Right now I can see two futures.
One where the 2026 election gives the Dems control of both Houses.
The other where the 2026 elections are cancelled for national security reasons.
I’m hoping for the first. But I fear it will take many blatantly awful things happening to counter all the indifference, ignorance, and complacency around us.
Because the hate is insurmountable otherwise.
I admire your optimism, but what do you think will turn people away from Trump in 2026 that didn’t turn them away this year? It’s not like we haven’t already seen a Trump presidency.
Trump got the same number of votes this year he got in 2016.
Dopes who thought Harris wasn’t worth voting for is what screwed us.
So US has 1/4 of China population and can’t compete economically.
World is in a sharp fertility crisis.
U get free humans coming to your country to help u with that economic problem.
U should use those people, dumbest thing u can do is deport them and waste tons of money in the process.
U want cheaper houses - that’s how u get cheaper houses ffs
Classic assumption that “the left” doesn’t love this country.
Love that phrase…”love this country”.
What does it even mean? The citizens? The flag? The physical land and soil that encompasses “this country”? Love the government? If so, what about the government do you love? The governments policies? Laws? The constitution? The actual government employees? Which ones? The president? A combination? How is the combination divided?
Also, depending on the answer to the above, why? Because you were born here? You think it’s better than other countries? How are you defining “better”?
Stupid phrase imo.
For me loving a country is a natural love of home. It’s a sentimental attachment. I want my country to be a nice place the way I want my home to be a nice place. I want to feel the pride of both. If my kitchen stinks because of spoiled food and piles of dirty dishes I don’t feel right. Same when my country stinks of poverty, homelessness, sick people who can’t afford cures, etc. I want my home to be better than that. Recognizing faults doesn’t mean someone doesn’t love their country. it means they’re honest.
But why would the boundaries of your “home” be as big as a country?
Sure, being proud of yourself makes sense, and of your family and close friends and of the things were you or they have a strong influence over like their homes and what they do which in some cases means their jobs.
However being proud of something were you and those you hold dearest are but a tiny, tiny fraction with pretty much zero influence is not at all the same thing, especially if most of the great things about it are the product of the works of people long dead.
My point being that pride in one’s country is an artificial thing which you’ve been pushed into having from the outside and as such is a prime vector to manipulate you (and all it takes is to listen to politicians harp about the greatness of one’s country to see that it is indeed being used for that by some), not something natural like pride for you and those close to you and their deeds.
I wouldn’t be surprised if my words above feel wrong, but under a cold logical analysis, do they come out as wrong?
I understand what they mean. I think this comes down to an exercise in semantics, and you are pushing the “country = home” analogy too literally.
Feelings of love and pride don’t need a pure rational root cause. They can exist in a more abstract sense, like in the case of “loving your home”. You can take pride/love in the work you do to clean your home, especially when realizing others will be living in it as well. I can “love” the earth, and want to take care of and respect it.
Love can be expressed in many different forms. I can both love my significant other and also love my parents. I think you can then extend this argument to loving something abstract, like earth, or your country, with a sort of rational basis being that I love my fellow humans and want to reduce suffering.
My point being that pride in one’s country is an artificial thing which you’ve been pushed into having from the outside and as such is a prime vector to manipulate you (and all it takes is to listen to politicians harp about the greatness of one’s country to see that it is indeed being used for that by some), not something natural like pride for you and those close to you and their deeds.
I don’t quite follow you here. To me, there is a difference between having love or pride in one’s country versus being nationalist. To me, the latter involves critical analysis and honesty about flaws, and working to fix those flaws. Nationalism on the other hand would be amount to uncritically supporting everything the country (or politician/government) does, which is I think what you are describing?
Also, how do you define what is “natural” vs “unnatural” pride?
I think the first part of your post kinda starts to answer what you quoted from me below it.
Love for your country is an emotion, so it’s not rational or logic.
It is however something one gets from society because nobody is born with love for one’s country nor naturally grow it by themselves without outside contact, whilst most people naturally grow love for their parents, brothers and sisters (or are born with it?) as well as love (in the broader sense) for some of the people you know well (i.e. good friends and in a different sense romantic partners).
Mind you, love (again in the broader sense) for a group one belongs to (for example one’s sports team) is natural for most people, often to the point of being tribalism.
Anyways, the point being that countries are artificial, societal constructs, so that’s the first part of “love for your country” being artificial and whilst the general cognitive mechanisms to learn to “love” a group is natural, for it to be for the very specific group which is a country, requires that you’re somehow influenced from the outside towards it, if only by constant exposure to talk about “our country”, so that too can be artificially pushed (maybe it might happen naturally from mere exposure and without a “push”, though from what I’ve observed having lived in a couple of countries, the levels of Nationalism and Patriotism in a country seem to be positively correlated to how much the media and politicians talk about “the country” which for me indicates that for most people such love it’s pushed on them).
“What does X mean to you?” isn’t a cold logical question, so a cold logical critique or analysis is pointless, but you do you.
Well said
A friend who worked in D.C. for a while clued me in to the Rosetta Stone of understanding the right-wing mentality: It all flows from a deep, abiding self-hatred. They need constant reassurance that they are good people, because they don’t really believe it.
Furthermore, they literally need an untermenschen (the poor, the homeless, the sick) to be better than, so their own success proves that they are good.
It’s obvious when you look at it this way: America must axiomatically be all good, because they are Americans; with your criticism, are you saying they’re not good?
Whenever I’m driving through highways, hiking at the Adirondacks, walking around nyc, visiting my friends in LA, I’m always in the awe of this country. Fuck these people who think we don’t “love” this country.
Patriotic lefty marine corps veteran here, I’m so sick of the right wingers highjacking the word patriot. You are exactly correct in calling out the difference between nationalism and patriotism. I love this country and I hurt so much seeing what it has become over the last 20-30 years.
In all fairness it’s only an assumption of those who confused Nationalism with Patriotism.
Patriotism (what can I do for my country) fits naturally with Leftwing principles (such as “The greatest good for the greatest number”) whilst Nationalism (what can I get from being born were I was born) fits naturally with Rightwing principles (such as “What’s in it for me?”)
“absolutely mute” 😆
Yeah, like a mime’s opinion. It’s “mute.”
She getting deported to?
To Columbia.
Leopards about to FEAST
They seriously unfucked this community just in time!
Colombia is probably going to be safer in 4 years.
Thems the rules. The rules we made up so we could demonize people and pretend it’s not racism.
Look at the name, it is a bot.
The second username is just a suggested Reddit username, I have one on my Reddit account because I was too lazy to think of an original name. It doesn’t mean you’re a bot.
And the first username looks like it belongs to somebody who owns a 2017 Subaru Impreza.
Honestly, what’s worse, that someone has so little empathy that they’ll just tell some innocent person that they should be separated from their loved ones because they didn’t say the right magic words as they went over the imaginary line, or that someone would invest the time and energy into creating software to do so automatically
These troll bots are here on Lemmy too. Same language. Bootlickers enabled by the internet. Do not feed them.
Have you ever noticed that 99% of the time the point of a post is to evoke an emotional response?
The same could be said of most songs, poetry, fiction.
Someday we will invent a way to convey emotions without that intermediate step. That will be impressive.
Find someone to officiate a marriage and then there’s no problem
That’s not how this works. I am legally married in Japan and wanted to get it official in the US as well and… we gave up. I would have to go through all the hoops to get her an SSN or TIN or whatever just to get it done, at least in the county I used to live in. That proved to be a second problem to me because I couldn’t prove current residence there (though that hurdle could be cleared by this person assuming only he needs to prove residence).
This ignores the fact that dude has been harboring an illegal alien, among potential other crimes, and the illegal alien is there in violation of stay which makes all future visa/residency stuff harder. If I get married THEN apply for some residency status for my wife, that’s possible and not the most painful thing from what I hear (green card and citizenship are whole other things), but that goes out the window when things are illegal already.
Getting a green card, even after marriage, typically takes 6 months at a minimum. If they started the process now, she could still be deported within Trump’s 100 days
For now. What if they change the rules and retro the law to apply to anyone? “Can’t happen.” We’ll see I guess.
I would like to say that SCOTUS is about to have bigger fish to fry than one Colombian getting married to stay in the country.
Relevant again
deleted by creator
This is a great argument for weak/selective law enforcement. Because there are always exceptions.
No, you have sanity backwards. This is a great argument for our legal system needing an overhaul so that only things that are enforced always are enshrined in laws. Murder is bad – great law. Loitering as a concept – dumb law used to abuse.
There will never be perfect laws. The idea of encoding behavior is absurd. What we need is let the laws handle the major ideas (don’t kill etc) and let real live humans handle the details.
Unfortunately when you say real live humans you mean “a coin flip between getting a human or a raging authoritarian racist bully with a gun” which is why your idea doesn’t work, historically. Works well for the racist bullies I suppose.
Surely we can pick our humans. Reject the “raging etc” and prefer the good ones.
What planet are you living on?
Less rhetoric, more plain speaking, please.
Your statements do not compute
Beep
Borp
Zoooooooop
Like, for rich people?
And wives of rich people?
Get hitched loser, she sounds great.
She can do better
Pretty sure scotus just ruled that she’d have to leave the country for 3 years as she was here illegally.
