What to do about the 9 percent without American pride

[Bootless]

American Pride Slips to New Low Pride among Democrats tumbles, while independents also hit new low, more than offsetting increase among Republicans JUNE 30, 2025 Gallup

It all started for me in 1993 as I watched the Texas National Guard supplied armored personnel vehicles ram the wooden side of the Branch Davidian building in East Texas.


The Stars and Stripes proudly mounted on the APV, waving in the breeze pumping internationally banned chemical agents into the holes made by the ramming.

So if that was done by the U.S. then it was done by me and for me, right? But I didn't ask for that. It was without my consent. I met some of those Branch Davidians back in '75; nice people, very much like myself.

I had no concern that if they were left alone that I would die in some nationwide terror attack. No them or me about it. But there I was doing it. Not that I was there, but we all saw it live on TV.

That was a major identity crisis for me. Something about identifying with both sides.

Then the Congressional Hearing; FBI assault leader laughing while describing the hundreds of canisters shot through windows.
-----
I'll spare you from the part later when I had a co-worker whose sister worked at the Oklahoma Federal Building, with kids in the day care. It's just that I had previously shown her the letter I had written to my Congressman. So she knew that I had less than wonderful thoughts about the government.
-------
Fast forward, Sept 11,2001. At least that didn't involve me killing my fellow Americans.

But then, "You're either with us, or you're with the Terrorists", and the bombing of food trucks and Red Cross food storage facilities began. And the wedding gatherings, and the funerals. And there was that Presidentially declared binary choice hanging over my head again.

It broke me like being drawn and quartered (whatever the binary form of that is), pulled in half.

What could I do? 
Protest, Sign the Not In Our Name Pledge of Resistance 

We believe that as people living
in the United States it is our
responsibility to resist the injustices
done by our government,
in our names

Not in our name
will you wage endless war
there can be no more deaths
no more transfusions
of blood for oil

Not in our name
will you invade countries
bomb civilians, kill more children
letting history take its course
over the graves of the nameless

Not in our name
will you erode the very freedoms
you have claimed to fight for

Not by our hands
will we supply weapons and funding
for the annihilation of families
on foreign soil

Not by our mouths
will we let fear silence us

Not by our hearts
will we allow whole peoples
or countries to be deemed evil

Not by our will
and Not in our name

We pledge resistance

We pledge alliance with those
who have come under attack
for voicing opposition to the war
or for their religion or ethnicity

We pledge to make common cause
with the people of the world
to bring about justice,
freedom and peace

Another world is possible
and we pledge to make it real.

And now the U.S. is doing genocide, supplying weapons, vetoing UN Security Council resolution demanding ceasefire and massive humanitarian aid. This phrase of the pledge is quite apropos:

"letting history take its course
over the graves of the nameless"

While we Americans are presented a huge stadium sized memorial for one American probably killed by another American. And a day set aside to memorialize him.

So what will I do now?

I think I'll read the John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent. I haven't read it yet. And I did see John Steinbeck once while camping in one of those California Redwood forests. My dad talked to him.

That's something anyway, whilst I await the hangman.



Styx | Renegade (Lyrics)

[UltraBudgie]

If you look closer at the data, it's up among Republicans. Democrats are the ones pulling it down.

Get yourself a pair of these:



And you will soon feel right as rain. Change starts from the bottom up.

[DBCowboy]

American Pride Slips to New Low Pride among Democrats tumbles, while independents also hit new low, more than offsetting increase among Republicans JUNE 30, 2025 Gallup

It all started for me in 1993 as I watched the Texas National Guard supplied armored personnel vehicles ram the wooden side of the Branch Davidian building in East Texas.
[Image: https://denyignorance.com/uploader/image...andoff.jpg]

The Stars and Stripes proudly mounted on the APV, waving in the breeze pumping internationally banned chemical agents into the holes made by the ramming.

So if that was done by the U.S. then it was done by me and for me, right? But I didn't ask for that. It was without my consent. I met some of those Branch Davidians back in '75; nice people, very much like myself.

I had no concern that if they were left alone that I would die in some nationwide terror attack. No them or me about it. But there I was doing it. Not that I was there, but we all saw it live on TV.

That was a major identity crisis for me. Something about identifying with both sides.

Then the Congressional Hearing; FBI assault leader laughing while describing the hundreds of canisters shot through windows.
-----
I'll spare you from the part later when I had a co-worker whose sister worked at the Oklahoma Federal Building, with kids in the day care. It's just that I had previously shown her the letter I had written to my Congressman. So she knew that I had less than wonderful thoughts about the government.
-------
Fast forward, Sept 11,2001. At least that didn't involve me killing my fellow Americans.

But then, "You're either with us, or you're with the Terrorists", and the bombing of food trucks and Red Cross food storage facilities began. And the wedding gatherings, and the funerals. And there was that Presidentially declared binary choice hanging over my head again.

It broke me like being drawn and quartered (whatever the binary form of that is), pulled in half.

What could I do? 
Protest, Sign the Not In Our Name Pledge of Resistance 

And now the U.S. is doing genocide, supplying weapons, vetoing UN Security Council resolution demanding ceasefire and massive humanitarian aid. This phrase of the pledge is quite apropos:

"letting history take its course
over the graves of the nameless"

While we Americans are presented a huge stadium sized memorial for one American probably killed by another American. And a day set aside to memorialize him.

So what will I do now?

I think I'll read the John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent. I haven't read it yet. And I did see John Steinbeck once while camping in one of those California Redwood forests. My dad talked to him.

That's something anyway, whilst I await the hangman.

[Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUPt7UIxHK4]
Styx | Renegade (Lyrics)

I think people no longer differentiate country from government.

Our country is much more than government.  Our country is far greater than any government.

Government is filled with men and women who are all flawed.

OUR COUNTRY, as defined by the Constitution and ratified by the Bill of Rights, eclipses any government.

In my humble opinion.

[ANNEE]

I think the "Us against Them" mentality is just becoming obsolete.

The younger generation today is "born" connected to the entire world.  They don't see the division.

I do think they see the inequality in the world.  Global humanity and natural resources as more important that where your feet touch the ground at birth.

[UltraBudgie]

I am curious what the stats would be for those Americans who have travelled extensively to other countries, versus those who haven't.

I suspect there is a perception bubble, where Americans consider their country "the greatest on Earth", but don't actually have any first-hand experience of anything else.

And DB has a very good point.

[argentus]

If you look closer at the data, it's up among Republicans. Democrats are the ones pulling it down.

Get yourself a pair of these:

[Image: https://denyignorance.com/uploader/image...837382.jpg]

And you will soon feel right as rain. Change starts from the bottom up.

Do they have those in knee-high compression socks?   I'm betting yes.

[Halfswede]

I think the "Us against Them" mentality is just becoming obsolete.

The younger generation today is "born" connected to the entire world.  They don't see the division.

I do think they see the inequality in the world.  Global humanity and natural resources as more important that where your feet touch the ground at birth.

When it's convenient...

Global humanity goes out the window when it comes to CCP sending out tik tok to disrupt their lives, salty tears when tariffs disrupt their temu purchases (because genocide and organ harvesting only matter when it doesn't affect their pocketbook), or deliberate blinders on enslaved Africans strip mining lithium and EV components.

This isn't to point out one side or the other, just that there is certainly no lock on humanity and natural resources from the 'younger generation'.  They just choose different convenient angles and causes to support what they like.

Back to the OT, this issue of country vs. government is regularly used as a political tool by both sides.  You can have strong pride in the ideals of your country while despising the govnerment. The CCP has thoroughly brainwashed their people into believing China doesn't exist without the CCP -- They are one and the same according to the leadership. 

Here, we are more used to separating the two, but both parties try and conflate them when convenient.

The left tries to imply that patriots are 'on the right' as if you can't stand high for believing in the american dream and ideals.  My own parents got so salty about it they 'could never buy a Jeep Liberty' because the name 'reeks of patriotism'. Regardless of what you feel, presidents come and go, but liberty is a concept.

The right tries to imply that if you don't like the government's policies (when it's right leaning), you are unamerican etc.  

It is none of those things.  The most important freedoms we have were established very purposely as 'God-given rights', meaning they exist without respect to something humans decide.  You can be patriotic without being right-leaning, and you can protest the government's abuse or policy without being left-leaning.  Heck, you can even be an environmentalist without being left-leaning.

That isn't to say there aren't fundamental differences in how the sides like to implement their ideals, but being a patriot and American has nothing to do with it.

[IdeomotorPrisoner]

[OP SHORTENED FOR SPACE]

I dont think I'd care enough to complain if I didnt have pride in country.

I just dont like watching what I'm seeing and I dont trust this administration to uphold the constitution anymore. Now censoring and approving the material of the press with access to The DOD seem sorta anti-FOIA. Who knows though? 

I shouldnt worry me so or concern myself with the technicalities and caveats of governance, as we are all going back to the time of nostalgia and greatness! 

So I figure i could totally get a prescription to Eqanil and then could spend my days in a zombie trance of cocktails, obedience, and repressed opinion.

As is preferred...

Now, some naysayers may argue that this administration’s speech concerns are merely a cynical ploy, a thin gruel of a ruse, a smokescreen to obscure an unprecedented consolidation of power and unitary intimidation, principleless and coldly antithetical to any experiment in a constitutional republic governance. Some people would say that. Not me, though I think it’s great. - NOT Jon Stewart

 I have have absolutely no fear of all my dystopian theocracy nightmares coming true in front of my eyes at all.

[Bootless]

I dont think I'd care enough to complain if I didnt have pride in country.
...
 I have have absolutely no fear of all my dystopian theocracy nightmares coming true in front of my eyes at all.

I guess I picked a pretty good book to read, the Steinbeck, first chapter so far. Protagonist from a long standing family, whalers; even perhaps some pirates.

My family goes back to before the French and Indian War, time and place of that Last of the Mohicans movie, made from a book I never read. Clan older than the country. Vast land holdings; slowly subdivided and sold off.

But I'm a wayfarer, nowhere near that land; only seen the last bit of it once, back in '70.

-----
Fear:

Well I'll tell ya, back about 1973, I heard this frightening sermon, all about the U.S. would become a Christian Nationalist country, and the United States would call a general open season on non-conformists. So the rabid fanatics of National Christianity in gangs would hunt down the helpless. Kind of like Esther 9. Unfortunately, that fed into the confirmation bias of what I was reading in Revelation and some book written in the 1800s.

So I was very emotionally overwrought, standing among a bunch of church people at the pot luck afterward, when the air right in front of me opened. In the mandorla which formed stood two people. The one to my left was looking down and to the right. The one to my right was looking at me and held out his left hand in a reassuring sort of way. I didn't think to ask him who he was. I just assumed him to be Jesus.

Ever since then I have never feared for my own life. But I feel distress for others.

[Bootless]

I am curious what the stats would be for those Americans who have travelled extensively to other countries, versus those who haven't.

I suspect there is a perception bubble, where Americans consider their country "the greatest on Earth", but don't actually have any first-hand experience of anything else.

And DB has a very good point.

I'm not cleared to mention such things, but sometimes a person finds himself with others in a foreign country sent there for the explicit reason to start a war. A person such as that may have foreign experience.

DBs point: difference between American people and American government. And over and over I hear "I voted for this". So where is the difference exactly?

This is a case of existential crisis that I mentioned in another thread. Collective punishment of an identity group because of the actions of some.

I have deserved death as an American so many freaking times. I call it "Once again my life is forfeit".

Here's a passage from Steinbeck. It's the protagonist telling the banker why he doesn't invest money rather than sit on it:

Ethan started an angry retort—Course you don’t understand; you’ve never
had it—and then he swept a small circle of gum wrappers and cigarette
butts into a pyramid and moved the pyramid toward the gutter. “Men don’t
get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What
kills them is erosion; they get nudged into failure. They get slowly
scared. I’m scared. Long Island Lighting Company might turn off the
lights. My wife needs clothes. My children—shoes and fun. And suppose
they can’t get an education? And the monthly bills and the doctor and
teeth and a tonsillectomy, and beyond that suppose I get sick and can’t
sweep this goddam sidewalk? Course you don’t understand. It’s slow. It
rots out your guts. I can’t think beyond next month’s payment on the
refrigerator. I hate my job and I’m scared I’ll lose it. How could you
understand that?”