An old comic that feels oh so relevant in this tumultuous election year.
Source: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/an-important-distinction
this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2024
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Nah.
Patriots would be there waving a giant flag saying we’re the best house ever, despite not actually being involved in building the house or having anything to do with the state of it outside of living in it.
Patriotism and nationalism has zero place in society.
Not true. Patriotism is wanting and seeking the best for your country. Because our society relies on those physical divides, patriotism would actually improve society. Nationalism is deciding that whatever your country is doing already is the best simply by virtue of self-identification. There is no desire for improvement outside of an individual perception so it, functionally, can never offer any improvement for society.
One is potentially beneficial. The other is cancerous.
Strange, nationalists in Europe have a lot of ideas about how to change their various countries.
Only in that they want to move it to a more extreme version of what they already perceive it to be. They are not looking to change it based on any meaningful measure. Nationalists are almost always conservatives.
That's true.
I was reading a nutter manifesto from the Heritage Party in the UK earlier... It is a hodgepodge of animal rights laws that are a mix of actual animal rights and outlawing Halal and Kosher slaughter, encouraging free markets and nationalising railways and utilities, being free speech and personal freedom but LGBTQ people can't have families or be spoken about, want to invest in the military and especially navy but also apparently are anti-war and want to cease support for Ukraine.
One is cancerous, the other is a benign tumor (for now).
How? That statement means nothing unless you explain it.
Patriotism, as long as it stays just that, is probably not going to do much damage. It's just kind of there and annoying, but not directly dangerous. But it is still a ridiculous concept to be proud of the arbitrarily drawn lines within which you were born, and being loyal to them simply because you were born there. That doesn't mean you can't like your country and want it to prosper. But emotional attachment to and positive attitudes towards a nation by default is cringe at best. Praise a country if it does something good and critisize it if it fucks up. But why would you give one country special treatment there? And patriotism is never far from being exploited and turned into nationalism at the slightest inconvenience. Sometimes, it doesn't even take an inconvenience, as evidenced by football right now.
What in the fuck are you on about?
It’s not pride in the lines drawn, it’s pride in the positive things that your community does on a national scale. That’s the point. You take the good things that you see elsewhere and you decide that you want to emulate that.
That's not true, Bernie Sanders campaign had a wonderfully wholesome and inclusive version of patriotism which they used to great effect:.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nwRiuh1Cug
...and he also talks about his nationalism when deriding the Koch brothers:.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf-k6qOfXz0
So like most things it depends on when AND HOW they're used.
Ok so let's entertain the opposite of patriotism and talk about self distane what is going to drive you to fix the crumbling rotting foundation or leaky roof because who cares if this crummy house rots and collapses on me if you don't care about your county then you won't have the drive to maintain it sure some might but those people who don't need motivation to do things are rare and far between if the world is hopeless then what hope is there of fixing it
Is pride the only reason you take care of your health?
Because the motivation to not live in a shit place should be that you wouldn’t want to be living in a shit place, not because you think it’s great.
People with no or low self-worth are way more likely to neglect their health than those with high self-worth. Pride is a huge motivator for taking care of your health.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC194072/
People often don't take care of things they aren't proud of. It doesn't matter if it's clearly in their best interest to.
Yup. The main difference between a patriot and a nationalist - or fascist - is a few years and an opportunity.
Last time I checked, we were able to deploy the Office of Censorship to censor US Postal Mail. Conscript Disney and Loony Tunes to build up a massive database of wartime propaganda. Use it to influence the entirety of the US Civilians. Use it to drum up support for War Bonds to help expand the US Debt to pay for the war, raise taxes to 90% on the highest end and build a better country while defeating both Fascism and Communism.
We, as a country, decided that desperate times called for desperate measures. And not only that, we also got rid of these dangerous emergency powers (of explicit Censorship / War Information / Propaganda) before we corrupted our society into an irreversible state.
And therein lies the problem with people who just yell "fascism" whenever they disagree with someone. Yall obviously don't know the history of this country.
Why do you assume op is an american? Not everything is about, or from, or related to, or on reference to, your failed state lol
If you're not American then we don't have any shared political system for which we can improve America. And therefore we have no serious system to help each other out.
None of this works unless we're working to build the same thing or same concept.
Again, why are you even talking about america? I certainly am not, and the op is just a generalized patriotism vs nationalism comic. The above commenter you replied to originally makes no indication they are referring to america either.
I get it, your system failing is a hot topic for you, but outside your bubble nobody knows or really cares about the inner workings of your government, beyond which senile capitalist you eventually elect to change nothing for the better.
Because this is a topic about Patriotism and who is actually going to help my country. And building a culture that encourages people to help my country.
I'm happy with "Americans" being my bubble. I honestly don't need to care about others, and as you point out there's plenty enough to worry about if we keep it to Americans alone.
SMBC-comics is obviously itself an American comic strip as well (A PH.D who lives in USA in any case), so you're coming over here to talk about an American comic, talking about American issues that's bringing up American political discussion and... like shitting on it? Okay, no one asked you to come over.
Now my question to you is: what are you doing in this topic? Are you seriously trying to discourage me from improving the country where I live? Or are you trying to say your country is better or something? I don't even know what your perspective is.
I know you skimp on your education system, but do you not understand my words? Patriotism doesnt automatically mean america. This isnt about who or what or how your country can avoid going full masks off fascism, this is a semi serious comparison between nationalism and patriotism in a comic format.
And if you want to talk to Americans about american problems I suggest a less international community dedicated to such musings, instead of self centeredly derailing a random, at best tangentially related comment section.
My point is that your entire perspective is already warped. You have no way to get me and you to communicate and effectively work together. The very fact that you and I are disagreeing is the very point I'm trying to make.
Now an American who discusses things with me, that's different. Because we can at least hold commonality between our country, and both of us would benefit from our country moving forward and progressing.
Exactly. You hate us, look down upon us, etc. etc.. That's fine. I'll work with the people who are willing to talk with me, work with me, and think about the betterment of our country. I honestly don't need people like you in my life.
This is a discussion about Patriotism. IE: things we do for the love of our country. If we don't share a country, there's not much we can share being Patriotic about, now is there? And thus, the discussion goes sideways and there's no hope of us ever possibly coordinating with each other.
Alas: such is life.
Of course you can discuss patriotism even with people who are not patriotic, or who are patriotic for different things. That's what this whole post is for.
It looks to me like the point of the comic is to draw a line between Patriotism, a basic technique for getting your fellow countrymen to help build the country better... and Nationalism, a technique for getting your fellow countrymen to hate each other and turn violent.
Followed up with a bunch of people who don't even understand the point to "Patriotism" to begin with.
We need to build a shared culture so that we can work together.
My house will become the best house should be a message we all can get around. Otherwise, why should I work with you to build society?
If you don't like shared work or shared culture to begin with, it's a bit problematic in that your own political ideologies are destined to die. At the very minimum, your ideology must be self sustaining.
Why this house should be the best? Why make it a competition? Who cares about the house?
We care about the people living in the house. And about the people living in other houses too.
The house in this case is a metaphor for the politicians, laws, community, etc.
You want people to take pride and improve all that. You want friendly competition there. And part of it would be, "We are the best house because we help other houses improve"
It's a stepping stone to, "We are a commune" ie "We all share this world and should take pride and improve it for everybody" - It's easier to take pride in and improve your own home first so you get to the point of, "Others should get to share in this and we have so much, let's help others make their homes as great as ours"
I may be dumb, but for me the metaphor is for the nation. Or the mention of patriotism against nationalism makes no sense.
And I don't care about nations. They're a tool used to divide people.
Yes it's easier to improve my country than others'. But I don't need pride for that.
Good luck building up a coalition of people who will cooperate with you.
And worse: good luck politically defeating those who are smart enough to use basic psychology to coordinate the masses. Its not evil to do so, its just practicality. We know how people act and how they think. Its not so hard to then use psychology and sociology to build up our own coalitions.
As Terry Pratchett wrote in The Hogfather : We tell little likes like Santa Clause because we're training children to believe in the big lies like Truth and Justice. And only when we all believe in that stuff can it possibly work. "We're the best country in the world" is part of that, its a little lie that helps smooth over problems and helps us work together. And in my experience, its effective at it.
You know, I'm not particularly intelligent. If I (and you apparently) understood that nations are a manipulation of the masses, everyone can. Thus we could create a coalition against nationalism and patriotism quite easily, but schools and medias are spreading their propaganda.
Except I'm not against manipulation of the masses. I'm tacitly for it, because if I don't manipulate them, someone else will.
Leaving the masses to be manipulated by Trump (or other bad actors) is obviously a bad idea. If you haven't noticed by the last 10 years of US Politics.
The reality is that 30%+ of the country (the current Trump voter base) accepts manipulation and embraces it. Its a huge cohort and a resource that can be turned to my side. Maybe not all of them, but its more than you or most people ever realized. And furthermore, anyone else who is intelligent and on my side about it will also join me and see that we have a winning strategy.
What's your strategy exactly? You want to try to beat back human psychology one-person at a time and deprogram on a mass scale? Good luck with that. I'm not sure I've seen a successful argument that breaks through the psychological games being played out here.