WARNING: PATRIOTIC POST Patriotism versus Nationalism Renegade's Perspective

ATTN: posted an episode of America Versus.
July 4 at 9:44 AM ·
Americans should know the important difference between patriotism and nationalism.

America Versus

America Vs. America: Patriotism 

The above is a facebook post I found on a friend's timeline.

The video attempts to outline the differences between their definition of Patriotism and their definition of Nationalism.

Now, 'Nationalism' is a term I've heard used only relatively recently.

The first time I heard it was in conjunction with the term 'Populism' (aka Popular Sovereignty) in an extremely negative context (disparaging, to be polite about it) regarding the increasingly apparent stirrings among the European Nations starting a very few years ago. That's a whole separate issue (see below) and has to do with the European Union.

I just wanted to establish up front that this new term (and its connotations) does have a 'history' of sorts, albeit a rather short history.

The video emphasizes something that's been an obvious component of our nation from its conception: dissenting views that have, do, and can lead to our nation getting closer to the original goals and purposes our Constitution sets forth (and played a critical role in the writing of said Constitution in the first place, which they neglected to mention). That I personally have to raise my brows at a couple of their 'examples' is moot. These are the Hero Patriots of the video - and as I've said, my brow rises at associating a couple of their choices with that role although others I agree with. Why they would select these to set apart from the rest of the equally valuable Patriots of all our eras I have no idea, but according to them being a Patriot is a good thing and especially being a dissenting Patriot apparently. Unless your dissenting is different from theirs, of course.

Nationalism, on the other hand, is a bad thing because, according to their definition, Nationalists are apparently exclusivist and suffer from some kind of Superiority Complex. At least that's what I got out of the video thing.

Here's my comment in response :



Interesting.

Patriotism has been with us from forever.

To me it means a bone-deep dedication to one's country and what it stands for. It means respect for and appreciation of the fundamental premises laid out in our Constitution and our Laws, the backbone of what makes us our own collective self and no other - and pride in that nation along with being ready willing and able to make it as close as possible to what it was designed to be.

Nationalism is apparently a new term coined by I don't know whom.

I would frankly associate it more with Europe than the USA at the moment, as the nations over there struggle to regain their own 'independent nations in charge of their own laws' status.

If I were to assign a definition, it would be closer to that, I think. The assertion that we as a nation are exactly that: a clearly defined nation to be proud of with a history unique to us.

No connotations; just a simple statement of fact.

But that's just me and I'm not the one assigning meanings to words.

I love my nation not because it's 'better than' any other but because it's MINE. My legacy to protect and to preserve to the best of my ability for the generations who follow.

And yes I'm proud to be an American and love my country, warts and all. NOBODY is even trying to deny the warts for pity's sake, or claiming 'superiority' over any other nation.

In some ways, sure the USA has worked hard to develop her strengths, and we might be better AT some things than others are.

They're equally better AT other things than WE are.

ALL nations have strengths and weaknesses, just like all people do.

Where is this narrative coming from?!

Holy cow.



That's where my facebook comment stops. I don't come out and say so but the question about where the narrative originates is rhetorical.

Maybe it's because I've lately been paying closer attention to Europe than has been my wont for most of my life (writing books that include historic times means research, which leads to current events and how past and present fit together - plus making friends whose lives are deeply impacted by both history and current events) but yes I have been paying some attention.

That I should have started paying attention thirty years ago is becoming clear, but as a lot of other people are also currently kicking themselves for not paying close enough attention thirty years ago I'm not going to beat myself up over it too awfully much. Thirty years ago I was about to give birth to my third daughter.

In short, from my perspective (it's the only one I've got, as yours is the only one you've got and we're both fully entitled to them) the EU started out as a not too bad idea: a grouping of nations to promote the economic prosperity of all.

Then it morphed.

The impression I've gotten is : "If you want to reap the promised rewards you have to agree to do this, that, and the other thing."

Still sounds fairly reasonable.

Then came : "You have to change the laws of your nations to fit our rules."

Then : "You have to do as we say or else."

And : "We want to build an army and you have to pay for it whilst minimizing or eliminating your own. You won't need your military; we'll take care of all that for you."

And : "Cultural diversity is good for you; here, add all these different people to your populations."

Then : "Oh good! Europe is becoming one big nation instead of many individual ones! Here are lots and lots more people to add to your populations, you'll be SO GLAD to have them! Long live the United States of Europe."

Then : "What do you mean, there's a culture clash? There's supposed to be only one European Culture, didn't you know that? Here, you need more people to take care of. Oh, and we have to raise your membership dues."

And:  "What do you mean you can't afford things any more? Pay up!"

 More recently : "What's this! The Peoples of the different Nations are thinking they can be their own uniquely individual selves! They think want their own Nations back, to make their own Laws, to control their own borders, to choose for themselves!?! Can't be having THAT! Those aren't Nations any more; they're subject States and had better toe our line!"

And so the term 'Nationalist' all of a sudden sprang into the vocabulary, to label the folks who thought they might be able to think for themselves and to make choices regarding their own nations.

Again, this is just mine own perspective.

At the same time all of that stuff has been going on over in Europe, there's been an apparently organized push here in the United States to be more a part of the world at large and less our own independent nation. Sometimes subtle, sometimes overt, the theme has been clear to those whose hindsight is better than their foresight. 

Let's make a deal with our North American neighbors, show unity with them. Never mind that our money is now going into the pockets of other nations. Let's give a lot of our money to these other nations; they need it more than we do. Let's share and share alike. Never mind that we're the ones doing all the sharing but nobody is sharing back with us. Better yet, let's just focus on a bunch of other things like which bathroom people are supposed to use. Nobody will notice anything else as long as we keep their minds occupied with baloney, and at each other's throats over other kinds of baloney. And, while nobody's really paying attention, let's bring in a bunch of others; it will balance things out ...

Yada yada.

I'm not going to go into detail about all of it because frankly I'm fed up with it - so are a lot of other people when it comes to that.

Fed up people who FINALLY (better late than never) noticed a thing or two or three are why a non-politician, one who cannot be bought, one who loves his nation as much as we do, is now the President of the United States of America.

Bottom line is:

I hear the label 'Nationalist' applied to American Citizens in that same derogatory tone I heard it applied to the Peoples of Europe and my hackles rise.

Just sayin'.

Can anyone be so stupid as to skip a step or two or three here and go straight to calling people Nationalists, or is it that those steps have to be skipped because they're not going to work with our President, who evidently has not been as slow on the uptake as I have been? In my own defense, he's been out and about in our world a lot more than I have, and is also a lot smarter in general than I am.

Unlike the Nations of Europe, the United States of America does not have to 'get our nation back' because we've still got it.

What we DO have to do is hang onto it.

Patriotism is something almost all of America can identify with.

Nationalism does not even belong in the American vocabulary as far as I'm concerned. It's but another of those meaningless '-ism' words thrown at us with malicious intent.

"I'm proud to be a Patriot, but call me a Nationalist and I might have to load my pen with that other kind of ink," is what one of our fictional Characters (named Renegade) might have to say in this situation.

They've Already Told This RICIMER Tale

The histories have already SPOKEN, the story-tellers have already HAD their say, the documentaries have already been DONE, and the movie-makers have ALREADY addressed the issue. The verdict is in.

All I'm doing is presenting a different point of view (and a fictional one at that), not arguing with the experts.

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, in their right mind, in any of those industries is going to want to touch this story's point of view with a ten foot pole, not in the world in which we live in today.

At the very beginning of writing the books of SONG I thought I might make the Catholics and the Baptists mad but so far they've not been critical of the 'truth' as it seems to me: by definition you CANNOT have a Father and a Son without a Mother - so how can that third Person of the Holy Trinity be anyone except the Mother? It's pretty obvious who a person's mother is at birth. There have been cases where fathers' identities haven't been all too clear, though. Female lineages are a lot more clear and easier to track, if you ask me. That's a scientific fact: mDNA is way easier to work with. It's consistent and accurate, relatively speaking. Point being that women are at least as important as men. If you find that threatening in some way, oh well.

Be that as it may be, I take the Mother's place in the Trinity as a given, something patriarchal ideologies could take exception to so I guess I'm lucky to be ignored.

And the women of Celt ancestry still bow to no-one. Ever.

So there's that to not worry about.

Not being overly fond of ideologies that go around trying to shove their beliefs down people's throats, and separating said throats from bodies and heads if opposed, yes I've taken a dim view of Rome's usurpation of the Faith they could not manage to eradicate in 300 years of trying. That they then weaponized it while denying half of the human population equal representation doesn't set too well with me, either. Being a descendant of the ones who held out, never gave up, never gave in, and won in the end, maybe it's something in my DNA that refutes the right of any to dictate to any other, let alone all.

Maybe it's because the church came to its senses in the end, after too long a time and too much brutality, that my condemnation of the early practices of the Roman church isn't being lashed out about.

Maybe it's because the peoples of Europe did, in the end, form themselves into strong independent nations once Rome's boot was off their throats - again, not quickly and not easily and with too much brutality - but they did it. And the very peoples who had held Europe for millennia before Rome came calling were back in control of their Continent. Fussin' and fuedin' an't nothin' new, folks. The factions of the Celts had been perfecting it for thousands of years already. That they'd HAD thousands of years TO perfect it says something about the stability of their culture, appearances to the contrary be damned. They were fussin' and fuedin', not trying to own everybody else body and soul.

So there are two more things to not worry about since who's gonna argue with what's already done and over with, right?

Right.

So far, so good.

The kicker here is that while I'm writing all this stuff about the past, there are a few things going on in our present that are liable to become obviously connected to said past. That's what's gonna keep me safe from media, from politics, from religion, and from invasive ideologies. Ain't nobody gonna want to go out on THAT limb I tell you true.

Writing fiction about ancient times is one thing. Connecting it incontrovertibly to current events is not gonna fly. So it's a good thing I just want to tell the Story and am not ambitious.

Because what motivates Ullin of Iona, RICIMER, and all the rest of our Characters is what lies at the heart of our current situations.

These Circles mean something:

That center Circle is FAITH

The rest of them represent

FAMILY

FRIENDS

FREEDOM

FUTURE

They're our Legacy.

This symbol, which you haven't seen as much of, means something too:

It's a pretty design, this is true.

It's also a warning.

This is the way it is NOT supposed to be.

It will not work.

Here is a representation of the underlying design by which our world is governed:

I call it the Father Phi Spiral.

That's for a couple of reasons.

One is that the line through the middle makes the Spiral look more like the symbol we recognize as PHI.

Phi is the blueprint of our world.

You can look it up if you doubt me.

The second reason is that it's one of the oldest of all symbols preserved by humankind. 

It means something.

It has always meant something.

It has always meant the same thing.

CREATION

GOD

1.618

BALANCE

And you know what the building blocks of the Spiral consist of?

TRIANGLES

What I'm about to suggest might make every religion except for maybe Buddhism and Hindu mad as hornets but I don't particularly care.

[WARNING: SIDETRACK]

Because it's not 'just' that the Holy Trinity has to have a female function if creation is to continue to procreate, which it most assuredly will, with or without humankind.

It's not 'just' that I find it personally offensive, what has been done in the name of 'religion' for all this time.

As a matter of fact it doesn't have much of anything to do with 'religion' at all, because people get to choose what (if anything) they want to believe.

What it has to do with is that attempts to twist the Spiral out of balance have caused, are causing, and will cause literal harm to innocent folk.

Half of us can't be heading in one direction and the other half heading in the opposite direction, and any of us expect balance to be maintained. It hasn't worked yet and it ain't gonna EVER WORK. Our universal - literally - governing principles will not allow it. [sidetrack inside sidetrack: speaking of governing principles, the Constitutional Republic government of the United States of America is fundamentally based on PHI.]

Look again at this warning symbol:

Say you're on one side of this 'twisted spiral' thing and I'm on the other, just walking along.

Where are we going to end up?

We'll either hit a dead end

or collide in the middle.

Either way we lose.

Plus, that spiral ain't gonna stay twisted like that because by design it CAN'T stay that way.

One side or the other is gonna flip back around so it's all in balance again.

So what in the heck do we think we're DOING?

May as well stick with the PHI thing and not lose our balance in the first place, if you ask me.

Which I realize you didn't.

[END SIDETRACK]

I think that maybe, just maybe, the significance of triangles and spirals and such clear back as far as we can track humankind has to do with something we ALL instinctively KNOW somehow.

There's no conflict between Science and Faith. They're the same thing.

Which is another thing to not worry about because Science is zipping right along to prove it and Faith is plodding reluctantly to accept it.

So what's the worry?

Me, I'm not worried because I'm just a little old lady with no real stake in much of anything - nothing to lose that I haven't already lost or don't care if I do lose.

But there are folks in our world who would likely not appreciate having people's attention drawn to parallels between historic fact and current events.

The divisions caused by 'identity politics', for example, mean that twisted Spiral is already out of balance. And I don't have to tell you who's been pushing that for a while now. I doubt they know what they're doing, but maybe they're hoping that when the time comes it will be the other side of the twist that will swing around and the Spiral will balance itself in their favor.

On the other end of the spectrum, but on that same side of the twisted Spiral, are the folks trying to shove the EU down the throats of the peoples of Europe. They don't want anyone reminded of how that ended when Rome tried to do it - twice - once via military and once via ideology. Neither ended well for Rome although Europe, once recovered from the ravages inflicted by the attempts, came out of it with those strong independent nations that Ullin and RICIMER and the others were betting on. Rome struck out twice trying what they're trying now.

Yet another loser in this equation is an ideology that can't seem to wrap its head around either the Holy Trinity OR that a Mother is required if there are to even BE a Father and a Son - OR that what they're trying to do has already failed more than once.

None of those people want to be challenged to explain how on earth they think they're going to take two failures and turn out a success by trying the exact same things. It's not like math where two negatives can produce a positive.

Honestly.

What did they do, look at history and say, 'Hey, check this out! This thing here FAILED spectacularly, and that thing over there FAILED just as spectacularly! Let's put them together and they'll be GREAT! We'll rule the world!'

Considering that the goal of both examples had been to 'rule the world', and both FAILED spectacularly, success by combining the two doesn't exactly seem very promising.

My point here, and in the books, is that our fictional folk (some not quite all the way fictional) SUCCEEDED in what they set out to do, not because they themselves were masters at what they did (although they were) but because their goal was WHAT THE COLLECTIVE, INSTINCTIVE, WILL OF THE PEOPLES AFFECTED WANTED.

So the moral of the Story is: the EU is doomed, and so is that invasive ideology. One is trying what Rome tried first; the other is trying what Rome tried second. Against the exact same populations of people. For that matter, some folks in the States are trying to do do what Rome also tried: pitting folks against each other. That, if you recall, resulted in something called the Barbarian Conspiracy, which didn't work out so well for Rome in the end did it?

Mamm of Dunnottar, fictionally speaking, asked Attila, "How stupid are you?!?"

Me, I would never think of asking anyone any such thing.

Out loud.

I might wonder it to myself, though.

If you're going to try stuff, you might want to first do a little homework so you know a little something about the people you're up against.

Not to be a spoil sport or anything, but at least three quarters of the citizens of the United States of America are probably descendants of the peoples Rome FAILED against - twice. The percentage in Europe is likely higher yet.

Fussin' and fuedin' is one thing Rome thought was more than it was.

Leave off the crap and leave our Legacy alone. 

Our instincts are still intact.

Believe me.

Go play in the rest of the world, and quit tryin' to mess with our Circles.

RICIMER MIGHT COME BACK.

And see how you like them apples.