That Shulan has a comforting empathetic way with words.
It's a bit Iwo Jima. I have come to realize people love their flags no matter what. On a commenter on b3ta once said of a really cute photochop of overturned bucket of sand turned into a tiny cottage with an American flag. The commenter said, "Fluffy, except for the flag." The flag made it fluffy to me but rendered it harsh to a young British woman. Her flag is harsh to me, after all, they did come here to kick our asses twice, burned down our capitol, in fact. And their flag is all pointy, And they are harsh colonializers, a word that earns a red squiggly line.
I have more to say about this. Crass thoughts. Low thoughts. To cheer you by. Eww I can't wait to say them in comments.
49 comments:
No words.
Flags are so hoi polloi don't ya know.
Gee, all of the above, SOooo typical of what I call "Atlantic Coast Provincials."
Horse whipping is not good enough for these bastards.
Flags: I already wrote about them:
Pro
Contra
It really depends on who's flying what when.
A lot of people don't want to be told they're being played.
Well, as Moochelle is reported to have said to Choomie, "All this for a flag?".
They really do think patriotism = jingoism. Pathetic.
An Italian on the SF writing newsgroup I read, many years ago now, talked about how weird it was that Americans were so into flags. Flags, flags, flags. She (if I remember this correctly) was in that patriotic bastion of Seattle and there were flags everywhere. She even saw a store that was dedicated just to flags. So she went inside in a sort of fascinated horror... or at least... when she walked out having purchased a US/Italian flag pin she was horrified at the corruption of her soul.
It was, she discovered during her visit, *catching*.
....
I think that I understand, if I try, why some people are so reflexively anti-flag or anti-Americana... I'll even admit to almost feeling it myself. But if I *think* about it... I think that it feels childish and that might be what people react to most. It feels unsophisticated.
Too Rah-Rah.
Too happy.
Too simple.
But even if all those things are true, when I consider it all, I think that the intelligent understanding of those patriotic feelings is that you don't reject them for being happy or simple or rah-rah or unsophisticated, because a reactionary opinion is a thoughtless opinion. It's doesn't make you smarter... it makes you pointlessly dense.
Hello, everyone. I am a lurker from Althouse since I think 2004. So glad to find you here.
That flag, in that iconic picture, the flag the firefighters were attempting to raise in that picture, that flag was taken w/o the owners permission, the flag was taken from his boat tied to one of the piers near ground zero.
This little known story was told to me, in the subsequent days after the attack. I heard the story from a co-worker not much unlike garage in opinion, if not in appearance. A liberal thru and thru.
I don't know what garage looks like, but I do know a little bit about his politics. I read garage politics on and off, now and again, here and there.
To some people, garage's politics' may have seemed torrential in it's quantity and voluminousity of commentary, but I always suspected that it may have seemed that way, it may have seemed garage was commenting, too often, because the opinions expressed retransmitted, or recounted by garage without the express written consent of Major League Baseball, was prohibited in nature.
Now you know, the more you know, the rest of the story. As one good story teller used to say. Good night and good luck.
A lot of. Americans think that the big break of their lives was being born American. Other Amercans realize that they can go behind the velvet rope and walk the red carpet. What makes them special is not being American but being superior to those who think America is special.....I just hope that this museum celebrates the diversity of America and brings to everyone's attention how racist white people are.
Simmer down, William, Shulan has something more to say:
“I really believe that the way America will look best, the way we can really do best, is to not be Americans so vigilantly and so vehemently,”"
Something iconic is always something that has been reduced to simplicity. (According to the article, the photo was too simple, and didn't represent the complexity of the event.)
This is called being so smart you forget not to be stupid.
Or else figuring that everyone else is too dumb to realize what "icon" is and that you're responsible for making sure they never slide into the error of simplicity.
But all the unwashed masses you're worried about misleading know better than you do that raising that flag was defiance, not patriotism. Those men likely lost friends and had no way to spit back at death just then, no way to spit back at the terrorists just then, except to use symbol (a potent and *complex* truth) to declare that the terrorists did not win, because raising a flag after a battle is what the winners of that battle do.
The icon is simple because it cuts to the essential truth. And the truth is simple. The complexity has been removed, but no one is so dull they don't realize that the complexity exists all the same... except if you're a professional intellectual who thinks in condescending terms on account of no one could possibly be as tuned to nuance as I am.
Hi Dinah!
I was a long time lurker, too. Glad you found your way here.
Other lurkers have popped in to say hello (and stayed lurky), and some have become more regular commenters.
Hi Dinah!
Glad you found your way here. I was a long time lurker, too.
Many other lurkers have popped in to say hello. Some have become regular commenters while others have stayed 'lurky'.
Heh. I just read the original article to hubby.
He asked: Where do they get these people?
Me: They are Howard Zinn acolytes.
Fie on him and his ilk.
Hi Dinah!
Glad you found your way here. I was a long time lurker, too.
Many other lurkers have popped in to say hello. Some have become regular commenters while others have stayed 'lurky'.
Hi Dinah Bug.
William -- get. a. grip.
We have an Ethiopian family member. We,with some English and German friends, helped him to get out of Ethiopian before he was killed by Mengistu's Red Terror. He chose to stay in the States and became an American citizen.
Ask him what he thinks of the United States of America.
You see, He. Gets. It.
There is no place like this place.
Could I live elsewhere? Sure. But there is no place like this place.
Thumbs up Synova.
These are the kind of anti-American assholes who control the universities and the culture.
This Shulan isn't an exception he's the rule. Remember when some College Librarian demanded the American flag be taken down after 911. She didn't want to "offend the foreign students" visiting the library! Yeah, right.
Wow, Synova, outta the park.
The Cuban army was instrumental in bringing Mengistu to power. We are blamed for the Rwandan genocide because we did not intervene promptly. I find all this very irksome to contemplate. Is it any wonder that I spend so much time looking at pornography.
The question of patriotism is one of those issues where the local bien-pensants mistake the conventional wisdom of the Euro-elites for the "cosmopolitan view".
Many countries around the world think highly of the spirit of patriotism, as this link shows. While the USA may be at the top, many other countries are not far behind in their feelings of patriotism.
I just realized my post, above, could be misconstrued. The "Atlantic Coast Provincials" I was referring to were guys like Shulan..
Nailed it, Synova.
I remember Bono saying he was surprised by all the pledges of allegiance and flag stuff in America. Irish do not that. Other than an occasional outburst by the British, it is sort of frowned upon in Europe (given all the nationalism fascism of the past).
But then he toured around and saw how diverse and big the United States was and it made sense.
And Synova, great comment.
A powerful nation safe behinds it's geography, and weapons refuses to hide and protect itself from the risks of the wilderness, but instead goes around the world to save other nations from despotism and evil while keeping the world from falling into the Armageddon it so addictively pursues. It has a long record of defeating abusive regimes and conquering their militaries at great cost in it's own blood and treasure only to rebuild them and set them free as prosperous democratic autonomous people who then become close allies and friends.
If you have something better to be "too rah rah" for, I'd like to hear about it. If that same nation embarrasses you, and you wish they would just chill a little bit, then I think you lack a certain level of sophistication and perspective, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume maybe you just never thought about it before.
People mix up patriotism and nationalism.
Americans love America not because their great great-great-great whoever was born here and their roots are pure...
The United States is about freedom -- the belief, the sense, the concept, the essence of our human being. It is truly something exceptional.
We are not subjects ... the government exists by our consent, not the other way around.
Unfortunately politicians -- especially those in Washington -- and especially the present administration -- are doing their damnedest to make us European subjects, or worse.
We visited the Arizona Memorial and Punchbowl - the National Cemetery of the Pacific recently. Sobering. A reminder that there is something different America offer.
There are some glimmers that our consent will be withdrawn from those in office now, (hopefully in 2014) and America will continue to be a beacon for the world.
To rah rah? Anyone who thinks that has never awakened yearning to see that flag one more time and feel life for one more day, each day being a question mark.
Synova got it just right: ... that flag was defiance, not patriotism. Those men likely lost friends and had no way to spit back at death just then ... because raising a flag after a battle is what the winners of that battle do.
Synova and JAL
Wow--really great stuff.
****
Hello, Dinah.
We are blamed for the Rwandan genocide because we did not intervene promptly
*********
Actually the big problem is, and keep in mind that we were more influential at the UN at the time-
a bunch of legal responses from the UN are "allowed" or set in motion if the definition of the term--
genocide is met.
Madeleine Albright and Bill Clinton did not allow that--they blocked it.
They did not want to call what happened in Rwanda genocide--they said they didn't want to insult Jewish people (ironic the scapegoat once again) by somehow diminishing the meaning of the Holocaust.
So a lot of men of action who do the dirty work while watchers debate the meaning of words were forced to sit back and be horrified.
Some of those guys went close to insane.
An interesting story is Romeo Dallaire.
His story.
I was a Democrat at the time calling Ted Kennedy's office and a very compassionate aide of his said I would have better luck calling Sen. Jim Inhofe and Rep. MIca of FL (R).
The Rwandan genocide would not have required U.S. Troops on the ground to prevent, just Bill Clinton and Madeline Albright not fucking it up. And then fucked it up. And about 500,000 to 1,000,000 Tutsis were hacked up by Hutus, who were paying back generations of slights.
But the black on black violence does not have the same draw as Christian-Muslim violence in the former Yugoslavia. So there you have it.
JAL, well said too.
Romeo Dallaire:
But what later on became worse is the fact that the impression I was getting from New York … was that a lot of them thought, or argued that the bulk of the killing had been done. And, in fact, by then we had come to grips with the scale and the killing was still going flat out. There may have been two or three hundred thousand killed, but ultimately they were way into the six, seven, eight, hundred thousand scale of people being killed. Some people say an intervention would have been useless because they were all dead. They weren't all dead. They were still being killed and slaughtered by the thousands and thousands. And so that became a point of contention. And the argument was ridiculous. It's just like the argument around the term "genocide." I mean it's a useless argument. Human beings are being killed in the thousands, it could be in the hundreds of thousands. You don't need the term "genocide" to decide to help other human beings. In fact, once they finally agreed to using the term genocide it did absolutely nothing, it changed nobody's perspective in any way, shape or form that brought any result on the field. On the contrary, the arguments were that the killing was over now, so is the deployment really so essential?
PBS Frontline "Ghosts" Interview with Romeo Dallaire
But the black on black violence does not have the same draw as Christian-Muslim violence in the former Yugoslavia. So there you have it.
******
Ah oui, c'est ça.
The reason for not calling what was happening in Rwanda genocide was maybe best said by Obama’s current national security advisor, Susan Rice:
‘At an interagency teleconference in late April [1994], Susan Rice, a rising star on the NSC who worked under Richard Clarke, stunned a few of the officials present when she asked, "If we use the word 'genocide' and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November [congressional] election?" ‘
Lots more about how and why the Clinton Administration just stood by in "Bystanders to Genocide" by, believe it or not, Samantha Power.
If you are ever in a political battle with lawyer types not only do you have to pin down the definition but you have to get that definition frozen in the environment because they will weasel out any which way they can.
A moving of the goalposts is maybe a more common sense way to label that later "timing" weasel twist.
Lots more about how and why the Clinton Administration just stood by in "Bystanders to Genocide" by, believe it or not, Samantha Power.
*******
Oh yes--I know of her.
Wow--
I was just reading this section:
… These groups were responding to local demands, but then, pretty fast, within days of the start of this and the evacuation of the expatriates -- all these white people, businessmen, abandoning the nannies who had raised their kids for years, with bags full of (certainly not) clothes, even bringing their dogs on the aircraft, [which is] against the rules. Running to the goddamn aircraft; running to the trucks to save their bums, and abandoning the ones who had been loyal to them for so many years … and a lot of them were Tutsis too. So we started to get these calls from New York … from here, there and everywhere, for us to go and save such and such. …
Marnie
Jeez I did not know or had forgotten this:
At an interagency teleconference in late April [1994], Susan Rice, a rising star on the NSC who worked under Richard Clarke, stunned a few of the officials present when she asked, "If we use the word 'genocide' and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November [congressional] election?"
I know, madawaskan, the venality of all involved is really just breathtaking. And how soon we forget.
Mamie said...
I know, madawaskan, the venality of all involved is really just breathtaking. And how soon we forget.
*************
Mamie
Sorry I need glasses--I have them, but I don't like them--
I apologize --I got your name wrong.
Synova,
That is extremely quotable and precise. I might share it on fb.
Someone once explained, in print—I don't remember who or where—that Americans embrace the flag because it is a substitute for a royal family. It brings us all together without us all having to agree with one another. It has a star for each state and a stripe for each original colony. It represents us now and as a continuation of our history. It is a symbol of us as Americans.
First the museum was going to be free, now it's pay. Now certain imagery is to patriotic, so the cowards in the museum won't display it. These scum bags are running the show and should be removed. How is displaying these pictures considered Jingoistic or even considered such. This is what happened on 9/11. It's an exhibition of the truth, but nope, the truth hurts peoples feelings.
Synova said...
Something iconic is always something that has been reduced to simplicity. (According to the article, the photo was too simple, and didn't represent the complexity of the event.)
This is called being so smart you forget not to be stupid.
Or else figuring that everyone else is too dumb to realize what "icon" is and that you're responsible for making sure they never slide into the error of simplicity.
But all the unwashed masses you're worried about misleading know better than you do that raising that flag was defiance, not patriotism. Those men likely lost friends and had no way to spit back at death just then, no way to spit back at the terrorists just then, except to use symbol (a potent and *complex* truth) to declare that the terrorists did not win, because raising a flag after a battle is what the winners of that battle do.
The icon is simple because it cuts to the essential truth. And the truth is simple. The complexity has been removed, but no one is so dull they don't realize that the complexity exists all the same... except if you're a professional intellectual who thinks in condescending terms on account of no one could possibly be as tuned to nuance as I am.
This is what leftist introspection does to people. It turns the narrative of one of being attacked into one of being the aggressor. People said it the day after we were attacked, that this is America's fault that it was, but they were squelched in the wake of the horror that at the time, we thought 50000 americans might have lost there lives instead to find out much later it was 3000. Even still, according to these fools, it's still our fault 12 years later and will be for decades. Fools plying their foolishness on the back of an ideology that would see us all subjugated.
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