I don’t understand this weird American obsession with flag. I was looking at some photos of Trump’s rallies. Flags everywhere - on shirts, hats, glasses etc. And this bizarre cult of the flag - “it cannot touch the ground” etc.
At the end of the day the flag is just a piece of cloth. If you worship any flag or take offense to any flag, you need to get a life.
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Only to the American haters such as yourself obviously
no.
Warning: my takes on this are probably even more unpopular than the OP. I typically don’t mention them to avoid whining, but since we’re in a comm for unpopular opinions, might as well speak my mind.
A country flag is neither a symbol of your people, nor of the general population under the same government as you. It’s the symbol of the government itself - an abstract entity, best seen as some sort of tool.
People who wave flags strongly remind me cows shaking their arses to show that they’ve been branded as property. “MOO! I’M PROUD OF BEING OWNED! MOO!”
Against the above, some might argue that their governments’ flags used to represent some popular movement, or similar. Well, it is not your flag any more; co-opting symbols is bread-and-butter of exerting soft power over you.
And if you do feel the need of a flag for your identity… sorry to be blunt but you have millions of identities at your disposal; if the one that you pick is what subjects you, you probably need to touch some grass.
“But the president/king/minister said that…” - of course governments will tell you otherwise, it’s convenient for them. But, most likely, not for you.
I understand your view, but it depends on your country. In Denmark the flag is used in a different way in everyday life I think. And I would say there are good reasons to be proud of Denmark as a country and the people have done well to own the flag themselves in this way. But yea, it can also be used in bad ways.
My vaugue understanding as a dumb American is that folk in other countries by and large aren’t about repping flags in the first place, flying them, wearing them, etc
Not in the same way. In the US I believe you swear to the flag or something? Which seems super strange to me.
In Denmark the flag is used in basically any celebration, especially birthdays. It’s common to have a cake with as many flags on as your age (usually for kids).
It’s common to have a cake with as many flags on as your age
Luckily that flag is easy to emulate. Imagine trying to frost 10 American flags onto a cake.
Oh usually it’s small paper flags stuck into the cake on small wooden sticks, not frosting :)
That makes more sense. Thanks.
I’ve seen this in my chunk of South America. It isn’t exclusive to Americans.
Sorry for the battering of rhetorical questions, but…
…what is “to be proud of a country”?
Achievements of people from the past? But you see people with laudable achievements through the whole world. Why specifically those associated with your country, instead of, say, another? And more importantly, why aren’t we proud of what we, as individuals, do with our present?
Proud of a culture? I get that people relate to others sharing their culture; but contrariwise to what that Napoleonic meme says (with all its disgusting implications), countries don’t need to coincide with cultures. Cue to Switzerland, a clusterfuck since HRE times, faring far better than a Portugal who has been culturally homogeneous since 1100.
And even demarcating cultures, gets tricky and arbitrary. It’s all a bunch of continua. Eventually this sort of proudness will boil down to “I’m drawing the line HERE. This one is from this side of the line, so I’m proud of them. That one isn’t, so who cares.”
Is it being proud of your impact on others, through your everyday interactions? But most people in a country - even a small one (more like Andorra than Denmark) - are not meaningfully affected by you.
So, to keep it short: every single thing that we could be proud of, as human beings, is better serviced by either a smaller or bigger identity.
No need to be sorry :)
Achievements of people from the past?
[…]
Is it being proud of your impact on others, through your everyday interactions?
Definitely more the latter rather than the former. There is a great deal of trust in Danish society. There is a shared understanding, community and culture that Danes are proudly part of - proud because we believe it is a good culture (and I think the happiness scores that get released every so often for different countries speak for themselves).
But most people in a country - even a small one (more like Andorra than Denmark) - are not meaningfully affected by you.
I don’t see it like that. Yes, someone living in the other part of Denmark doesn’t directly affect me of course. But I do think they meaningfully affect me, even if in a small part. I think Denmark is still small enough that it matters that someone in the big city in the other part of the country is still connected to me by culture and a shared “zeitgeist”, if that makes sense.
Anyways, I hope you can maybe understand that for some people, there can be such a thing as being proud of your country. You don’t have to understand fully though, I understand it can be hard coming from another culture (also it’s not like I speak for all Danes obviously and some would certainly disagree with what I’m saying here). I would encourage you to try visiting Denmark one day and maybe see for yourself :)
Definitely more the latter […] countries speak for themselves).
What you talk about, concerning “trust in the Danish society”, is clearly a cultural matter. And, as I highlighted in the other comment, cultures neither coincide with countries, nor they should.
I don’t see it like that. Yes, someone living in the other part of Denmark doesn’t directly affect me of course. But I do think they meaningfully affect me, even if in a small part.
We could spend weeks discussing what to “meaningfully affect someone else” entails, but that would be pushing a boundary line back and forth between points of a gradient, to force a conclusion for either side. (That’s always a problem when trying to handle quantitative matters with qualitative labels.)
However: no matter where you put that line, it won’t coincide with the country, because some people from other countries affect you more than some people from the same country as you. Perhaps because they’re shaping what you think, perhaps because they have political power (even over other countries than yours), so goes on. (The opposite is also true - you’re likely affecting far some people from other countries than some other people from within your country.)
Anyways, I hope you can maybe understand that for some people, there can be such a thing as being proud of your country.
If I may be honest, the argumentation that you’re using is mostly the same as I’ve seen coming from other people. It is not a matter of “lack of understanding”, but disagreement.
cultures neither coincide with countries
I think that’s very reductionist. Countries clearly have a large influence on culture and culture often forms around countries as people in a country share borders and law and politics and all that.
Anyways, we can agree to disagree if you insist. I do think you’re being slightly closed-minded in this case though, but it’s not a big deal.
Countries clearly have a large influence on culture
To influence is not the same as to dictate. And the ways that a country influences culture of its citizens are, most of the time, shitty - cue to the linked example of Vergonha. (It’s actually a mild example, when you remember that massacres are a damn efficient way to have “a large influence on culture”.)
And, sure, there are even milder versions of that. And considerably less efficient.
culture often forms around countries as people in a country share borders and law and politics and all that.
And it forms also across the borders too, to such an extent that “we have the same head of state” and “we’re subjected to the same laws” become just a drop in an ocean. Food gets shared, people learn each other’s languages (or make a contact language in the spot, that eventually is passed to their children), fashion and architectural trends get mimicked… even the laws get mimicked. Or they simply are born in a place and move 5km next door, and that happens to be the other country already.
Of course, as long as the countries aren’t artificially trying to prevent that from happening.
Anyways, we can agree to disagree if you insist. I do think you’re being slightly closed-minded in this case though, but it’s not a big deal.
I don’t think that I’m being closed-minded, but that I’m taking more things into account than you are.
I get it. It’s not really a true choice though. Like bring born in the United States makes it difficult to move and become a citizen elsewhere, where I could waive a different flag (of choice).
It’s a simple as being born into it and being prideful of whatever it is you are. Typical pride involves surname, race/ethnicity, religion, state, country, brands of things… I mean… It’s whatever one is proud of having. Some things are by choice and others are by birth. 🤷
The difference between country and all those other “not a true choice” things that you listed is pointlessness.
A surname is still about your kin. Race is arguably also about kin*. Religion will probably dictate your behaviour, or at least principles. Brand is a damn silly identity, but I get that - it’s still about things that you enjoy.
Country though? In larger countries this boils down to “land that you never saw, people whom you’ll never interact”. In smaller ones it boils down to “a fraction of the lands you saw, and people whom you interacted with”. All because you pay taxes to the same government?
*I say “arguably” because race is still a damn silly identity, unless you use it to highlight oppression and gather other people to end said oppression. But past that I don’t think that anyone should see themself as an Amerindian, a black person, a white person, but rather as simply “a person”.
Brand is a damn silly identity, but I get that - it’s still about things that you enjoy.
I completely agree. Especially when someone gets so upset about criticism of their preferred OS owner (Apple vs. Android fanatics).
I’ll also add sports teams into the mix. Some people get so ravenous about their support for a certain team, or criticism of said team.
People who wave flags strongly remind me cows shaking their arses to show that they’ve been branded as property. “MOO! I’M PROUD OF BEING OWNED! MOO!”
🤣🤣🤣 I am definitely stealing this one.
If you want to get technical about it, it’s a symbol of a nation’s military. That was what national flags were originally for.
it’s a symbol of a nation’s military
Not any more. You’re 100% right on the origin, but the symbol eventually became of the whole structure of power that [typically] includes the military.
That’s why for example even countries without an army or a navy still have flags.
except governments change a lot more than flags do.
In those situations, the newer government is simply seizing the symbols and the perceived “legacy” of the older one. Typically while claiming itself a successor state of the former.
I understand a flag having meaning. What I don’t understand is kids pledging allegiance to the flag everyday. That’s some North Korea shit.
it’s post-ww2, cold war-era creepy shit. Need to make soldiers and weed out the conspirators.
That’s some North Korea shit.
Nope. That’s some American shit. And it was American shit long before the DPRK even existed.
Note that they have the legal right to refuse to do that.
https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/west-virginia-v.-barnette-the-freedom-to-not-pledge-allegiance
Sure, but kids are kids, they probably don’t understand that. It’s fucked up.
And they should, so spread the word and let parents know.
And nationalism is astonishingly thinly veiled racism.
"There are two types of patriotism, although sometimes the two are mingled in the same breast. The first kind one might call nationalism; nationalists believe that all other countries are inferior in every respect and that one would do them a favour by dominating them. Other countries are always in the wrong, they are less free, less civilized, are less glorious in battle, are perfidious, prone to falling for insane and alien ideologies which no reasonable person could believe, are irreligious and abnormal. Such patriots are the most common variety, and their patriotism is the most contemptible thing on earth.
The second type of patriot is best described by returning to the example of General Fuerte. General Fuerte did not believe in ‘my country, right or wrong’; on the contrary, he loved his land despite the faults that he could so clearly see and that he labored to correct. It was his frequently stated opinion that anyone who supported his country when it was so obviously in the wrong, or who failed to see its faults, was the worst kind of traitor. Whereas the first kind of patriot really glories in his own irrationality and not in his country, General Carlo Maria Fuerte loved his country as a son loves his mother or a brother his sister."
–Louis de Bernieres, ‘The War for Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts’
and a book is paper and ink. but it’s what it represents
So a while ago an American who moved to the Netherlands asked about the proper way to store the Dutch flag.
The consensus was: put in a little plastic bag from a supermarket and shove in the back of a random closet.
What else would you do with a flag anyway? Assuming you even had a flag to begin with.
When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross
There is no when. Fascism is already here.
Symbols are incredibly powerful things. It’s pretty easy to understand.
I’m an American and I don’t get it either.
My daughter got in trouble in the fifth grade for refusing to say the pledge of allegiance in class because, in her words, “it’s stupid to say a pledge to a flag.” I didn’t teach her that, she’s just a smart kid. For non-Americans, it is illegal to force a child to say that pledge, which was decided by the Supreme Court in the 1940s.
I let her shitty permanent “substitute” teacher (yay Indiana teacher pay being shit) know about this supreme court case and told her that if she got in trouble again, lawyers would get involved. She got super apologetic and claimed that my daughter wasn’t in trouble, she just took her out in the hall and had a private talk with her about it. Which is totally not punishing a schoolchild as everyone clearly knows. She never apologized to my daughter, but I knew she never would and I didn’t bother to push it.
My daughter never stood up to say the pledge again, as was her right.
Fuck the flag, it’s cloth, like you said. Americans should be revering the founding document and its amendments that gives them their rights, not something designed so that friendly ships wouldn’t fire cannons at each other.
Whats funny is the flag fanatics are disrespecting it from a historical perspective. Paper plates and napkins dirtied up and tossed. Crumpled up tshirts tossed into bins or crumpled up on a floor.
All of which is against the flag code too, but while they’ll attack you for letting it touch the ground they’ll lose it if you can them out for their flag trunks cause laws end when their convenience and desires begin.
I’ve seen American flag diapers. These flag-worshipers wouldn’t even hesitate to let their kid shit in a flag diaper. It makes no sense.
Buddy of mine visited after some time in the army and I had to stop him from beating some other dude’s ass because they accidentally let their flag graze the ground barely, I’ll never understand loving the symbol of the people you supposedly joined up to protect over the ACTUAL FUCKING PEOPLE themselves. Thankfully, that behavior and the PTSD he got from being in the middle east for a while seem to have subsided.
I guess he got ptsd bc he participated in event of “military”. This event is characterised by idiots with flags tryin to kill other idiots with different flags in favor of some rich guys competition againt other rich guys. maybe he just mistaken this dude with the ‘other idiot’? Dunno.
I don’t disagree, seeing his (thankfully temporary) transformation into maximum chud massively changed my opinion on the military.
Good to hear he is fine right now! Anyway ptsd is a bitch and we should help ppl with it. Everythin gold for youand your friend!
The success of flags on https://canvas.fediverse.events (!canvas@toast.ooo ) still shows that it’s a way for people to identify.
Interesting to see how New Zealand tweaked their own, though.
It’s some creepy as fuck shit for sure BUT it allows us to identity the weirdos and avoid them.
That reminds me of a neighbor that seemed normal and nice enough… then he put up a “Let’s Go Brandon” flag and my opinion of him completely changed. I didn’t realize he was a pedophile:
Flags are just cloth, words are just symbols or hot air depending on the medium, and cars are just metal and plastic.
At the end of the day, everything is just atoms. If you disagree, get a life.
Oil and blood.
People tend to care more of a fucking piece of plastic trash (most of flags are made of just shitty plastic btw) than other’s people lives. Not without reason “patriots” rhyme with “idiots”.
