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I don't understand USA patriotism

Mayne

Mayne

Diamond Member
Can someone explain it to this Canadian?

At this point, I don't understand American patriotism. You guys are the most powerful country in the world ,that uses it mostly to fund wars for profit, refuse to provide your citizens with health care and well funded education, imprison your population for profit, and elected an administration that claims climate change is a lie.

America is by far, BY FAR, the biggest threat to the survival of the species as has ever been formed on the planet. Now Trump wants to have NFL players fired for not bending a knee.
 
We have done great things and have the ability and will to do more. EVERY nation on the planet has gone through dark times. We trust those of us with clearer vision can put our fellow man ahead of the greed and selfishness exhibited by those nations who have had a thousand years to do better and have not.
 
As a canadian, you should try to understand that the US is a lawless, insane nation full of many dangerous people. We have basically taken "capitalism" to its logical extreme. So whomever has the money and the connections makes the laws, and whomever doesn't follows them. Hence why our laws are half meaningless and the other half only apply to the poor.


Someday you are going to receive lots and lots of refugees. I believe you've already begun receiving DACA refugees and Muslim ban refugees. One day these will be called American refugees from Trump.
 
FIVR said:
As a canadian, you should try to understand that the US is a lawless, insane nation full of many dangerous people. We have basically taken "capitalism" to its logical extreme. So whomever has the money and the connections makes the laws, and whomever doesn't follows them. Hence why our laws are half meaningless and the other half only apply to the poor.


Someday you are going to receive lots and lots of refugees. I believe you've already begun receiving DACA refugees and Muslim ban refugees. One day these will be called American refugees from Trump.
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We have been doing this for years.
 
Mayne said:
Can someone explain it to this Canadian?

At this point, I don't understand American patriotism. You guys are the most powerful country in the world ,that uses it mostly to fund wars for profit, refuse to provide your citizens with health care and well funded education, imprison your population for profit, and elected an administration that claims climate change is a lie.

America is by far, BY FAR, the biggest threat to the survival of the species as has ever been formed on the planet. Now Trump wants to have NFL players fired for not bending a knee.
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Apparently making America great means going back to the way things used to be as opposed to making things better.
 
Mayne said:
Can someone explain it to this Canadian?

At this point, I don't understand American patriotism. You guys are the most powerful country in the world ,that uses it mostly to fund wars for profit, refuse to provide your citizens with health care and well funded education, imprison your population for profit, and elected an administration that claims climate change is a lie.

America is by far, BY FAR, the biggest threat to the survival of the species as has ever been formed on the planet. Now Trump wants to have NFL players fired for not bending a knee.
Click to expand...

When was the last time the most powerful nation didnt try to invade the rest of the globe? Imagine russia with that kind of power. Germany? China? Great Britain? While not perfect it is a hell of alot better effort and results than those that came before.
 
Atreus21 said:
I'll try.


I think the best explanation is that you're a doofus.
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You can thank the US for the debauchery in the Middle East, thanks to ensuring that they spread Wahhabi Islam since 1945. I wonder what a Vietnamese victim of Agent Orange would have to say about the US, or a peasant family from Afghanistan, or Cambodians who lost limbs to American ordinance, or Guatemalans who were raped by the US sponsored Government's military, or the Kurds who were sexually enslaved by (at the time, and for a long while after) the staunch US ally Saddam Hussein, or Syrian refugees, or the Nicaraguans brutally raped and tortured by US sponsored "contra rebels", etc. etc.

I wonder what your opinion is. Taj stated that it's perfectly acceptable for the US to gallivant around, slaughtering and raping, and protecting those who do the same, so long as it brings some indirect benefit to the US. Do you concur?
 
Just the fact that a weak, powerless nation can sit next door to the most powerful nation on earth and have one it's ill informed citizens blindly insult the far more powerful nation without any fear of retribution is one of the best answers to your question. Canada has nothing to fear from the United States and we've spent more and done more to protect Canada and your interests than you could ever pay back. If we were really as bad as so many on the left think we are, you're have been living in fear for the last 50 years and you haven't.
 
There are two kinds of patriotism. One is the respect for the blessings of live given to you by your fellow countrymen. Those flow out of self love and self respect for the being the lives of others have made possible for you as a person who had your origin in that country. Another kind of patriotism is the herd king of patriotism where people filled with self hate look for ego identification outside of themselves to confer to them a sense of worth they themselves do not have internally. In the former case, ones country has earned respect because the option to respect or not is open. In the second, respect is a demanded, that without it you would be a worthless person. The former is a liberal vision and the latter a conservative one. It is conservative thinking that is the threat to the planet. There is lots of that in America. But there is also lots of the best kind of patriotism here as well. Trump, of course, is mentally ill.
 
Moonbeam said:
There are two kinds of patriotism. One is the respect for the blessings of live given to you by your fellow countrymen. Those flow out of self love and self respect for the being the lives of others have made possible for you as a person who had your origin in that country. Another kind of patriotism is the herd king of patriotism where people filled with self hate look for ego identification outside of themselves to confer to them a sense of worth they themselves do not have internally. In the former case, ones country has earned respect because the option to respect or not is open. In the second, respect is a demanded, that without it you would be a worthless person. The former is a liberal vision and the latter a conservative one. It is conservative thinking that is the threat to the planet. There is lots of that in America. But there is also lots of the best kind of patriotism here as well. Trump, of course, is mentally ill.
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As a Canadian I genuinely adore Americans and America as an idea. In my view, Canada and most other countries have made a collective decision to be medium-risk, medium-reward: Our social safety net is pretty good, but the flip side of that is the taxation and general fiscal attitude here is to not try to bite off more than you can chew. So we're rarely world leaders on anything.

America... America's business climate shuns rational thought and asks you to shoot for the stars. The highs are real high, but the lows will basically kill you. I think I'd want to adjust that collective trade-off to make the lows not quite as bad, but then it wouldn't be America. I think that'd be a loss for the world.

I do think the electoral system is horribly out of date though and genuinely think that America should consider a Westminster style parliamentary system instead. You know how we'd deal with Trump? A snap confidence vote that simply requires a majority which triggers a new election. Done.
 
The biggest reason for loyalty to America right now is that the president wants employers to fire employees suspected of not being loyal enough to America.

If we don't stand up for America now it'll become Trumpisadickistan. RESIST.
 
Mayne said:
Can someone explain it to this Canadian?

At this point, I don't understand American patriotism. You guys are the most powerful country in the world ,that uses it mostly to fund wars for profit, refuse to provide your citizens with health care and well funded education, imprison your population for profit, and elected an administration that claims climate change is a lie.

America is by far, BY FAR, the biggest threat to the survival of the species as has ever been formed on the planet. Now Trump wants to have NFL players fired for not bending a knee.
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A very basic & simplistic attempt to answer the question briefly, but nevertheless fairly accurate reason IMHO is that in knowing nations are run by individuals, we can extrapolate from our personal behaviours.


http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002945.html
" PHILADELPHIA, PA--Financially richer people tend to be happier than poorer people, according to sociological researcher Glenn Firebaugh, Pennsylvania State University, and graduate student Laura Tach, Harvard University. Their research is focused on whether the income effect on happiness results largely from the things money can buy (absolute income effect) or from comparing one's income to the income of others (relative income effect). They present their research in a session paper, titled "Relative Income and Happiness: Are Americans on a Hedonic Treadmill?," at the American Sociological Association Centennial Annual Meeting on August 14.

Firebaugh argues that, in evaluating their own incomes, individuals compare themselves to their peers of the same age. Therefore a person's reported level of happiness depends on how his or her income compares to others in the same age group. Using comparison groups on the basis of age, the researchers find evidence of both relative and absolute effects, but relative income is more important than absolute income in determining the happiness of individuals in the United States. This may result in a self-indulgent treadmill, because incomes in the United States rise over most of the adult lifespan.

"If income effects are entirely relative, then continued income growth in rich countries today is irrelevant to how happy people are on the whole," says Firebaugh. "Rather than promoting overall happiness, continued income growth could promote an ongoing consumption race where individuals consume more and more just to maintain a constant level of happiness."

Firebaugh tested what he refers to as the hedonic treadmill hypothesis, which uses a comparison of age-based cohorts. The hedonic treadmill requires a specific type of relative income effect--one where "keeping up with the Joneses" means continually increasing one's own income, because we can be sure that the Joneses are increasing theirs."



Fear of being overtaken or in becoming average drives the desire to continue dominating using all means. The individual in a modern society has an external enforcer [police forces] to maintain rules of conduct. What do nation states have? They act at will, unless forced or enticed by other states to change their behaviours. The USA seems to only believe in the stick and have forgotten the carrot.

The incredible irony is that the USA is made up of immigrants who often have have fantastic success stories, yet the peoples these immigrants come from are seen as inferior. You're only a great person when you become an American. Talk about cognitive dissonance at work.

This applies to all parties, both left & right, with a minority of exceptions as in all scenarios. The biggest fools say it's either Obama or Trump and if only my side was there, it would be better.

In closing, this World situation will play out to it's own end & we should all hope that not too many die in the process.


I'll add that any country in the dominant position as the USA at present would most likely behave the same due to the nature of humans.
 
1sikbITCH said:
The biggest reason for loyalty to America right now is that the president wants employers to fire employees suspected of not being loyal enough to America.

If we don't stand up for America now it'll become Trumpisadickistan. RESIST.
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I wonder if he's going to make it an Executive Order the way his predecessor Obama would have done? Maybe a Paris Loyalty Accord?
 
Patriotism is good for the country only if the leader is smart and not trying to dividing its own people.
 
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