naturalplastic wrote:
Your question is a string of Non sequiturs (about infrastructure) that have nothing to do with the concept of 'nationalism'.
Nationalism is modern tribalism. Kinda 'racism lite'. Loyality to your tribe. Your ethnic group.
Both Nazism (and ironically) Zionism are forms of nationalism. The American Black Muslims are nationalistic and reverse racists towards Whites, and bind their creed with a bastardized form of Islam. And we now see the rise of White "Christian Nationalism" in America. Loyalty to the subset of Americans who are White, and who are also Evangelical Christians. And using a distorted deformed form of Christianity to bolster the ethnic loyality against others who are not 'truly Americans' (ie brown folks).
Nationalism is often confused with "patriotism". But they are different. Patriotism is love of country. Not love of nationality, ethnicity, or race. A patriotic American honors all Americans of every race and honors its democratic institution.
But you have your own distinct and unique confusion about the word...you confuse 'nationalism' with "domestic spending", or something.
Spending money on roads and bridges has nothing to do with "nationalism". Nationalism is about things like keeping refugees out of America (including refugees who would work cheap to help build our infrastructure).
You seem to think that building bridges comes at the expense of foreign aid, and vice versa. But America only spends a fraction of one percent (not a fraction, not one percent, but a fraction OF one percent) of its GNP on foreign aid. If we got rid of all foreign aid the savings would neglible to the whole nation. And we dont give foreign aid out of charity anyway. We do it because its in our interest to buy friends and influence people abroad (to get allies in the war on terrorism or like that).
I won't lie to you, I feel like an idiot now for my original post.
The way I arrived at that conclusion is simple. There's a site called "Quora" and on it I searched "Is nationalism bad?".
Most of the posts said it is not in fact bad and that it should maybe even be encouraged. They then went on to say that our nation should be helping our own citizens first instead of foreign nations. They also include elements of the economic structure as well.
This is how I conflated the two. Because in my area as well as all over the US, I constantly hear others complaining about their cities and towns in disrepair. Nationalism > Putting domestic issues first > Infastructure.
Again, I guess it's just too far off the mark but that's how I figured it in my head.
14 Nov 2022, 4:44 pm
