Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t need that adhesive strip, I had a freedom patch.

I hope you don’t think I’m done with my “America Bashing”, I’m not. There are more things that catch you off guard when you visit/move (back) to this land of milk and golden corn syrup.

Even if you only know a little about Japan, chances are good that you know the Japanese flag. Well, if you go to Japan it’s possible that you may never see an actual Japanese flag (or miss seeing the one or two that were actually up). What a completely different situation it is when you come to the US. The number of flags that some people display is staggering. And on the off chance that you don’t see someone with a flag, there’s a chance that they have something (or many things) that are red white and blue. Flags are displayed prominently on cars, in front of houses, on bikinis, as window stickers, and probably many other places.

Flags. There’s no place you can’t put them.

There are at least a half dozen flags (of varying sizes) in front of my parents’ house. Now this is all a little showy, but you wouldn’t really know it unless if you go somewhere else so that you have some kind of frame of reference. It can be quite surprising to find how infrequent a flag sighting can be in some countries. That is not to say that the US is alone in this regard or that you can’t find another country where a large number of home and businesses fly the country’s flag; what is different is the fervor put into the waving. This definitely isn’t something that is solely an American thing. For most countries it’s usually something that a small minority of their citizens do, but a few countries lead the pack in this area. The top dogs seem to be USA and China and given what’s happened this summer it looks like China might actually be #1; yet this is not a competition that many would like to win.

I rule. You suck. La la la.

Patriotism is fine, but it’s gone a little overboard when you get the “my country right or wrong” jingoist attitude that is often celebrated by many of the citizens of those two countries. In fact, since I had nothing else to go by I thought that this was standard fare. Little did I know that what many people consider patriotism is nothing like what I used to.

Patriotism in most places is a love of the country where you live and the feeling that, while there are nice places the world over, you have reasons for preferring this country over others. However, for many people in America patriotism is that the US is always right, always blessed by god, the best (healthcare, prosperity, etc) , but also that, in a sense, it’s a beacon of democracy in a world of shit. While I can in some sense understand where the first three come from I never really got how or why people can believe, to whatever degree, the final point, but I’ve seen it enough to know that it’s not a freak occurrence. I would find it sad if it wasn’t something ridiculously frightening in so many ways: the logical disconnect, the lack of a good grasp on the actual facts, the blind acceptance.

Don’t confuse this with nationalism (seen often in France, Japan, etc) which, for the most part, isn’t nearly as bad.