Welcome"Patriotism is indoctrination." (BMcC[18-11-46-503])
America is a free country: Everyone is free to do what they are told to do.
Oh! I got your attention by saying politically incorrect words? Well, what do you think I was coerced to do as an elementary school student? To place my hand over my heart and pledge allegiance to The United States of America. What's the difference from what I would have had to do had I been a student in Germany in the 1930's? Heil Hitler! I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.... (A 1943 Supreme Court decision barred compulsory recitation of the oath, but like many things it was different in practice, if only becaue kids were kept in the dark; teachers did not begin the exercise by saying: "Now, children, you do not have to do this if you don't want to, and there are no penalties for not doing it. Are you sure you want to? Take your time and think about it." I would not likely have volunteered for such a stupid thing if I knew I had a choice.)
⬑A Leader leading his followers. Adolf Hitler led his followers. The Reverend Martin Luther King Junior led his followers.... (The medium is the message)
I didn't believe in it. I didn't thematically attack it like I can do today with a half century of humanistic studies and a lot of largely unpleasant life experience behind me. But I never was enthusiastic about it, I would never have sacrificed my life for "my country" (whose country?), and I mumbled the words and just wanted the thing to end. Today I am thoroughly disgusted to fear I can't say certain word because they are politically incorrect and the self-appointed Stasi, the political correctnessers, may destroy my life for saying something they don't like.
I once told an Activist that words do not matter. He told me that calling Covid-19 a "China virus" was a "racist slur" which was"insensitive" to an apparently thin-skinned world class virology researcher Ph.D.+M.D. When I replied that lay persons who did not understand epidemiology might well call a virus that came from Wuhan China a "China Virus" and not be racists, but that a racist would still be a racist if they called Covid-19 "the X virus", this Activist did not "get it". He verbally spit on me. Since it was email, and his semiotic germs could spread across fiber optic cable, that was fine with me, because it just confirmed what a dangerous and disgusting creature he was; but I do wish he had never been born. As a manager once told me when I asked for a job assignment that would both be constructive for our employer and help me further develop my learning: "If wishes were horses then beggars would ride." Heil Hitler! I don't think I have to say I don't believe tht, just like I did not believe in pledging allegiance to the United States of America, either.
I am disrespected to feel I am being judged by 2-legged sheep and so, to avoid their knee-jerk oppobrium I feel intimidated to keep avowing that I harbor no thoughts they have been socially conditioned to believe a person should not have: I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist. I am not a racist.... Get over it, people! And I'm supposed to celebrate "diversity"? All sheep are the same color in the dark and none of them are either goats or shepherds.
Are you, my reader, a partisan political bigot? Do you believe in and would you die for your country of your birth origin or current residence or any other, whether it was "right or wrong"? Does the thought of patriotism arouse in you fear and loathing of a repetition of the late junior Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph R. McCarthy's anti-communist witch hunting of the 1950's here?
Aside: "Heil Hitler" was probably the most stupid thing a Nazi ever did. Karl Donitz's submarine radio operators generally ended their very securedly Enigma encoded transmissions (or began them, it does not matter for the present purposes) with that very patriotic little phrase. Allied code breakers were not stupid; they hypothesized this might be the case. It helped them crack the unbreakable German code. So, next time you get all wimpy about pledging your allegiance, remember: "Loose talk costs lives." (World War II American slogan); it can aid the enemy. "I pledge allegiance...."
Every nation has two enemies, or, if you will, sets of enemies. the first set is the nation's declared adversar nations. For instance, Russia is the enemy of The United States, and, presumably, vice versa. Nominally each would like to destroy the other for the latter's own good, of course. But, actually, I will argue, they are all really friends under the covers.
Every nation also has a second, unacknowledged enemy: Its own people. No, I do not mean the people want to overthrow their government, although for various reasons or lack of same, this sometimes does happen. I mean that each nation's government is eternally at war against its citizens. Often it's a cold war: the very threat of police enforcing corporate profits makes most people be good citizens and go to work each day. But when push comes to shove, the first thing a nation does is to impose involuntary servitude and more or less random death sentences on its able bodies male citizens; It imposes military conscription and those who can't get out of it but will not serve go to prison and are even sometimes executed for the crime of not wanting to volunteer to get mutilated or die on a battlefield. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, or else, young man! The other part of the enemy is females who must be motivated to be baby factories to replace existing citizens who age out, become incapacitated, or get killed fighting for their country. My own country is generally my worst enemy. Of course there are exceptions, like when the Nazis rounded up citizens of third countries to send to the extermination camps. But in most wars, it is the near enemy which poses the greatest risk.
As said, one can call a nation's citizens "human resources", like oil or lithium are "natural resources". Parents and teachers are Janus figures who look simultaneously or flutteringly in opposite directions: they are both themselves human resources and also produce more human resources, not just human bodies by copulation, which are so far unsmelted ore, but loyal citizens, like themselves: the purified precious metal of the state. "My country" loves me as cannon fodder. Most people even if they don't exactly relish this, accept it, and forget any doubts in becoming intoxicated on patriotism and waving the flag. Some, for whatever reasons, exercise their god-given faculty of judgment respectfully or less respectfully, to the contrary. I don't give a [fill in the blank] any more about my "motherland" any more than about my intrusive mother, but fortunately for all concerned, the latter is dead, while unfortunately for me if not for thee, my reader, the former is very much, metaphorically, of course, since nations do not exist except semiotically, "alive". I never liked America. The passum sub iugum of being abused by being required to register for involuntary servitude ("the draft") sealed the case. I did not ask for it, and di not want any part of it. (Actually, they blew it: Had they offered me an intellectually interesting desk job at some place iike The Army War College in Fort Leavenworth Kansas, I would have been a willing collaborator, because I don't care about the American citizenry, represented by my parents and teachers, either So I would have pretended to be a patriot) if it was win-win, not them win and me lose. I jus twanted a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and wher liberty simply means being free to read the books I want and to ahv ea few objects of esthetic value, not the right to extract surplus value from workers or anything bad like that, that's all.)
| Unfortunate for themself, the person who lacks one; unfortunate for others, the person that is one. Don't be an a**hole! | |
