Do you consider yourself a patriot?

Only during the world cup

Been a real practice in forbearance reading some of the Aussie slander posted in the world cup thread

Yes I do, but I love my fake country in a specific and highly personal way-- the most salient version of this "love" is that I stay on top of my taxes and am happy to do so

tbf belgium is maybe doing less of these things at this current moment

‪Rodger Sherman‬

people who hate imperialism and genocide can simply root for USA's opponent on Monday night, Belgium

i love my country's food and creative arts and slang and jokes; i do not love my country's violence which is the part that gets celebrated on the fourth of july

how do you think I voted

less than ever, somehow

the single word 'patriot' is defined in far too many ways to be useful for communicating anyone's attitude toward their nation. this means misunderstanding is all but guaranteed. in my own mind and by my own definition of what it means to love my country, then i voted yes, I consider myself a patriot. but my patriotism is never a comfortable, and nowhere near a complacent, position.

ˈa person who loves his or her country and defends it when necessary

I remember someone saying "it's like if someone calls your dad an asshole, maybe he is an asshole but he's your dad, and they have no right to say it"

my answer to this is

* my dad is certainly not an asshole
* if he were an asshole I'd like him to be correctly labelled as such
* the country is not your dad, the country does not give a shit about you

resounding no

xp hey some of our dads don't give a shit about us either!

First refuge of a scoundrel, so no

I don't even own a tv

Lmao fuck a patriot

Buncha cunts who never do anything for their community but take credit for shit someone else did cos you grew up in the same land mass

i can see how somebody might get a little misty-eyed about a nation that presents itself as a promise or an ideal or a mission somehow, even if that mist in the eyes is hiding the sordid reality of what a nation actually is and does in the alleged service of that ideal. but if yr nation isn't an ideal but the (faux) historic demesne of some in-bred feudal landlord then jesus grow some dignity you don't have to willingly embrace serfdom

country/people/culture/nation if patriotism is fealty to the last of those then it can usually quite easily serve as a container for all the worst that you might be asked to sign up for in any given demand for partisanship

the land, the people, the culture ah i love for all the faults and flaws but its rare i ever have much demanded of me ito belief or answers from that set tbh (language aside)

I like certain aspects of my country and dislike others. I'm fairly happy to have been born here. I would feel the same if I had been born in any other country more or less. Patriotism is ridiculous.

i feel like patriotism like i feel about appeals to loyalty to family pretty much

As soon as shit hits the fan here I'm off.

No loyalty to anything but me

its already hit the fan though

I'm not at all patriotic, but that isn't an intellectually thought out or even moral choice on my part. I'm just not, just like I don't believe in God but I couldn't tell you why and don't care enough to think about the why. I don't think people who are patriotic are wrong or suspect tho. I remember seeing an old world cup where one of the Chile players was belting out their national anthem and looking v emotional and thinking how cool it looked, but if it was an england player doing the same to god save the queen I'd find it yucky, which makes no sense really.

it might just come down to childhood for me, get called the n word a few times when youre a kid and the idea that england is for you seems strange.
I do like living here tho and have no desire to live anywhere else.

this is kinda how I feel about Scotland - get called a [gay slur] of choice, you think you're not welcome.

I don't know my birth father and I've never met him so half of my identity is a question mark, and it's hard to feel connected to anything to do with my origins partly because of that too.

I also think parts of Scotland, especially the parts where I come from, have a culture of people being expected to know their place, to lower their ambitions, to not reach too high. I know I'm mediocre but it would have been nice to not be pressured into feeling like that by everything and everyone around me.

A lot of the traditional Scottish stuff leaves me cold. I hate the traditional music, I would never eat haggis again, I can barely tolerate even Irn-Bru. I know it sounds so small and petty but this stuff really does feed into the identity alienation. There's adverts featuring Susan Calman for the Bank Of Scotland where she really leans into the Scottishness and I find it so embarrassing and exaggerated and unlikeable.

voted no

I am extremely partisan about my home state but not about the USA as such (despite ancestors fighting to create it 250 years ago, or maybe because of that and knowing how the sausage got made).

No. I have never and never will do so, mostly due to my life having been marked by migration and having encountered some degree of unwelcome hostility in all three countries I've been citizen of (including in the first one when I would return). I have never felt like I belonged to any imagined national community and as an outsider the internal divisions were always too apparent to me to develop patriotic feelings (e.g., moving to the South from the Midwest and feeling somewhat like an immigrant all over again).

Apart from the long list of negative reasons (history, current actions, etc.), it feels like a philosophical error to tie any positive reasons to a "love of country."

No. There are things about the USA that I am very attached to and fond of, but I have liked things about every country I’ve been to and I can imagine living happily many places on the globe. “Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles.” — George Jean Nathan

I am extremely partisan about my home state but not about the USA as such

Yeah, this is where I fall too. I’m not from America; I’m from New Jersey.

That fascinates me because the other day a friend and I argued about the partisanship of the South up to and after the Civil War: they were Virginians or Carolinians before Americans, which I find so bizarre.

Lmao fuck a patriot

― a hoy hoy, Saturday, July 4, 2026

I have!

Not a patriot but seems good to have some connection to where you live to avoid like rich digital nomad type behaviour.

big fan of poor lost extraterrestrial behaviour

the digital nomad types in my experience remain culturally stuck to their home country and are not really interested in exploring other cultures beyond cheap costs and sunny beaches

I barely identify with the human race, never mind a nationality.

I looked up a few online dictionaries and what surprised me was how often the wording is about supporting one's country rather than loving it, Cambridge even had "willing to fight for it" in there. There are many things about Portugal that I love but I'm certainly not in the game of supporting a nation state so it's an easy no for me.

seems good to have some connection to where you live to avoid like rich digital nomad type behaviour.

Yes but then when I talk about bingeing Round The Horne everyone's like "wtf that's old and unfunny" :/

English people are generally the worst at appreciating the good English stuff.

Yes but then when I talk about bingeing Round The Horne everyone's like "wtf that's old and unfunny" :/

Everyone with no sense of humour that is.

Like Connolly, really. Many things to love about the country’s history and landscape and culture, will certainly argue with any British person on the subject, but Joyce and Connolly both had pointed criticisms that have persisted and seem truer every year that passes. Country by and for a capitalist class that’s only changed the names.

Connolly:

Ireland without her people is nothing to me, and the man who is bubbling over with love and enthusiasm for ‘Ireland’, and can yet pass unmoved through our streets and witness all the wrong and the suffering, the shame and the degradation wrought upon the people of Ireland, aye, wrought by Irishmen upon Irishmen and women, without burning to end it, is, in my opinion, a fraud and a liar in his heart, no matter how he loves that combination of chemical elements which he is pleased to call ‘Ireland’.

Joyce:

“Do you know what Ireland is? Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.”

There's adverts featuring Susan Calman for the Bank Of Scotland where she really leans into the Scottishness and I find it so embarrassing and exaggerated and unlikeable.

A certain parochial policeman has a great take on this, calls it cosplaying your own ethnicity for foreigners. We are awful for doing this as well.

US “patriotism” as it currently stands is “God Guns and Trump” yard signs, blaming immigrants for problems caused by billionaires, fear of “socialism “ and pretending that Kid Rock has any worth.

Yes, though definitely not of the flag-waving variety. And especially as it relates to opposing the USA these days--in sports, in trade, whatever.

Can you have patriotism without nationalism?

Resounding no.

Can you have patriotism without nationalism?

The usual normie response is "yes, you can love your country without denigrating others". I'm not so sure.

Actually normie is prob the wrong word there. The response I've most encountered, let's say.

Loving a country has always seemed weird to me, because countries are political fictions that are usually/always the result of various kinds of conquest and exploitation. Loving a community, a culture, I can see those because they come from the people who live in a place and share things with each other. That's a reasonable basis for affection. Lines on a map, sometimes but not always contiguous with geographic features, don't to me seem at all the same thing.

If you live in a small or isolated country then isn't your community/culture indivisible from your country? This is prompted by Cape Verde doing well in the World Cup and the fact that I'm going to Malta on holiday later in the year.

It's also complicated if, like Cabo Verde, you have a history of colonization and so national identity is tied into liberation from that.

Also our flag has THE MOST stars suck it Brazil

Respect to Canada though that flag has the chonky leaf to rule them all

NZ had a shot at even more leaf on flag action but decided to stick with tradition rmde

thats just a formal canadian intro

― lag∞n, Monday, 6 July 2026 19:22 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

lmao

She said "tell me are you a patriot"
and I said
"I am tonight"

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when I go to protests/marches etc, I bring a smallish California flag... that is where my loyalties lie, but I'm not a patriot

I like Tom’s answer a lot. I was just in the Kyoto railway museum and one of their prize exhibit is a locomotive from the 1890s built by Kitson and company in Manchester next to a model of James Watt’s original beam engine. I’m now in Hong Kong and have just passed one of their ancient British trams, those are some good British inventions to be proud of.

yes

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nice

Last night I read a really good essay about John Dos Passos' U.S.A. trilogy, which I love. Overall, the essay rekindled my love for the books and I think I'll pull them back off the shelf soon. (I own the Library of America edition.) But the introductory paragraphs really tripped me up, especially the bolded phrase:

My neighbor, a kind elderly Jewish woman with a Jack Russell Terrier named Fauci, knocked on our door last week, offering an American flag stapled to a little balsa wood stick. It was a version of the Betsy Ross flag, with thirteen stars in a circle and “250” in the center of the circle. As “block captain” of the neighborhood association, it was her job to distribute these free flags to everyone on our cul-de-sac. I suppose they had ordered a few dozen of these flags off of Amazon to help everyone get into the semiquincentennial spirit.

I took the flag gratefully. We don’t have any decorations. Some of our neighbors have been going all out with the flags and tricolor bunting. Dorothy told me that not everyone offered had accepted a flag from her.

“I think because it says “250” people think it’s Trumpy,” she said.

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “It’s the 250th birthday of America for everyone. What a shame that it’s being associated with Trump.” I feel strongly that the left is foolish for ceding patriotism to the right.

But I understand. I have only lately become a patriot. I grew up in the shadow of 9/11, the Iraq War, Bush II, in a liberal suburban bubble. I associated “supporting the troops” with mindless idiocy, the stars and stripes with rural racists. Only fools and demagogues drape themselves in the flag, I thought. As I got older, I went further left and discovered what felt like the hidden curriculum of American history: Noam Chomsky, redlining, Fred Hampton, COINTELPRO, the Pentagon Papers. Through a love of folk music I learned about the labor movement, the Haymarket riot, the Ludlow Massacre, the Wobblies. I was ashamed to be American. The USA was synonymous with oppression, imperialism, rapacious industry.

All of these things are true. They are part of our history. And yet the United States of America remains the greatest country in the world, a deeply flawed place that is many places in one, a place of infinite possibility and infinite disappointment, a country that tries and endlessly fails to live up to its ideals, but in the trying proves itself worthy of the hopes that generations of immigrants and native-born sons have placed on its shores. This is an enormous country; it is big enough to hold all these competing realities and histories at once. It’s big enough to contain my ambivalence.

Why do people persist in using this particular phrase? It's an unthinking recitation, like "the sky is blue" or something. And yet it's so easily disproved or contradicted that it drives me a little bit insane to encounter it, over and over and over again. Like, show me any kind of evidence for your claim. Make a list of things that make America "the greatest country in the world." There is no doubt that I will say of at least some of your selections, Yes, those are good things. But in what way do they make America "the greatest country in the world"? Do other countries not have those same things? In what specific ways are other countries inferior to the United States of America? What exactly are they lacking? Make me a second list of other countries' deficiencies, and maybe I'll say, Yes, it's too bad France doesn't have Waffle House, or whatever. But when a seemingly otherwise intelligent person drops an anti-thought cliché onto the page/screen like that, it's fucking depressing.

I feel the same way when people— in this thread no less— attribute inventions by people living in the US to the country as a whole.

Anyway, agreed.

I also agree it’s trite nonsense. I have way too many colleagues from other nations that I respect tremendously to pretend that my home is somehow magical. We do have the Grand Canyon though, which was obviously invented by Americans.

I do kinda think the USA might be the WEIRDEST country on earth, however - we measure things weird, we record dates weird, we govern ourselves weird, and we definitely throw our money at some weird ass ideas sometimes

comparing america to ancient rome is a cliche but i do think theres some truth to it a country that succeeds through the power of lunacy and violence

they had gladiators, we have the Rich Housewives of Utah

i do conceive of usa as a creed and a project. i am stuck in it. i think it is worthwhile, for many reasons. if i did not, i would object more actively to defeat it, or work realistically to leave it.

there are enough histories and events to validate whatever the fuck you want probly.

i am not a patriot and never will be. i do find myself understanding why people are though, why people have always been. it's an instance of people wanting to be part of something larger than themselves. it gives people meaning and structure. it's an easy route to feeling a sense of belonging. they're on the team. i don't find the same meaning in it, and i think it's transparently foolish when considering what a nation-state actually is at any level. you can tell someone that all you want and it's not gonna change a fuckin thing. except make you more bitter. i don't know. for whatever reason it's harder for me to make judgments about other people's patriotism. i just don't want to talk to them about it, that's for sure. when people try to bring up how much they love america with me or whatever, criiiinge. like, good for you. crazy weather we've been having, right?

I absolutely get that too, for me it’s “hip hop is fucking dope, can you believe it’s from across the street?” not so much “Huntsville Alabama rules, we built the Patriot missile!”

…To be both a bit on the nose and also confusing at the same time.

Essentially I think Real Patriotism means loving the achievement first, then being pleasantly surprised you were born next door to its foundation; Bullshit Patriotism is waving the flag first and then claiming credit for the achievement.

it’s a creed, with some just and some virtuous accomplishments, not a street with cool songs or vicious missiles.

Sure! Whatever!

i do conceive of usa as a creed and a project.

Dunno if I'm just expressing a platitude here but this is one thing I hear regularly from Americans and no one else, like tons of countries have exceptionalism (UK, Japan, France - probably most countries, when I get to think of it) but no one else views it with such a sense of mission, I couldn't possibly think of Portugal as a creed or a project...at my most high faulting I might think of humanity that way, I guess.

Hope that doesn't sound dismissive, it's just an enormous cultural difference and so alien to me that I find it fascinating.

i mean i conceive of the US as a creed and a project too, just one that was bankrupt from the start and must be destroyed/stopped

I think of Ireland that way, but the project and creed is pints.

lol

Obviously a trouncing, but a much closer result than I had anticipated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pf9oj5clY5A

another country that thinks of itself as a project is israel

otm about this idea of country as a mission

deeply strange

i mean all countries have their ideas of who they are and how they perform that so ultimately its kind of the same but also clearly theres a difference

The historical circumstances of how the US came to be is obv a big part of it but as an outsider I can't help feeling there is a lot of retconning and mythology in the American project

lol maybe a tad

(xp) tbf founding a country to avoid paying tax is pretty unusual.

tbf taxes have often been a contentious issue in colonial situations, salt tax in india and so forth

In Sherwood Forest too

especially there

tbf, there are elements of the US that are both pretty distinct from a lot of peers and clearly tied back to foundational myths / shared beliefs in what the country stands for. With the obvious caveats, most people do kind of believe that anyone can become an American. There's a comparatively high acceptance of both legal and undocumented immigration. Any attempts to mandate English as a national language for areas like citizenship have been rejected. For better or worse, individual rights are pretty well protected (with the flip-side of individual responsibility being socially, legally, economically, etc, enforced). 'You can't force people to learn English as it's un-American' means something coherent in a way that it doesn't in the UK, Australia, Canada (excl Quebec), etc.

I did once see a Canadian right wing meme that was like "we have two official languages, english and french, speak one of them or get out!" and it struck me how feeble that sounded when compared to the "speak english or die" bigotry elsewhere in the anglosphere - come on, you already have two, might as well give in to the others...

tons of countries have exceptionalism (UK, Japan, France - probably most countries, when I get to think of it) but no one else views it with such a sense of mission, I couldn't possibly think of Portugal as a creed or a project

A lot of countries passed through their mission/creed/project phase hundreds of years ago, when they were actively colonizing/enslaving other parts of the world. It's mostly been abandoned in the modern era, while the US is still at it.

if it's not, what is it, unperson? if it's simply a system of rules to apply power to control people and space in the moment, the SECOND that you devise a way to do that, a creed is born.

i think the US - maybe not solely- is quite clearly in a phase of marching on towards something where other countries have settled in and are merely housekeeping at this point

i do think the u.s. put together a particularly powerful foundation vibe, sort of a mix of religious awakening / new startism / yearning at its most elemental. but under a powerful creed people get the idea that anyone outside of it is dirt they have every right to just play with. frankly i'm of the opinion that people believing in a creed is a huge 'don't go there' signal for me.

i think the US - maybe not solely- is quite clearly in a phase of marching on towards something where other countries have settled in and are merely housekeeping at this point

― Wichita Referee's Assistant (darraghmac), Friday, July 10, 2026 4:04 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

definitely. although it's also kind of at a point where it can't march on anywhere else so there's this huge cultural crisis happening because of it.

Yes. Strangely enough I don't really see this sense of mission in other newer countries either, even those that seem fiercely patriotic. It doesn't seem like India or Nigeria view themselves as projects...or even Australia.

Israel is a good point tho.

xposts

xpost

i think there's a direct relationship between how zealous and brilliantly crazy a country's sense of mission is and how much violence it commits. it's almost like the zeal requires the violence.

I guess Hindutva is the project and India is the territory. Similarly, you have an increasing divergence between the American Project as a semi-authentic expression of national purpose (liberal interventionism, a haven for the persecuted, an example to the world, etc) and America First as a nativist, expansionist expression that barely even pretends to believe in any of the rest.

must say my sense of “project” goes no further than the rights of persons in it and “mission” as a term for what this is is not appropriate for the tasks except in the most limited sense

as soon as you are gardening with sufficient scope to maintain the rights of the whole garden you become an architect

Every organized effort, such as a country, is a project. House keeping is a project. Calling these things “projects” is sometimes done to make them sound uniquely important. They way “experiment” is being used is *blows rasberry*

i wouldn't call myself a patriot, no. america is... something i struggle with.

as much as i'd love to see a post-american world, i look around me and i don't see it happening. too many people are too invested and it's not like i have something i can sell people on. what am i supposed to say, the dictatorship of the proletariat? there are structural issues.

one of the criticisms of america is that americans seem to want everyone to be american... i'd say that i want an america that's _open_ to everyone. i don't think of america as a _people_. i think putting "america" on this particular mindset is very arrogant and presumptuous and i don't personally agree with it, but a lot of people i respect are doing good things in the name of "america". i depend on them, and...

i don't know, that supreme court thread, i read justice jackson's concurrence and wow, here it is in a supreme court decision. two americas. the first america didn't and doesn't recognize me, didn't and doesn't recognize a lot of people, and the second one... the way i read it, it is for everyone. do i trust a new colossus? not really. if it's going to lift its lamp beside the golden door, though, well, that's better than anybody else is offering. i can work with it.