[lbo-talk] Prop. 62 Would Squelch Third Parties in California

Carl Remick carlremick at hotmail.com
Fri Oct 29 15:28:30 PDT 2004



>From: Jon Johanning <jjohanning at igc.org>
>
>On Oct 28, 2004, at 9:48 PM, Bill Bartlett wrote:
>
>>But it seems Americans don't have any binding national identity. Just
>>pretend stuff, every time i see this curious American phenomenon of
>>exaggerated flag waving partriotism, the words "methinks they protest too
>>much" come to mind. The American identity looks like a big fraud, at heart
>>this isn't a real nation at all. Just a bunch of colonies ruled over by an
>>emperor. A feudal empire at that?
>
>Well, I think this "exaggerated flag waving patriotism" thing is to a large
>extent a product of biased foreign news coverage, designed to make
>Americans look ridiculous.

Come, come. Americans need no help from biased foreign news coverage to look ridiculous. It's their birthright.


>To someone who lives here, and has lived here all his life, it's not as
>prominent as it looks to outsiders, I think.

Well I too have been planted in the US since birth, and in all the many decades since then -- including the Vietnam period -- Americans in general have never seemed more a pack of patriotic saps than they do now.


>You can take pictures of a few people waving flags and make that look like
>the whole population to people in places like Australia, where all they can
>see are the pictures, but the reality on the ground is a bit different.
>There was a fair amount of flag waving right after 9/11, which is quite
>understandable, given the tremendous emotional shock. There was also a rise
>in flag waving (but not so great) at the onset of the Iraq war. But at this
>point, the only people waving flags are the rabid Bush supporters.

I think you're focusing too much on the word "waving." Those little flags flapping on car-mounted flagstaffs that were so popular after 9/11 have gone away, but I still see plenty of non-waving flag decals on vehicles, and they are at least double the size of any flag decals in previous common use. In addition, there is a new explosion of patriotic ribbon display -- with car decals showing yellow support-the-troops ribbons, red-white-and-blue ribbons, or combinations of the two.

All in all, this remains a land congenial to the most florid excess of patriotic sentiment.

Carl



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