Mainly you lose me here, Chuck.
I said:
>
>So, if I feel that I am an American, with a special connection to the
>traditions and customs and the people of this country,and moreover
>that this is not a bad thing to be, but even a good one, I am
>necessarily a bloodthirsty bigot, a scoundrel, and and hollow man who
>fails to to recognize that I have a special bond to each and every
>human being in the world? Sheesh, no wonder the American left can't
>connect with anyone... jks
>
>-------------
>
>Justin, come on.
>
>This isn't just a confusion over a few idle flag wavers. We (you, me,
>everybody) are completely surrounded by a mass media envelop of
>mythological representations that purport to be, literally BE
>America.
So, you're gonna let 'em? You let them have it?
>
>This fabricated system of signs and symbols . . . is sold to us and
>everybody
>else on earth as America. It speaks for us (which is why it has to be
>denounced as the big lie) and it is completely oppressive.
Quite right. So we say: Not In My Name! Which the title of a Jewish Palestinian right group that I work with. You think USA Patriotism is monolithic and oppressive, try Ameriacn Zionism. But I don't say: I am Not a Jew (which after all is what the Zionsits thinka nd would rather I said), but Not In My Name!
>
>In my absolute trashing of patriotism, I am not talking about what are
>your tangible and living experiences, your life---
However, I am talking about my life and yours, our concrete existences as, among other things, activists who live in America and must persuade, first all, other Americabs.
but its commodified
>Other, its expropriation, its representations, its branded USA logos
>and eros that animates in a dance macabre the whole mythic force of
>this country and hence its conceptualization of itself as Empire.
Well, I don't go in for that stuff either, but after all, Jimi Henmdrix played the Star Spangled Banner. It's not just an ironic deconstruction. It's also a tribute to possibility.
>
>Remember (about two years ago) our exchange over Hegel and his
>identification of state with world spirit and its uses during Bismarck
>with developing German nationalism---a kind of ghost or after image
>of what Hegel felt as a young man, was the promise of the French
>Revolution? (I am not explaining this well, sorry, but you must remember).
No recollection whatsoever, sorry.
>Look at us! There is nothing but talk of war, slaughters, death,
>power, terror. This is insane.
Yes, your point? Some thugs want us to say that this is America, we are nation of killers. W thinks so, he just thinks it's a great thing. Gets him off, it seems. I don't dispute that we can be made to kill, but I do dispute that that's all we're fit for. After all, we may have produced Sheridan and Custer and Lt. Calley, but we also produced Louis Armstrong and Eugene Debs.
But if the US and the pigs in power keep this shit up, it
>seems to me, this threatens to get very dark
No dispute there.
>
>So, I want to put as much conceptual distance as I can between me and
>that fucking USA.
>
That USA, sure. But what about Louis' USA?
jks
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