...But even before the planebombing I visited the US on several occasions and was absolutely floored by the level of nationalism. Of course, Americans don't ask you about your favourite American food, because many of them don't take any non-American foods seriously (and of course the answer is probably McDonald's anyway, statistically speaking). As to national dress, do y'all have one?
But the flags! There are flags everywhere in the US! It looks like a permanent fascist rally - and they're on libraries and schools as well as on people's houses. Or to put it the other way, they're on people's houses as well as the schools and the libraries.
And more recently there have been things like the french fries matter. We thought that was a joke until friends started bringing back reports of menus. A country's national best friends point out that it's making a mistake and the response is try to expunge them from common language - this may be the craziest piece of nationalism I can ever remember hearing.
Well, all I'm trying to say is that nationalism takes different people differently. In Jamaica the national dish has two parts, one is poisonous and the other comes from Canada. But I was going 'national dish?' because that isn't an idea we had. I thought we in Britain had a national railway system until they sold it.
But we unconsciously expect nationalism to take familiar forms, while it's perhaps the objective of nationalism that it doesn't.
Then again, what it's all about I have no idea, because if anyone can persuade me that a 'nation' is more than a line on a map and an educational curriculum, I'll be surprised.
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Date: 2005-02-22 05:12 pm (UTC)But the flags! There are flags everywhere in the US! It looks like a permanent fascist rally - and they're on libraries and schools as well as on people's houses. Or to put it the other way, they're on people's houses as well as the schools and the libraries.
And more recently there have been things like the french fries matter. We thought that was a joke until friends started bringing back reports of menus. A country's national best friends point out that it's making a mistake and the response is try to expunge them from common language - this may be the craziest piece of nationalism I can ever remember hearing.
Well, all I'm trying to say is that nationalism takes different people differently. In Jamaica the national dish has two parts, one is poisonous and the other comes from Canada. But I was going 'national dish?' because that isn't an idea we had. I thought we in Britain had a national railway system until they sold it.
But we unconsciously expect nationalism to take familiar forms, while it's perhaps the objective of nationalism that it doesn't.
Then again, what it's all about I have no idea, because if anyone can persuade me that a 'nation' is more than a line on a map and an educational curriculum, I'll be surprised.