This is an IOZ quote which may be even more relevant than when he said it back in the GWB years:
American liberals have a troubled history with the cognitive dissonances of patriotism, especially owing in part to Vietnam and Iraq. There’s no room for nuance in American discourse so they can’t explain how patriotism could ever be bad, and the concept strikes them as a relic from a less enlightened time, like believing in ghosts. If you’re going to run a system of global capital then patriotism is outdated, but it keeps biting them in the ass domestically so they gotta keep chipping away. That’s one reason all the American chest beating slogans in this thread feel so corny.
On mainstream lib blogs, especially the comment sections, they often tell themselves they’re the real patriots. They like to point out how Republicans vote down healthcare for veterans or boo gay soldiers or don’t support rape victims in the military. I don’t know if they actually buy into this stuff or it’s a meta-reaction from the Cold War and War on Terror. They’ve been typecast as anti-patriots for so long that their efforts to break out look fake and backfires and makes their own supporters uncomfortable, e.g. Dukakis, Kerry, or the Dem '16 convention which was rah rah USA to the max. They tried to outflank Trump on patriotism, like pointing out how he insulted a gold star family or how he doesn’t buy American steel. This is all further complicated because it’s a big tent, so there’s plenty of libs who would make a string of ears or dig bullets out of pregnant women with a knife, anything to make Uncle Sam happy.
Calling patriotism that goes too far “jingoism” reminds me of how when people want to defend capitalism ruining everything they call it “crony capitalism.”
You apparently missed the part about ‘vaguest and least descriptive.’ But please, continue to dig that hole.
There’s a difference between literally quantifiable concepts (crime, drugs) and value judgments about self based on a completely unquantifiable concept. How many milliliters in 'extreme patriotism? Now, how many drug overdoses in your area over the last year? How many murders? Burglaries? Car thefts?
The questions were “Overall, how would you describe the problem of ____ in ____”. They weren’t “tell me how many murders there were?” or “how many drug overdoses in the last six months?”.
Getting back to my question about presidential job approval polls. That’s an unquantifiable value judgement as well (unless you want to tell me how many milliliters there are in “good job, Mr. President”). Do you dismiss those as meaningless? Or are you going to hang your hat on “about self”? That would be an absurd line of “reasoning” as well: it’s ok to make unquantifiable value judgements about one’s neighborhood, one’s country, one’s president, but not about one’s self. :rolleyes: Gimme a break.
You called it “just about the vaguest and least descriptive question possible”. I think that’s a ridiculous value judgement, but seeing as it’s your opinion, you’re entitled to it. Would you care to offer up an example of a polling question about patriotism that you think is more specific and less vague than “How patriotic are you?” If it’s really “just about the the vaguest and least descriptive question possible”, I imagine this will be an easy exercise for you. Or is patriotism itself just such an esoteric concept that it’s impossible to ask a non-vague and descriptive question about it?
“Make America Grate Again” would get my vote. It’s about damn time that we finally had a candidate who had the courage to stand up to the pre-shredded cheese industry.
I absolutely believe the poll. I absolutely believe that fewer Democrats than Republicans identify themselves as extremely patriotic and the like.
I just don’t think that actually tells us much at all about actual patriotism. I don’t think people are any more likely to honestly and accurately report their patriotism than they are their penis size.
If your point is that Republicans are more likely to consider themselves highly patriotic, then I have no problem with the point. That’s what the scientific poll indicates, and I have no problem with the poll.
In my experience, confederate flag wavers consider themselves highly patriotic, in general. They also, in my experience, generally don’t believe they are in any way racist. I find both opinions, self identified, equally unlikely to be true.
Since “jingoism” is defined as “extreme patriotism, especially in the form of aggressive or warlike foreign policy”, calling patriotism that goes too far “jingoism” seems fairly accurate to me.
I’m not sure why it bothers you when liberals say things that are objectively true, but there you go. I’m also not sure why giving big piles of money to the Pentagon is considered supporting our troops but trying to actually provide real support for them isn’t.
Well apparently thew new slogan, chosen after “months of polling and internal deliberations among the House Democratic caucus” (according to Vox Congressional reporter) is…
My favorite bumper sticker slogan is “Good policy doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker.” or even a recursively self referential and self contradictory statement “Only bad policy fits on a bumper sticker.”
And that’s not really a policy paper, a policy paper explains how those things are to be achieved. One of clinton’s (many) faults on the camping trail is that she would read a policy paper to her audience. They would nod off, and then complain that she never addressed any of the issues that she spoke about, while repeating over and over the one line out of context that makes it look like it means the opposite of what it says.
So, the slogan, while maybe a bit unwieldy, is not a policy paper, not even a policy. It is a goal to be achieved through policies.
This may not be obvious to those who think that Make America Great Again is a policy, but that too, is just a slogan.
Of course it’s a slogan. But it’s a snappy (and yugely successful) one. As opposed to the ridiculous clunker of “A Better Deal: Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Wages”.
It also unfortunately will lead Trump to inevitably mock the slogan with comments like"A better deal?! I’m the king of deals, I wrote the Art of the Deal, no one makes deals like I do, blah blah" and on and on until the midterms. Maybe not the best choice.