An old comic that feels oh so relevant in this tumultuous election year.
Source: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/an-important-distinction
What a dumbass take.
The difference is much simpler. Patriotism for internal conflicts, nationalism for external conflicts. Both for manufactured Boogeymen fueled by malicious propaganda.
Talk about dumbass takes…
I did talk. You didn’t. This comment of yours… Zero substance. Not even dumb, just empty.
imo, actual patriotism would be more like “I want to make my house as good as I can.”
You don’t have to think your country is the best to be patriotic with respect to that country.
Nah, it’s very subjective. Idealistically patriotism is more like “I want to make the common house everyone on the street lives in more pleasant to live in for everyone.”
Realistically it’s more like “I want to make my house how I think it should be better. Why doesn’t everyone else do the same?”
Each individual has their own idea about what’s the patriotic thing to do, even if that ends up to be the wrong thing in someone else’s view. That’s why I say it’s about internal conflicts. Your patriotism and your neighbor’s can come at odds with each other in various points. Neither of you might be wrong, but you’ll still have to pick something that goes against those beliefs eventually. Better for you, worse for someone else, but pat oneself on the back with the excuse “the good of the many”.
How many languages outside of English even have a word for patriotism?
Nah.
Patriots would be there waving a giant flag saying we’re the best house ever, despite not actually being involved in building the house or having anything to do with the state of it outside of living in it.
Patriotism and nationalism has zero place in society.
Ok so let’s entertain the opposite of patriotism and talk about self distane what is going to drive you to fix the crumbling rotting foundation or leaky roof because who cares if this crummy house rots and collapses on me if you don’t care about your county then you won’t have the drive to maintain it sure some might but those people who don’t need motivation to do things are rare and far between if the world is hopeless then what hope is there of fixing it
Is pride the only reason you take care of your health?
Because the motivation to not live in a shit place should be that you wouldn’t want to be living in a shit place, not because you think it’s great.
People with no or low self-worth are way more likely to neglect their health than those with high self-worth. Pride is a huge motivator for taking care of your health.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC194072/
The levels of obesity and diabetes among the Pima Indians of Arizona have long been recognised to be high. A small study tested the efficacy of lifestyle interventions. Two groups were identified. The Pima action group had a familiar mix of interventions on nutrition and physical activity. The Pima pride group looked remarkably like a control group for a health education trial—they received printed leaflets about activity and nutrition—but in addition they had regular discussions with local leaders on Pima culture and history. At the end of 12 months, much was going in the wrong direction for the action group, but the pride group had either less deterioration of risk factors or improvements. Compared with the action group the pride group looked favourable on weight, waist circumference, and blood glucose and insulin levels two hours after a glucose load.3 A tentative conclusion was that increasing pride in their identity had a more favourable impact on health behaviours and risk than focusing on how to change diet and exercise.
People often don’t take care of things they aren’t proud of. It doesn’t matter if it’s clearly in their best interest to.
Patriotism and nationalism has zero place in society.
That’s not true, Bernie Sanders campaign had a wonderfully wholesome and inclusive version of patriotism which they used to great effect:.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nwRiuh1Cug
…and he also talks about his nationalism when deriding the Koch brothers:.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf-k6qOfXz0
So like most things it depends on when AND HOW they’re used.
Patriotism and nationalism has zero place in society.
Not true. Patriotism is wanting and seeking the best for your country. Because our society relies on those physical divides, patriotism would actually improve society. Nationalism is deciding that whatever your country is doing already is the best simply by virtue of self-identification. There is no desire for improvement outside of an individual perception so it, functionally, can never offer any improvement for society.
One is potentially beneficial. The other is cancerous.
Strange, nationalists in Europe have a lot of ideas about how to change their various countries.
Only in that they want to move it to a more extreme version of what they already perceive it to be. They are not looking to change it based on any meaningful measure. Nationalists are almost always conservatives.
One is cancerous, the other is a benign tumor (for now).
How? That statement means nothing unless you explain it.
Patriotism, as long as it stays just that, is probably not going to do much damage. It’s just kind of there and annoying, but not directly dangerous. But it is still a ridiculous concept to be proud of the arbitrarily drawn lines within which you were born, and being loyal to them simply because you were born there. That doesn’t mean you can’t like your country and want it to prosper. But emotional attachment to and positive attitudes towards a nation by default is cringe at best. Praise a country if it does something good and critisize it if it fucks up. But why would you give one country special treatment there? And patriotism is never far from being exploited and turned into nationalism at the slightest inconvenience. Sometimes, it doesn’t even take an inconvenience, as evidenced by football right now.
Yup. The main difference between a patriot and a nationalist - or fascist - is a few years and an opportunity.
Last time I checked, we were able to deploy the Office of Censorship to censor US Postal Mail. Conscript Disney and Loony Tunes to build up a massive database of wartime propaganda. Use it to influence the entirety of the US Civilians. Use it to drum up support for War Bonds to help expand the US Debt to pay for the war, raise taxes to 90% on the highest end and build a better country while defeating both Fascism and Communism.
We, as a country, decided that desperate times called for desperate measures. And not only that, we also got rid of these dangerous emergency powers (of explicit Censorship / War Information / Propaganda) before we corrupted our society into an irreversible state.
And therein lies the problem with people who just yell “fascism” whenever they disagree with someone. Yall obviously don’t know the history of this country.
Why do you assume op is an american? Not everything is about, or from, or related to, or on reference to, your failed state lol
If you’re not American then we don’t have any shared political system for which we can improve America. And therefore we have no serious system to help each other out.
None of this works unless we’re working to build the same thing or same concept.
Again, why are you even talking about america? I certainly am not, and the op is just a generalized patriotism vs nationalism comic. The above commenter you replied to originally makes no indication they are referring to america either.
I get it, your system failing is a hot topic for you, but outside your bubble nobody knows or really cares about the inner workings of your government, beyond which senile capitalist you eventually elect to change nothing for the better.
Again, why are you even talking about america?
Because this is a topic about Patriotism and who is actually going to help my country. And building a culture that encourages people to help my country.
but outside your bubble
I’m happy with “Americans” being my bubble.
Now my question to you is: what are you doing in this topic? Are you seriously trying to discourage me from improving the country where I live? Or are you trying to say your country is better or something? I don’t even know what your perspective is.
I know you skimp on your education system, but do you not understand my words? Patriotism doesnt automatically mean america. This isnt about who or what or how your country can avoid going full masks off fascism, this is a semi serious comparison between nationalism and patriotism in a comic format.
And if you want to talk to Americans about american problems I suggest a less international community dedicated to such musings, instead of self centeredly derailing a random, at best tangentially related comment section.
We need to build a shared culture so that we can work together.
My house will become the best house should be a message we all can get around. Otherwise, why should I work with you to build society?
If you don’t like shared work or shared culture to begin with, it’s a bit problematic in that your own political ideologies are destined to die. At the very minimum, your ideology must be self sustaining.
Why this house should be the best? Why make it a competition? Who cares about the house?
We care about the people living in the house. And about the people living in other houses too.
The house in this case is a metaphor for the politicians, laws, community, etc.
You want people to take pride and improve all that. You want friendly competition there. And part of it would be, “We are the best house because we help other houses improve”
It’s a stepping stone to, “We are a commune” ie “We all share this world and should take pride and improve it for everybody” - It’s easier to take pride in and improve your own home first so you get to the point of, “Others should get to share in this and we have so much, let’s help others make their homes as great as ours”
I may be dumb, but for me the metaphor is for the nation. Or the mention of patriotism against nationalism makes no sense.
And I don’t care about nations. They’re a tool used to divide people.
Yes it’s easier to improve my country than others’. But I don’t need pride for that.
Good luck building up a coalition of people who will cooperate with you.
And worse: good luck politically defeating those who are smart enough to use basic psychology to coordinate the masses. Its not evil to do so, its just practicality. We know how people act and how they think. Its not so hard to then use psychology and sociology to build up our own coalitions.
As Terry Pratchett wrote in The Hogfather : We tell little likes like Santa Clause because we’re training children to believe in the big lies like Truth and Justice. And only when we all believe in that stuff can it possibly work. “We’re the best country in the world” is part of that, its a little lie that helps smooth over problems and helps us work together. And in my experience, its effective at it.
You know, I’m not particularly intelligent. If I (and you apparently) understood that nations are a manipulation of the masses, everyone can. Thus we could create a coalition against nationalism and patriotism quite easily, but schools and medias are spreading their propaganda.
Also patriotism: This house sucks, and it’s because of these fucking immigrants
Are you voting Republican or Libertarian?
Can we not do politics? I generally like the comics sub, but my exposure to politics on lemmy, social media, wherever is at such all time peak nonsensical levels that I just block all politic related subs, and would like this not to be one of them.
That’s a fair point. I can try to avoid politics in this community in the future.
As for this post, I’ll defer to the community mod to either leave it up or take it down. No hard feelings from me either way.
But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile. - Patrick O’Brien
Ironic if P had a bit more of N he wouldn’t be absorbed that easy
The liberal fear of these concepts and fear of showing these beliefs is part of why establishment liberals have become such bad orators and such weak and unconvincing political parties.
These concepts have to be harnessed, that’s just the nature of drawing in the middle of politics.
Politics is a luxury to focus on, there are huge swaths of work a day people who don’t and can’t focus on it. They need certain messages as short hand for doing the “right thing” - that’s just how politics is, not everyone can afford to live with the burden of political awareness, it’s not necessary healthy.
You have to give the devil it’s dues, and do so willingly and happily. That’s just how political campaigns are under this system.
I am the queen of France (drums start) (wavy arm dance begin)
I take issue with the first panel.
To me, patriotism is “I’m going to work on my house because I love the people who live in it and I want them all to have the best house.”
If you start from the assumption that your country is the “best” that’s nationalism and straying too close to the roots of xenophobia.
It could be the best for you.
You seem to be implying all people and countries are on a scale moving closer to some single ideal.
But it’s perfectly valid to think your house is the best and want it to be different to someone else’s house, who also thinks their house is the best.
You seem to be implying all people and countries are on a scale moving closer to some single ideal.
I mean that’s definitely how some people interpret it but at least for me, patriotism encompasses the idea that my country should be best for me and the people in it but that other people in other countries get to think the same thing about their country and work towards their own version of “best.”
But I’m not gonna argue that everyone does patriotism this way because that’s clearly not the case 🙃 plenty of “patriots” out there willing to wreck their own country in a war over bringing their own ideals to a different place.
Yeah, it’s maybe the greatest difference between Patriotism and Nationalism: the former is all about “I’ll work to make my house the best house” whilst the latter is about “Yield to me, as I am from the best house”.
Patriots want their country to be the best country, Nationalist want to extract gains from living in what they think is the best country.
You’ll notice that the only things Nationalists ever do for their country are things like “stopping others from coming here” or “celebrating the greatness of their country”, which aren’t at all about making the country better.
Words are defined by how they’re used.
Patriotism and Nationalism are basically the same thing. The distinction is nonsensical, especially in this context.
good ol’ Lemmy’s lack of nuance.
You’ll have to explain, since in the comic the main premise of both Nationalism and Patriotism is that “this house is mine ergo it is the best”.
(Also historically the distinction would be that Nationalism is about establishing an ethno-state, while Patriotism is the basically-unconditional loving of your state, be it ethno or otherwise.)
so, you got the start, where the similarities were laid out, but you skipped the title and then the rest where the distinction - the differences - were laid out.
you want me to explain the entire thing to you. word by word. panel by panel. 🤦♂️ ffs. You’re the sort of person who wears velcro shoes, but not by choice.
Or, I’ll you’ll bear with me, I reject the arbitrary and contrived difference the comic puts forwards.
You’ll surely grant that in real life there is a lot of co-morbidity between the two conditions - even if you personally might not agree that the improvements to the house that the people you label as Nationalist would try to implement. Which is the Patriot’s quality.
Also, if you vote, you are ethnically tied to, and guilty of, every decision and moral misstep of that politician until the end of time.
I would say patriotism is when you love the ideas a nation is built on and stands for, while nationalism is when you love the people and history of a nation.
As a european it’s very hard to love the former, since we’ve been here for more than a thousand years meaning whatever ideas our forefathers might have had in mind are rightfully gone now. However over this time we developed our own culture and became a nation of people which we can love instead.
Nationalism doesn’t have to be toxic as it’s often depicted, if someone belives their nation is “better” that’s called chauvinism. Nationalism is just when you feel your nation is special for you at least and that makes you want to better it.
I don’t think that your differentiazion between patriotism and nationalism is correct. Nationalism always began with the invention of nations through national movements. The nation building in europe began in the 18th century, not a thousand years ago. Nationalism always refers to the invented history of a nation (“a thousand years ago”), while patriotism can refer to the political system or the constitutional documents.
I think both are awful because there is a really fine line to chauvinism. The positive view of oneselfes too often comes with the devaluation of others.
if you want to make up new definitions for your own language that is similar to, but not quite like English, that’s up to you.
Conservative’s patriotism is mostly virtue signaling in my experience.
Chauvinism ≠ nationalism
Ireland and quebec are nationalist, they want to become independent from englad. Its about sovereignty.
Chauvinism is fanatical adoration of a person, a group or a belief like the maga side of the republican.
You see my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one’s country, not to its institutions or its office-holders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death. To be loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags—that is a loyalty of unreason, it is pure animal; it belongs to monarchy, was invented by monarchy; let monarchy keep it. I was from Connecticut, whose Constitution declares “that all political power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority and instituted for their benefit; and that they have at all times an undeniable and indefeasible right to alter their form of government in such a manner as they may think expedient.”
Under that gospel, the citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth’s political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he is a traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this decay, does not excuse him; it is his duty to agitate anyway, and it is the duty of the others to vote him down if they do not see the matter as he does.
- Mark Twain, “A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court”
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