Yup. What’s sad is the poor to mid-income shmucks that fall for it.
I mean, i don’t wanna be mean.. I have a lot — a LOT of libertarian friends. I totally ‘get’ the feels. My hippie side want to believe.
But… I’m also pragmatic and size matters. Shouldn’t but it does.
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You’re right. Weird thing is: I believe in America. Not as it is per se but in its weird balancing act. It’s always a mess and that’s a good thing. It’s just painful to go through.
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I mean like – what’s the American identity? Older nations know what it is to “be a Swede” or “be French” or “be Russian”. They got a feel for it.
But what’s “be an American”?
My view is the whole melting pot thing, ideals of basic humanism – sort of UN / EU ish. Human rights, etc.
But… there’s other notions that just don’t make sense and never did to me.
I stopped wearing a little US flag pin by the late 1980s – still a teenager in high school. I just couldn’t. It was stolen from me — this notion of America I thought I knew. I was and am still annoyed at that. Erosion started in middle school though as I watched Iran Contra play out on TV, “America Love it or Leave it”… the first school shootings…
Still I got Schoolhouse Rock playing in the back of my head and I know I’m not alone with that. So there’s that.
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