this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2025

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It's Gross And Cringey To Love A State Like Israel Or The USA (www.caitlinjohnst.one)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

19 comments fedilink hide all child comments

People who love and defend a government are creating parental figures out of the state instead of growing up and taking their stand as mature individuals.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago

Nationalism is always cringe, yeah. States aren't your friends; they are violence. The US and Israel are the perfect examples of this.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I have a tremendous amount of pride for the America I was taught about in school. One that was aware of its past mistakes and was continually trying to better itself. One where people from all backgrounds intermingled and thrived with one another. One where the people decided their leaders and one that had checks and balances in place to prevent corruption.

Then I grew up. Now I resent the country that actually exists and the school system that misrepresented reality.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

yep, makes you wonder where all the lies end. Is it turtles all the way down, or what?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 days ago

There's nothing wrong with civic pride and feeling a bond with your community. But a country is not a leader, or a party, or a religion or ethnicity. America is united diversity. E pluribus unum. Love and celebrate that, or just admit that it's not about loving people like you but instead hating the people who are not.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

I love my country because despite all the fucking assholes and horrible history, it's still a place that a bunch of people from all over the world came to and decided to share and mix their cultures while creating new traditions too. As many assholes are here there are also a lot of cool people too.

The government can fuck all the way off though.

[+] [email protected] -6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I have nothing against Russia, China or Iran, but I also have no personal emotional relationship with them.

[Trump] makes the US empire much more transparent and unhidden. He removes its mask and reveals the twisted face beneath it.

Typical tankie. No "emotional relationship with Russia", but the US on the other hand...

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I think your brain is returning a false tankie positive. This is an article against supporting imperial states as part of your identity.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

~~There is authoritarian apologia elsewhere on the blog so I think it's accurate.~~

~~At minimum hypocritical.~~ Apologia for any state is idiotic.

Edit: I thought I saw something along these lines from the author but I can't find it anymore so I'm going to retract this to be safe.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I skimmed through the ~50 articles published this year and they were all anti imperialist pieces focused on the US & Israel. Not defending authoritarianism.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Hmm I clicked some link and I thought I saw some apologia about China but now I can't find it. It does seem to be mainly criticism of the US and Israel which is always fair game considering current circumstances.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (4 children)

[China] simply do the normal thing while we do the freakish thing: they make the lives of their citizens better and better and avoid unnecessary wars, while western governments make the lives of their citizens worse

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

As an American its a strange and uncomfortable to ponder that maybe China was/is not as bad as I always categorized it as since Tienanmin. More research definitely needed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

they make the lives of their citizens better and better and avoid unnecessary wars

That's an oversimplification of the truth, not defending authoritarianism. It's not denying or minimizing China's actions in Xinjiang or '89. It's not praising the censorship or arbitrary detention.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Finally the end of the matryoshka doll.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Yeah I think that was the one, it's not love but I'd call it apologia.

To me it's so much weirder to spend energy defending a distant authoritarian government that you have no connection to whatsoever than your own. Both are stupid, but people are indoctrinated to be sycophants for their own authoritarian government so I kinda get it even though I wish it was otherwise.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

On the one hand she argues that it's not true that she loves Russia, in fact one can't even have emotions like love towards a country:

It’s impossible to have a real personal emotional relationship with any nation ... You’re not loving the actual country, you’re loving a small mental representation of it that you have constructed inside your head.

On the other hand, her entire blog is aimed at provoking emotional reactions against the US, which she admits she hates:

I hate what they love so they assume I must love what they hate.

Are countries simply mental representations or are they valid objects of repulsion and hatred? It depends on the country, comrade! Russia exists only in your mind, so your feelings about Russia are invalid. But the US is an actual twisted abomination!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

There's no contradiction or double standard here.

Love and hate are usually understood to include support/oppose in their meaning. It's cringey to say you "love" any nation, because they will never care for your wellbeing. It's especially unacceptable to support violent imperial states.

That doesn't preclude opposing or hating certain states, or having indifference to states that you don't feel strongly impacted by.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It's cringey to say you "love" any nation, because they will never care for your wellbeing

That's not really her argument, which is that you cannot have any emotional relationship with a country.

But even your version is flawed. She lives in Australia and hates what happens to Gazans but is not impacted by what happens to Ukrainians and Uyghurs?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

I think the title, opening sentence and paragraphs 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 & 8 all show that she's talking mostly about love in the sense of support and identify with.

Only paragraph 4 talks about the impossiblity of a personal connection with a nation and the next paragraph makes it clear that it's a side point.

It's an imprecise and out-of-place side point that I don't agree with, but it's not proof of her secret support of authoritarianism.