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Does not help the movement most inclined to wrap themselves in a flag just stormed the capital.
Fuck that shit, the fascist dickheads don't get to steal the flag from the rest of us.
They'll pry my American flag out of my cold dead progressive hands, lol.
Well, gee, I wonder why. Could it be that it's been a shitstorm of fuckery their entire lives? Nah, that can't be it....
I'm in the middle age bracket there and completely agree with them as do most of my similar aged peers.
This seems like a pretty nebulous concept with a lot of wiggle room for interpretation.
Like, am I proud of having been born in the specific place I was and having the parents that I do? I ain't had shit to do with that. I'm American by accident. I'm no more proud of being American than I am of being 5'10": it's just a box I fit into, honestly somewhat uncomfortably. I'm proud of the work I do and the achievements I've... achieved, but nothing I've done would be impossible anywhere else. If anything, there are parts of the world where what I've achieved would have been easier to do and where my preferred lifestyle is more widely accepted (for context, this refers to that I don't like cars, don't own or want to own one, and choose to get around by bike and transit instead) (a friend of my dad's recently told him that I "need a European girlfriend" because "American women don't understand guys like him:" for the record, I've never met this woman).
Anyway, pointless rambling aside, America is just one country out of hundreds in the world, and I don't see why I should feel all nationalistic about having been born in it.
For a lot of folks, I think this is accurate, but the problem is that the US has totally and absolutely exhausted all of its WWI/WWII "good guy" image on the global scene.. As a base line, I feel generally neutral about where I was born, because I had no control over it. It's when I show empathy and factor in the opinion of others that things sour. The US military spent 2/3 of my life bombing Afghan villagers, and they mortgaged my future to do it. I can't be proud of that. We allowed unfettered greed to run rampant with no supervision and crashed the world economy multiple times. I'm not proud of that either.
I have this conversation with some of my older relatives occasionally, and I always tell them that in order for me to be proud, the US needs to do something that's worth being proud of. And while there are some small things, there's nothing that outweighs the immense damage the US has done to the world as a whole in my lifetime.
I'm embarrassed to be American at this point... Republicans are literal fucking nazis, democrats continue catering to the whims of corporate lobbyist bribes, and corruption is everywhere. Nothing will change until the boomers start dying off ~2032, and that's assuming we can remain a democracy that long.
Germany is currently seeing a resurgence of even-more-literal Nazis. France recently bypassed its legislature in order to force a higher retirement age. The Italian government is de-registering same-sex parents. I might point to literally any action done by the government of Hungary. And that's just Europe.
These problems aren't unique to America by any means. Democracy is very hard, no matter where you are. We're certainly not doing well, but we could be doing much worse.
Like one from abroad old enough to remember the old idea of America as something to aspire to:
It's kind of like losing your older brother to a crippling drug addiction (almost literally). You know that he wasn't always perfect, but he was always there. Nowadays you are never sure how he will act, sometimes showing signs of how he used to be, but more often bring a disappointment.
Haha as a Canadian that's definitely how it feels, but also we easily give in to peer pressure and are accepting more and more drugs from our big bro
Many young Americans lack experience outside the country, meaning they have a warped, likely from the internet, sense of what's right and wrong when compared to other parts of the world.
I'm proud to be an American, in the sense that I'd rather be here than many other parts of the world, even though I recognize there are issues requiring more attention and/or progress. Perhaps it helps that I view things under my own objective lens, gaining first hand experience in many cases, rather than sitting behind a screen and amping up my ignorance.
It's OK to disagree with me of course. Everyone has their reasons, whether pro or anti, but I'd personally question how much experience people younger than myself have in other parts of the world. Many Americans take things for granted with little understanding of how good they have it. Obviously not always the case, but traveling the world is eye opening and no amount of internet research can substitute those experiences.
On the flip-side of this, I had a close friend who traveled the world extensively for 10+ years. Last time I saw him he had visited 65 different countries, often living for months or even years in some of them. He hated coming back to the USA. He said our ideas of freedom and liberty are complete fabrications compared to a great many EU and Asian countries. He always had to add hours to his flight times when traveling through or within the US because he refused to go through the naked scanner, because he felt that they violate our individual rights and privacy. He said he didn't need to deal with those anywhere else. That's just one small example out of a list of dozens that he gave me.
Ribbit
We give around a billion a year to Israel because after they pay for universal healthcare and free tuition for college they don't have enough to buy a bunch of shit from our "defense" manufacturing industry...
America has been full blown capitalist for decades now, our government cares more about corporation's profits than the well being of Americans.
Who could blame them?
no shit
It's hard to have true perspective on what it means to be an American with my limited travel. I've never been out of the country. I've been to most southern states, but live in the west coast now (much prefer it here) and am very aware of my bubble. It doesn't take interaction from people living in countries with free healthcare and great work reform to know that our shit is fucked, though. Proud - not yet. Determined to make this a better place - yes.