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by jhickner
4730 days ago
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> Do common people in the US really identify with being a patriot? Patriotism originally meant you were willing to sacrifice something for your country. Presumably the smallest measure of that sacrifice would be spending your time developing well-founded opinions about how the country should operate. (Just take a look at the federalist papers: 85 long, dense articles arguing in favor of the minutest details of the constitution. And the expectation was that people would actually read them!) Unfortunately patriotism doesn't mean sacrifice anymore. It means something akin to a fingers-in-the-ear, uncritical fanboyism. Just plaster everything with flags and soaring eagles and call it good. It's not sacrificing everything (like Snowden did), it's something you do instead of sacrificing _anything_, even the time it would take to educate yourself on what your country is doing. And as a bonus you get to flaunt that very ignorance as an additional point of pride. And yeah, common people here in the US definitely do embrace it to a nauseating degree. |
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Yes. That's why Snowden is a patriot, not fat bald men sitting around in a climate-controlled building in Utah, listening to mp3s of private conversations (and posting them to Youtube -- we're certainly not very far from this).
Those NSA characters don't sacrifice anything. They probably look like Newman of Seinfeld fame. Calling them "heroes" is hilarious (as well as Orwellian, but we're used to that).