a million pieces/segments sneering at hasan piker and the co-chair of the DSA, meanwhile a republican congressional candidate in upstate new york named peter oberacker is the grandson of an actual nazi germany soldier and his former staffer was part of the ‘i love hitler’ young GOP group chat
Should everyone be proud of where they come from? Probably not.
I don’t think being proud of your ancestry or heritage should be the default setting. In fact, we should look back with a critical view and criticize where we should and learn where appropriate. Humans tend to suck, you know? So we should acknowledge that and not ignore the faults of our nature.
Thing is, you could very easily be a very proud German AND proud of your family and still say “yeah, I’m not so proud of my country and family between 1939 and 1945”
I don’t really understand how, personally. I’m not proud of my family at all. I am American, but I am a first generation immigrant, and my family is Belgian and they are responsible for genocide and I mean they have in Belgium in their homes a Massive collection of stuff from the Congo. When I was younger, I didn’t understand what all of that ivory and everything else meant. But when I got older, I learned where it had come from. I’m not proud of that. I’m not proud of my family. I’m not proud of a thing they fucking did in the past.
I don’t really understand how any American right now could be proud of America considering where we are at.
I don’t understand, how German can be proud of themselves. It’s not been long enough. And while my own countries have been a fucked up places. I also saw what the Germans did to Belgium. My family never forgot that and we haven’t forgiven. I don’t understand why anyone fucking should.
Now I don’t believe any person or country should be proud of anything. Elon Musk didn’t make all his money because of America. That took nearly the entire world’s leadership to do. And they are collective of all of us. So I’m not sure what there is to be proud of anymore.
No you could not. Being “a proud <insert nationality here>” means outing oneself as a dimwitted loser with no accomplishments of one’s own.
Dumb take
Said the genius ^^
Thanks
I’ve never understood the concept of “being proud of your country” at all, to be honest. Like, you as an individual have such a vanishingly insignificant impact on your country as a whole that anything you may have contributed is pretty much irrelevant. This applies doubly so if you’re below the age of, say 30 or 40, or if you’re being “proud” of something your country did before you came of age, as you literally didn’t contribute anything whatsoever and just happened to be born into it.
The obvious exception is if you are the supreme dictator-for-life and singlehandedly made every major policy decision for the last 3 decades. Or if you live in Liechtenstein and therefore your individual impact is drastically overrepresented compared to a “regular size” country.
Yeah it feels more healthy to be proud of achievements.
Includes being proud of your children if you have achieved good parenting, but being part of a country, what is the achievement, what is the work you have put in there?
Pay taxes maybe. “I’m proud to pay taxes for country X” doesn’t have the same ring to it, though.
I understand where you’re all coming from, but at the same time I do believe you can be proud of things you’ve done nothing for.
For example I don’t see anything wrong with being proud of a family member for beating addiction or running a 5k etc.
Edit: Phrasing
It’s a longer time period tho. And “not so proud” doesn’t cut it for literal genocide, you need to actively denounce that shit if you claim to be proud of the rest of your culture and history.
It’s not about isolating and ranking historical events or periods tied to whatever nation-state ideology you were brought up with. It’s about questioning the authority and functions of nation-state narratives in the first place. And realizing that ugliness is often borne out of the most seemingly banal things ever.
Being proud of your randomly assigned geography and demography can and has come with some good. But it’s nothing compared to the ugliness it causes.
You can be proud of yourself and your own achievements. You can be proud of how your kids or students turned out and, to an extent, their achievements. You can be proud of your teammates (colleagues, coauthors etc) and what your team has done. Being proud of millions of totally unrelated people, or a social construct like a “nation” or a “country” is a big fucking stretch. If you insist on doing that, you also need to be ashamed of all the awful shit your country has done too. And believe me, there will be a ton of shit there. Can’t take the credit but eschew the responsibility.
A lot of people came to America because where they was was so shitty, that even a wilderness like America looked good.