Is the “insulted American” in the room with us now?

There are….others??

I understand what they mean. I think this comes down to an exercise in semantics, and you are pushing the “country = home” analogy too literally.

Feelings of love and pride don’t need a pure rational root cause. They can exist in a more abstract sense, like in the case of “loving your home”. You can take pride/love in the work you do to clean your home, especially when realizing others will be living in it as well. I can “love” the earth, and want to take care of and respect it.

Love can be expressed in many different forms. I can both love my significant other and also love my parents. I think you can then extend this argument to loving something abstract, like earth, or your country, with a sort of rational basis being that I love my fellow humans and want to reduce suffering.

My point being that pride in one’s country is an artificial thing which you’ve been pushed into having from the outside and as such is a prime vector to manipulate you (and all it takes is to listen to politicians harp about the greatness of one’s country to see that it is indeed being used for that by some), not something natural like pride for you and those close to you and their deeds.

I don’t quite follow you here. To me, there is a difference between having love or pride in one’s country versus being nationalist. To me, the latter involves critical analysis and honesty about flaws, and working to fix those flaws. Nationalism on the other hand would be amount to uncritically supporting everything the country (or politician/government) does, which is I think what you are describing?

Also, how do you define what is “natural” vs “unnatural” pride?

Upvoted both of you

Typically I value comments based on argumentative strength and/or whether information provided adds value to discussion.

Strong arguments will be upvoted even if I disagree with the overall conclusion. And part of what makes arguments strong is civility and open-mindedness (in my opinion).

One can appreciate a strong argument, even if it goes against what they themselves believe.

I honestly think most people would highly benefit from reading A Workbook for Arguments: A Complete Course in Critical Thinking

The amount of cognitive dissonance and logical fallacy among these chains of reasoning and “arguments” (and I am using the word argument very generously here) is astounding.

I don’t care about what anyone says about anything anymore. Means almost nothing to me.

Past voting history (both party and candidates), bills drafted and passed while in office for previous roles, if (and where) they have money invested to analyze conflicts of interest, and other data about the candidates.

Use this information to extrapolate what each party’s administration will do in office if elected.

Oh for fucks sake

Well said

Love that phrase…”love this country”.

What does it even mean? The citizens? The flag? The physical land and soil that encompasses “this country”? Love the government? If so, what about the government do you love? The governments policies? Laws? The constitution? The actual government employees? Which ones? The president? A combination? How is the combination divided?

Also, depending on the answer to the above, why? Because you were born here? You think it’s better than other countries? How are you defining “better”?

Stupid phrase imo.

$10 for literally an entire fucking box of razors that will last me years. Can’t even remember the last time I’ve paid for a blade.

Pretty much. I see it basically as our masters arguing over the best way to rule the peasants. Do we give them some crumbs so that they don’t outright revolt? Or do we just go full steam ahead with exploitation with full on force and violence?

Self-diagnosed centrist: We need to compromise here. It’s the only way we’ll actually get things accomplished in politics. Kill half, and imprison the other half.

Self-proclaimed “realist”: They both suck equally as much

Political “philosopher”: Society needs to stop seeing everything in black and white. There’s nuance in genocide versus life imprisonment.

Undecided voter: I’m just not convinced yet for either. I see the merits of both. I need to hear both candidates’ policies in more detail before making a decision.

Old people: As long as my taxes don’t go up, I don’t give a shit what they do.

Reward system activates when helping other people. Why does brain not give dopamine for helping myself 😫

False dichotomy. Doesn’t have to be one or the other. It can be “more” under one party than with another.

How is it that SO MANY people literally can’t see past a false dichotomy logical fallacy? I swear every other fucking comment is like “Yuhh WELL it wouhda been the same under the LIBS” like some sort of “gotcha”.

The amount of people that desperately need a course in basic informal logic is beyond astounding.

Ah yes, the ol’ “if I don’t know something, then it MUST be X” argument.

Substitute X for whatever ya like! Demons, ghouls, demon ghouls…the possibilities are endless!

TF you on? Just because there weren’t immediate, drastic regime level changes doesn’t mean they went “exactly nowhere”.

There have been many changes at smaller levels not being reported in mainstream western media. Public pressure called for MANY local officials to step down along with changes in law that have already started effecting everyday life, and at least in Thailand, some pretty major changes in how public officials are held accountable via more expansive auditing channels, thereby increasing transparency.

Not everything is a fucking hollywood movie wherein you have some Hunger Games style uprising against the elite.

In fact, it’s fucking insulting hearing people who haven’t an ounce of global exposure beyond whatever 2 or 3 media sources they shove their heads into saying “those protesters got nothing accomplished”.

Never let anyone tell you protesting doesn’t work.

Tf is this shit

Can’t wait till AI can just learn and utilize my consciousness on my behalf. That way I don’t need to exist.