not an expert but it’s a bit of a hangover from the French revolution, they have a strong focus on integration and preserving their shared culture.
Turkmenistan has some amazing propaganda and surprisingly, interesting music on the propaganda channels. Never would want to go there, though.
The fuzzy hat horse sing-along segment goes surprisingly hard? 16:31, pre-stamped:
There’s a big difference between nationalism and patriotism though both can be displayed in similar manner. For example if you take a look at small european countries like the baltic states they are very patriotic and have flags on their cars etc. but they are not nationalistic at all.
So I think it’s unfair to equate them in this context even if reviewing vanity like flags and mascots.
Also, why does nobody here know that their mindless nationalism is weird? I’ve seen military guys stop traffic to stop their cars in the middle of the road and stand with their hand over their heart towards the nearest flag when they play the trumpets at the end of the work day. ( on a military base) But seriously, why would you stop rush hour traffic to virtue signal your worship of an inanimate object. Those people should not be allowed to use firearms. There is seriously something wrong with that. My coworkers did the same thing, but not while they were driving. It’s beyond bizarre.
You’re supposed to stop your car for colors. You don’t necessarily need to get out, but hence the rush to get there and inside before colors.
Oh. I didn’t know that. Most folks there are not active duty. Thanks for explaining. That guy must have been a new recruit to get out.
Yea, and gladiators were “supposed to” die for the glory of Rome. When are people going to get past pomp and circumstance? It’s fucking pathetic.
Nope. OK, maybe NK, if you insist. And of they can afford a flag.
Americans are weird with their odd interpretation of “patriotism”. They pledge allegience to flag and constitution as kids, and trample both with their feet once they are adults.
Like mentioned in another comment there is a difference between patriotism and nationalism.
I would add to that there is a difference between loving one’s country and being a fetishist of its flag or its national anthem.
You will find flags in all countries. The question is more what proportion of the population is obsessed with them?
I’m French and I can tell you that beside the far-right, who loves waving flags and singing the first few lines of the Marseillaise (most of them, like the rest of the population probably have never taken the pain to read the entire song, even less so to memorize it, too much of a hassle). For the most part, you will find flags on public buildings and offices. Seldom on private home/office.
Also, it’s visible during special celebrations, say, each year for the 14th of July (France’s birthday) some streets and stores will be decorated and, at least where I live (Paris), public transit will also have a little flag waving in the wind.
Last but not least, you will mostly see the French flags waved, this time en masse, during sport events. People will also proudly wear french colors on their clothing and on their face, or on their head (I fucking love this stupid hat, but Io don’t own one). But then you will also see the other countries flags being waved by their own supporters, and most of the time they don’t end-up killing one another ;)
Like I said, people barely know more than the first few lines of our national anthem, kids are not required to swear allegiance to the flag either at school. Some people are discussing about bringing that back but I’d rather see them bring back some traditional reading and math lessons, like in the ‘good old days’… when kids actually were taught something useful. Because we’ve been suffering from the same issue you have with your US school system: it’s falling apart, badly. Our kids aren’t taught much if anything. More and more of them can barely read or write, and they can’t do simple math. Let’s not mention getting any notion of civic education, history, philosophy (which would all help make a more informed & better-equipped citizen, which is not that silly in any country that is supposed to be a democracy).
That being said, even without a flag, we’re many to love our country, despite all its flaws, even those of us who criticize it vehemently. We just don’t need to show that by waving some cheap piece of fabric, or glue a sticker on a some car.
I have bookshelves filled with books on French (and European) politics, history and philosophy. Sure those are not flags I can wave on the street or glue on my car to show what a true patriot I am but, imho, their non flashy content represent France (and the many other EU countries) a little better than any cheap piece of fabric put on a mast.
That being said, I have a pair of socks with a french flag on them. Could that count a patriotism? ;)
No, we have broken off the Soviet union.
No, I was from Soviet Union
I think I misphrased my comment I meant to say that we are no longer in a dictatorship, so we do not have such propaganda
Britain (not the UK as a whole) has their moments, but its nowhere near the same intensity as the US
