this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2024
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[–] Crampon 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You often have the same relation to the kid in Uganda and the kid in your hometown. But they are still different.

This comic is probably made by someone American. They made it for a target audience. That's why it's specified. Making the message more targeted is an effective tool. It's called pathos.

Believing people on the left care for everyone on the planet equally while people on the right only care for the nation they tax to is a strange take.

You're allowed to be proud of your country or people without being a q-anon nuthead nazi.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Believing people on the left care for everyone on the planet equally while people on the right only care for the nation they tax to is a strange take.

Don't be disingenuous (or worse), you're distorting what I said. Refer to the first and third paragraphs of the very comment that you're replying to.

Now, if you really want to pretend that your hometown should "magically" coincide with the territory controlled by your government, by all means, do it. But then let's call a duck a duck - then you are a nationalist, and should be treated as one.

This comic is probably made by someone American. They made it for a target audience. That’s why it’s specified.

I'm not going to guess the author's "intention". I'm focusing on what the character says, on the light of the maxim of quantity (refer to this or this for further info).

If I told you "I have two books", and I actually have three, you'd correctly point out that I'm saying something untrue, right? Because of that maxim - by saying "I have two books" I'm implying that I have no more than two books.

Now look at what the character says within that context:

  • [A] "It's the anniversary of a great tragedy."
  • [B] "I know, over a million Americans have died."

The exact same maxim operates here; the implicature being created is that the tragedy does not include non-Americans dying. It's probably an accidental implicature, but the very fact that people don't pay attention to this shit is concerning.

It’s called pathos.

It's pathos only in the original meaning. Because damn, it's a really miserable discourse! /s

Etymology aside, "pathos" in the meaning typically associated with the usage of the word in English can be easily conveyed without that nationalistic discourse.

You’re allowed to be proud of your country or people without being a q-anon nuthead nazi.

Let us not fool ourselves that the only nationalists out there are the Q-Anon tier Nazi. In that situation you're still a nationalist, and promoting a harmful discourse.

"Hometown" is not a metaphor. A country is not a hometown.

[–] Crampon 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

I don't see this as radical. Specially since, although I'm labelling it nationalism and saying that it's bad, there's no way that I'm seeing it the same as Nazi shit. The Nazi discourse relies on multiple ~~piles of shit~~ pillars, only one of them is nationalism.

I'm also making a distinction between a person voicing a nationalistic discourse and being a nationalist. Once we (all of us) analyse what each one of us says, we notice that we promote a lot of shitty causes, without even realising. That's also why I'm not putting myself above the author.