The relationship of many American leftists to patriotism reminds me a lot of those guys who grow up in oppressively evangelical communities and decide to express their disillusionment with it by becoming black metal satanists - a oppositional mirror of Christianity - instead of becoming atheists.
Like the correct response to the realization that nationalism is a false consciousness used to suppress class conflict is to focus on raising class consciousness not to root against the nation everyone around you is rooting for.
Flag burning anti-patriotism is stupid in the exact same way that jingoistic chauvinism is stupid but it's also stupid in an additional self-defeating way because it sets your goals up in opposition to a bunch of symbols and institutions that normies have been trained their whole life to believe in.
Nations are lines someone drew on maps and flags are pieces of cloth. Made up! Don't get mad at something that's made up especially if it's also alienating people that you need to reach for no good reason!
Ya I feel sometimes like this stuff is the foreign policy equivalent of those straight edge punks who'd tattoo X's on their hands or whatever bsky.app/profile/thre...
"have you ever considered how many people in the united states see the united states flag as an irredeemable symbol of profound evil" like, yes, and the number is "extremely few" which is why setting yourself up against it is insane bsky.app/profile/nacl...
ever consider how many people look at that flag and see mammon, a beast that hates them, a monster that has killed and harmed their families? those are the people our struggle is for. blessed are the meek, jackass
in both directions: in 1854 it was totally reasonable to see the United States flag as symbolizing protection of slavery, in 1864 the same flag was flying over Union Armies as they rampaged through the south burning down plantations. I think that's neat and a good idea! bsky.app/profile/wron...
Gallup polls "are you proud to be an American" regularly and in 2023 it fell to a record low... of 89% (saying "extremely" "very" or "moderately" proud. Only 4% said "not at all")
news.gallup.com/poll/507980/...
Yes, like if you sincerely believe that most normal working class Americans hate America and find the US flag to be a symbol of colonialist oppression (not that they SHOULD believe but that they actually do) you need to go out and touch grass bsky.app/profile/walk...
I expect that’s mostly an automatic response instead of any deep thought or questioned value the country. You Americans have patriotism as value over anything else drummed into you from birth.
It’s jumped (to 11%) since people on the far right are less proud to be Americans now that the country is beginning to deliver on its long-standing promise of equity and egalitarianism
On one hand I agree with the folks who rightfully have every reason to not feel patriotic, yet, this is the terrain we have to work on/with! Once patriotism sets in, it’s gonna be extremely hard to dislodge it
Being on these websites has a profoundly distorting effect on people’s understanding of the electorate, you ask some of these “Marxists” what that number is they’d guess like 20%
It's weird that very few people, especially liberals, have figured out that Obama was & remains a wildly popular figure in large part because he's openly pretty patriotic.
Its also why Rs "he hates America" smears never landed outside FOX
I was curious to see if there would be any sustained attempts to retake the canadian flag from the antivaxxers here. But maybe we need a civil war to change that narrative.
Garrison believed entering politics would dilute second wave abolitionism’s commitment to both ending slavery and achieving citizenship for African Americans. Douglass concluded that politics were the only way to achieve any of those things.
Yep. And an orientation toward politics also meant rejecting Garrison’s disdain for symbols of the American republic, as justified as that disdain was.
The pro-Constitution abolitionists (Douglass, Goodell, Spooner) also made (what I find to be, at least) the clever and interesting move of taking the Constitution at its word and seriously as a text
Yes, so this is exactly the point: context matters. If you're running for office you probably shouldn't burn the flag on the debate stage. But the main point of protest is to cause discomfort and generate media coverage, so it seems a reasonable tactic in that context.
Yeah, the interesting problem of trying to read Douglass at face value is that he was Machiavellian in the Straussian sense — his embrace of the Constitution was tactical, and even though his reasoning is very defensible it’s not clear to me he ever truly believed it.
Others have addressed the question, I’m just here to plug David Blight’s book
The Garrisonians gave Douglass his platform to become a famous public intellectual, and his break w Garrison on the redeemability of the republic & 1789 constitution got very heated
www.goodreads.com/book/show/38...
This.
On the merits, it's easy to disagree with Douglass's characterization of the US Constitution (long before the Reconstruction amendments) as a glorious liberty document.
But from a political standpoint, Douglass was clearly right to claim this.
The short documentary I just watched on the Niagara Movement on PBS kinda implied that he was a really difficult person to try to come to a consensus with, unless the views you held were exactly aligned with his own.
Somewhat inflexible in thought would be a generous way of describing him.
He began or always saw the world as either with or against me. I always wonder if he had oppositional disorder or PTSD.
There is no way folks got away from this work with mental health intact.
interesting to look at all the civil rights marchers who carried or even literally wrapped themselves in the flag in the 60s. were they rah rah jingo nationalists? or was there something more strategic happening?
Absolutely, but I think it’s worthwhile to keep in mind that most people view themselves as fundamentally good. Appealing to that can be very effective.
That’s the beauty of the line. “I know you’re actually good underneath, so let’s fix this thing where you’re not being good, and it‘ll all be sunshine and roses”
They, the RW, do not get to claim the flag for them. It is not to be symbol for oppression and racism. We claim the American Flag for us,…actual freedom.
'Not alienating a majority of regular people' is both a requirement for winning power and something a lot of leftists simply can't bring themselves to do
Many people don't understand that it's all well and good to envision a fairer, better world, but the only way you're going to get there is to get most people to go along with it, which means you have to pick your battles.
Unless your goal is to just feel morally superior.