politics

What is there to be proud of? An illegitimate court, house and senate bought and paid for by corporations and foreign governments, a capitalist economy that crushes 99.99 percent to lift the 0.01 even higher? These are points of shame, not pride.

The kids under 35 have only known post-911 snooping, bigotry, military adventurism, the 2008 mortgage crash, housing and education costing multiples of what previous generations paid (in adjusted dollars), COVID insanity, a political system that is completely inaccessible to them and utterly uncaring about their needs, and, finally, a climate being actively accelerated to disaster.

The wonder here shouldn’t be at their lack of patriotism. It should be at the fact that they aren’t setting fire to everything, murdering politicians, billionaires, and their lackeys, and generally grinding everything to a halt.

I find Patriotism incredibly arrogant and somewhat ignorant of the world around you. I don't care where you're from, I only care about decent individuals.

I think a lot of people are confusing "proud" with "glad". I'm in the 35-54 range and I don't think there's much to be proud of anymore. And frankly I'm closer to embarrassed than indifferent on the subject given the progress we've lost in the last decade or so. But am I glad to be an American?
Sure, I'm glad I wasn't born in Russia only to be a bullet sponge in an unjustifiable war.
I'm glad I wasn't born in Afghanistan with the Taliban oppression.
I'm glad I wasn't born in Syria during one of the longest and bloodiest conflicts in modern history.
I'm glad I wasn't born to sift through cancerous e-waste or mine diamonds for a warlord in Africa.
I'm glad I wasn't born into North Korea (self explanatory)
So, while I'm glad I wasn't born under worse circumstances, I'm not proud that we're directly and indirectly responsible for many of those circumstances.
But, I also don't think it's an unsolvable problem. We could make America a place to be proud to be from, but that's a very long road from where we are right now and I fear that there's also a lot of potential to get worse if the tinderbox is mishandled.

Can confirm, am German and not proud to be an American either.

To any “patriot” who would tell these young folks to just leave the United States, I’d like to submit a preemptive YOU are the one’s who should be getting the fuck out. YOU are the ones who are un-American, YOU are the ones supporting a traitor to our country, and YOU are the ones fucking it up for everyone else by voting against not just your interests, but our interests as the not billionaire class. Hopefully, enough youth in this can be motivated to make us something to be proud of, rather than an embarrassment.

I'll also add a preemptive "I have no fucks to give" to anyone who wants to try and shame me for not playing nice with these "patriots". I definitely spend quite a bit of time trying to understand these people, but only in the hopes that a method to marginalize racists/traitors/bigots can be developed. You want to try to figure out how to "work with" these people, go right ahead. Not going to waste my time.

Signed: One pissed off veteran.

Americans have not had it hard in a long time. No world wars have been fought on our soil. The wars we have been in since WW2 have not been very popular. I grew up gen X and we pretty much thought the world was going to end and that the previous generations handed us a pile of shit.

The kids now days look at all of us like a bunch of hypocritical ass hats. If I was a kid watching the shit adults are doing and talking about now, I would not be proud either. I would be embarrassed. I am embarrassed of what we have/are becoming. A lot of older people sit around and bitch about the younger generation but we are the ones that raised them. We are the ones not taking care of business like we told them they should. We are the ones babbling nonsense, disrespecting the law, doing all the things we told our kids not to do. Why the hell should they listen, or be proud or form the same values as we may have? We are literally showing them that none of this matters and then turn around and blame them for telling us all to fuck off.

I thought we were living in 2023. Why be proud of coincidence to happen to born in a location? Feel lucky compared to other locations, maybe that makes more sense.

Well, y'know, we were an explicit apartheid state for 80% of our history, and were founded on the back of slavery and genocide so brutal it served as the blueprint for Nazi Germany... The more alarming part is that anyone is proud of our nation.

I'm not young and I'm really not proud. It's honestly embarrassing. Trump was a disgrace and ruined any sense of pride I had.

Why would they be? I'm not.

Be proud of something that you have no personal responsibility for creating is weird.

I mean, gestures broadly

I'm 65 now. When I was a kid, I was relatively patriotic. Civil rights, moon landing, all that stuff. Now? Not so much. The US is still much better than many other countries but it's not the world leader that used to be.

The American Dream. You can keep it.

I second that and I'm 54. America has given us precious little to be proud of and the "American Exceptionalism" folks seem willfully ignorant.

I consider myself an Oregonian first and foremost.

Good be proud of things you do, not how you were born.

This Gen Xer isn't either. I drank the Kool Aid so hard as a teen. I joined the army and learned how to fall out of perfectly good airplanes. Lost all of that after 9/11. It took me a few years but all the Bush regime lies and invading Iraq really brought it into focus for me.

It seems strange to me that people have pride in the circumstances of their birth, something which they have no control over. Most Americans became Americans by doing nothing more than sliding out of their mother's womb. It's one thing to be proud to be a citizen if you worked hard and took the citizenship test to earn it, or during certain times where citizenship actually matters like when doing one's civic duties such as voting or attending jury service, but the people who go around boasting about how proud they are to be American always seem so phony to me. What exactly are they proud of? Why are they proud of it? So bizarre.

I mean...

*gestures around at everything

I have always found it weird to be proud of where you're born. It's pure chance.

I'm grateful for having been born here, but I can't find it within myself to be prideful over something that I had no control over such as the circumstances of my birth. I have a different concept of pride. I'm prideful for things that I've done such as reaching milestones, accomplishing goals, etc. I don't hate this country, but I definitely don't believe we're the best, but I definitely don't believe we're the worst. For what it's worth, it's my home and I plan on staying.

I'm embarrassed to be American at this point... Republicans are literal fucking nazis, democrats continue catering to the whims of corporate lobbyist bribes, and corruption is everywhere. Nothing will change until the boomers start dying off ~2032, and that's assuming we can remain a democracy that long.

I'm 45, and my nationality is nothing to be proud of.

There's a lot I love about America: the natural beauty, some of the people, access to a lot that most of the rest of the world doesn't have similar access to, but I've never bought into the "Proud to be an American" schtick. Our gov't can get fucked, regardless of who the President is. There's corruption that goes way beyond that office.

On a political and governmental level, I'm not proud at all personally. There is very little that our government did that I think should inspire the rest of the world to follow suit. Maybe stopping a few terrible things that it should have never been doing in the first place, but that's hardly anything to be proud of when it's long overdue and with still plenty of other bad things that it's starting or failing to stop.

But as far as the people who live here go, there are a lot of them that I am proud to know and be around. There are some great people here, and maybe they are partially influenced by some good deeds from the country's past, or at least the ideals it promoted. Not government leaders thag would affect things on a large scale, but genuinely good people who make things more bearable for those in their vicinity. Ironically some of them are in demographics that this country is not currently respecting or defending enough.

Because it's not about the soil, it's about the bond with your people, your history, your culture. There's a good kind of national pride we don't have - the kind that says "look what we've built! Look how we trust each other, look how we all keep things clean together, look how even when we disagree we work towards the goals that matter"

We don't have much trust in our people, our history is short and brutal, and our culture is just bits and pieces of other cultures. We definitely don't have a national goal, we rarely even feel a part of our local community. Our greatest connection is to work, and they'll squeeze out everything they can then cut us loose in a heartbeat

And that all leaves people starving for an identity, which is very exploitable

I lost the last bit of patriotism I had left after the Sandy Hook massacres & all our elected officials did jack shit. Murica is only #1 in white collar crime these days. Our politicians are paid off shills. Wall St is run by the absolute worst scum of the earth bc they know we do nothing to them no matter how many laws they break. SCOTUS is fucking worthless & the country is comprised of about ~35% of the world’s stupidest people.

We need a revolution. That is the ONLY solution at this point but because of all the stupid, we’d much rather fight amongst ourselves than get off our lazy butts and fight the real evils in this world. It’s sad times but I do hope I live long enough to watch it all burn down.