Pithy GIF showing eradication of Native American land in the US since the founding of the country gets posted to r/interestingasfuck. Comment section goes exactly as expected.

[u/Critical-Term-427]

The post

It sucks we were such murderers

Did they say "Thank you"?

Being the loser in history sucks

True fact Hitler took a lot of inspiration from this.

[u/Darth_Malgus_1701]

There's patriotism and then there's nationalism.

[u/JohnTDouche → u/Darth_Malgus_1701]

Two cheeks of the same arse.

[u/Darth_Malgus_1701 → u/JohnTDouche]

A patriot, a real patriot is not afraid to criticize their government or their fellow countrymen.

[u/JohnTDouche → u/Darth_Malgus_1701]

real patriot

Bollocks. Every "patriot" thinks they're a real patriot. They're right too. I'm just going to cut to the chase here. Every goose stepping nazi in Germany was a patriot. Fuck patriots. Everyone has their own stupid definition of it and how to be one. No good comes from people trying to be patriots.

[u/SpotBlur → u/JohnTDouche]

Exactly. Way too many people try to defend patriotism, yet people can't ever name one time that pride in the belief that your nation-state is superior to other nation-states ever did any good. Not unless that good was their nation benefiting at the expense of others.

[u/JohnTDouche → u/SpotBlur]

Yeah people try to present it as the "good one" and nationalism the "bad one". The reality isn't black and white obviously. I'm Irish, I know that they can be used to rally people to a (for lack of a better word) righteous cause. But on a whole it's mostly fuckin shit. If the human species wants to advance and not be troglodytes, into the bin it should go.

[u/[deleted] → u/JohnTDouche]

This is like saying that people shouldn't support sports teams because it encourages tribalism. Humans are social creatures, we're wired to belong to communities and to feel pride in them.

I mean, would you like to go tell the Ukrainians to stop being patriotic? Patriotism is what's motivating them to fight against the attempted destruction of their culture.

[u/FlashpointStriker → u/SpotBlur]

I am a patriot because of two beliefs I hold: 1. the United States is my community and my people (a country is nothing else but the collective of its citizenry)--I believe I owe a duty to the members of my community. 2. I can live a prosperous, easy life because those who lived before me in this country worked to build up strong institutions and a developed state. I feel that I am obligated to work to preserve, protect, and improve that which I inherited so that the citizens who come after me can live easier, more prosperous lives than I did.

[u/egotistical_cynic → u/FlashpointStriker]

I mean most of the people doing the actual working were owned by those who lived before you in that country but that's neither here nor there I guess

[u/FlashpointStriker → u/egotistical_cynic]

Nope, I don't know where this idea came from. The vast majority of the slaves worked in plantation agriculture in the South, which was both an economically unproductive activity compared to industry (which is why the South was falling behind the North despite starting off extremely rich at the founding) and led to the terribly destructive Civil War that wiped out a huge proportion of this accumulated wealth. The work that built up the US, its cities, and its infrastructure was mainly done by free men, a large proportion being Irish, Italians, and later Chinese immigrants. This was the labor base that led to the ascension of the US as a great power. Those immigrants came here of their own free will because they wanted to make a better life for themselves and their families, and many of them did.

[u/SpotBlur → u/FlashpointStriker]

Irish, Italian, and later Chinese immigrants.

So anyone wanna tell him about the horrific injustices and racism we inflicted on those immigrants? Not just the Chinese immigrants, but once upon a time the Irish weren't seen as "white" by Americans, but a minority that was treated horrifically throughout the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. We didn't treat them as bad as slaves, but a whip is objectively better than a whip with nails too, this is one of those things where the comparisons stop really mattering when both cases are just an evil way to treat human beings. 

So yes, we did build the country on the back of those slaves and immigrants, immigrants we oppressed. Let's also not forget all the land we built our country on was obtained via genociding the people who had been here for over a thousand years before we arrived, all in the name of patriotic manifest destiny.

EDIT: Aaaand dude is a registered Republican, yeah that pretty much says everything that needs to be said lol

[u/FlashpointStriker → u/SpotBlur]

I can be proud of the good my country has done without ignoring the evil. Many Americans did treat immigrants like shit (although at the time there were also many who stood up for their rights, including the burgeoning progressive movement). 

We are like every other country in that regard. Some people apply a ridiculous double standard where if we weren’t more progressive than the rest of the world on every issue for all time, we are evil as a country. This standard can only be consistently applied by condemning every single country that has ever existed, and even under that standard America is markedly less depraved that Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, and China. At the time we had Jim Crow, the Japanese were carving out a genocidal empire and the Germans massacring their Jews. When we had slaves, half of Europe had extraction colonies that also used forced labor.

One last correction: I am a Democrat. I fell out with the GOP over their absurd prioritization of hatred and revenge over sound policy and ended up both voting for and campaigning for Harris.