Lack of patriotism makes me sick!

It really erks me to see all these young kids riding around in their piece of shit cars with flags of different countries that they've never been to, hanging from their rear-view mirrors.

I understand wanting to represent where you are from and remembering where you may have grown up, but 90% of these ungrateful fucks have never even been to these countries. The worst is Italians. Not only have 99% of these morons never been to Italy, but if the country wasn't shaped like a giant fucking boot, they wouldn't even be able to find it on a map.

How about being proud to be American? Patriotism doesn't mean agreeing with the government, or supporting government officials, it means loving the land that has provided you with everything you have in life. You may hate the government and their policies, that's fine. But, don't allow them to skew your viewpoint of America. We are the free-est nation in the world, and are truly the land of opportunity. The government will educate you, feed you, care for you, provide you with housing, etc. I've been to some of the poorest places on earth, and until you've seen the prejudice, poverty, and corruption in other places on earth, you will never be able to appreciate what we have in this country.

My random thought for the afternoon.

 

i was seriously thinking this was gonna be a troll thread.

i agree with the kids with the italian flags. thats stupid. but you can't assume that much on people. kinda stupid to say "hey kid! you cant have that flag, you've never been there!"
but the entire concept of patriotism is completely retarded. its a huge act of ignorance.
and in reality, patriotism has nothing to do with appreciation.

for me i dont give a fuck if someone has any kind of flag, the only thing i care about is them being in the society that they actually are in.

i find your thinking very irritating.

 

Perhaps they have the flags as this is the world cup in South Africa and their teams are getting ready to compete.

It does not mean they are not patriotic or American.

 

..

 

Perhaps they are showing some pride in their ancestry/heritage...

There's a lot that can be done by regular folks to make the country a better place for them and something to be proud of and flag waving is toward the end of that list.

 

At this point in my life I can say that I'm not patriotic in the least.
America has not provided for me, nor do I expect it to. What I do expect though, is to not be fucked over by a consistently growing disparity between the rich and the poor, practically mandatory second-rate higher education being sold at hyper-inflated prices, an absolute crises in the housing sector, a health care system that neglects a sizable portion of the population, the pursuit of unpopular military conquests that are neither just in their purposes nor financially reasonable, and the general underhanded justifications of supporting a society that revolves around the bourgeois profiting on second-class citizens. How can you blame people for not giving a shit about America when they grow up in a seemingly fascist corporatocracy?

And I'm aware that there are people in this world that would kill to be living in America even below the poverty line. There are some seriously fucked up places in the world, but that doesn't excuse the shit hole that America is becoming.
I wouldn't be surprised if in 20 years the line between "first-world paradise" and the third world began to blur.
America has become a place of greed where the privileged, (code word for "rich") profit on the suffering of not only their own countrymen, but on the suffering of people all over the world, and is not something I can feel proud to be associated with in the least.

 

As an Italian(well of Italian descent) I'm popping in to defend people waving the Italian flag, what is more wrong with it than waving the American flag. We're a very proud people. This entire continent was discovered by an Italian, it's named after an Italian, Italian food has become a standard in the United States. Italy in itself has one of the longest and most impressive cultural records in all of Europe. Basically all western nations, which eventually set the basics for most world nations, developed it's system of government and law from the Roman republic/empire. When all of Europe fell into the dark ages, who lead the Renaissance in the later middle ages? Italian artwork, music, architecture, literature, universites, ect set a standard at the time that still makes them among the most treasured works in all of western history. Heck, did you know even St. Basil's cathedral in Moscow, one of the most famous symbols of Russia and Eastern Orthodoxy, was actually designed and built by Italians, since Ivan the terrible wanted the best to design it, and well, *smug face*

So yes Italians are proud and overly smug, but why shouldn't be we, the whole western world is in love with Italy. Italy's cultural dominance over the past 2,000 years is basically the equivalent of America's economic and military dominance over the past 50.

That and we're not spread out, Italians seriously concentrated in the north east:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.svg
And we the last major wave of European immigration, so where Italians were Italian culture was very flaunted since as one of my friends once put it "jesus you can't spit and not hit an Italian in Connecticut"

So yes, we're proud, but only because everyone else loves us!:xmastree:

 

No group of people can be considered culturally dominant if they lack Bach.

 

Why be proud to be American? Fuck America. I was born and raised in America, but I hate this fuckin country. I love Georgia though, just because this is my home and it's a lovely place, but the government forces me to hate this country.

 

We should secede bro.

 

Indeed. GA should be it's own country. You can be president and I'll be surgeon general

 

The goverment has not fed me educated me or cared for me. They have never provided housing for me.
They have taken my money in the form of taxes to fund shit I do not agree with.

If someone wants to hang a fucking flag from their car who gives a shit.

 

Ahem, didn't Guido of Arezo invent the entire basis for how sheet music is written!!!. Let's not forget Verdi either.

 

You can be proud of where your from without being proud of what they do.

 

Pride is an insidious form of self loathing.

 

flags are stupid

patriotism is stupid

this thread is stupid

 

There was a joke in an old Mad magazine about someone having a cookout and telling the neighbor:

"We're having Italian sausage, Swedish meatballs, a salad with French dressing, and German chocolate cake."

Neighbor: "What's the occasion?"

"American Independence Day!"

.

 

I agree with Stinkfoot. There are many ways to be patriotic besides waving the right flag. I don't see any problem with being proud of America plus your ancestral homeland. This is a land of immigrants.

 

patriotism makes me sick

 

be proud of what you have done or not done

who cares where you were born or where you live?