this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024
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In the US politics is like sports or entertainment. I call it Team Democrat vs Team Republican. For example the average MSNBC viewer watches an insane amount of that crap every day. I think it's ~7 hours. The average viewer is also a retiree at ~70 years old. This is what they choose to do in their retirement. And - of course - the average Fox News viewer is the other side of that.
When an American uses a word like "sacred" in regards to voting - they are nearly certainly unaware of how insane that sounds to people from other countries and leftists in general. The fetishization and conflation of the flag, voting, the Constitution etc are American civil religion and American exceptionalism. Some Americans fly the flag 365 days a year. One of my neighbors has a flag out every day. I can see it through the window when I'm at my computer desk.
American exceptionalism is very weird to me. If we are so great - why don't we compare ourselves to other countries to prove it? But Americans want to live in their bubble. American exceptionalism is a tautology based on the fantastic level of wealth of our country and our military.
Political tribalism was added to the mix. There was some in the pre 9/11 but that event caused different insanity - war-brained insanity and political sectarianism was pushed aside for a while. Of course - it came roaring back when Obama was president and it carried through to today. So people will be proud of being an American and being a Democrat or Republican.
Flag shagging is ridiculed here, rightly so. It's an embarrassing thing that should be kept in check because of the types of people it creates when it's out of hand.
Anti-nationalism should be one of the biggest parts of a leftist america movement. There's a reason the feds are signal boosting patsocs, they've already identified it's a critical component that communists should be targeting and with a growing left the intel agencies are getting ahead of the game.