Mrs. Obama: FINALLY Proud of Her Country?

"Look at me"? Funny, up until Demiurge's spittle, I was on topic.


Clearly, everyone else gets to defend their arguments alone, while I need to be attacked for merely existing.
There's a nice worldview.
Gotta love this country.

So she did backpedal on her earlier statement.

Isn't that what I said I was hoping for in an earlier comment to you?

I bet our first black president is really upset by all this. Why wasn't she ever as proud of him and his efforts? :

^ I am quite satisfied with her explanation. If it's, "I didn't mean it the way it sounded, I was referring to a specific context," then that's absolutely acceptable to me. Everyone says things on occasion that didn't come out just the way they were meant. That's no reason to get after someone.

In any case, I sure prefer her explanation to the "Well, I'm not too proud of my country, either, because the bad outweighs the good" defenses that some posters were coming up with in this thread.

For me, the issue is settled. And quite satisfactorily.

Sounds good to me. Her explanation is better than some of the others presented here.


Next!!

Yeah, your mind isn't too handy with shades of grey on this subject, is it?

Lemme try to walk you through it again.

Glad to live in this country?
Yes.
Proud of it?
Like an accomplishment?
Nope.
But then, I also think it's primitive and infantile to think you took part in the accomplishments of your children, or your favorite ball team.

But if it's not that kind of pride, that leaves the kind of pride where you're glad for the person when they do right, and you give 'em an "attaboy".

But then, the country has an equal share of fuckups, so to blindly give it an "attaboy", and forget the fuckups, is a bit shortsighted and the kind of dumb blind pride Nick spoke of.

So, no, you're never going to wrestle an "America, fuck yeah!!", out of me, sorry.
It takes too much turning off of my brain.

As long as it's got the Asyncritus imprimatur, it's kosher. Let me write that down...

I believe I beat him to the punch in commenting on her retraction of her remarks. Do keep up!

See, this is the difference between theory and experience.

Theory, why should you be proud of the accomplishments of your children? It's not like you had anything to do with them.

Experience, I kept them alive, taught them successful habits, educated them, and poured my life and soul into seeing they would be happy and have options open to them in life.

My dad is proud of me. I'm proud of the steps my son takes every day, and I know the man he is going to be when he grows up is going to have a lot to do with me and my wife.

Yes, we know, you don't understand, so it must be ridiculed.

Lovely.

Of course, if you'd been a crap dad, and fucked up your kid, and he became a school shooter, then you'd blame the video games.

Or, try this one on for size, if he'd been retarded.
You put in all that same good parenting work, but he's never gonna be the star quarterback.
Same input, different output.
Hmm?

Come on, you know what I'm saying, you're being deliberately obtuse.
Parents play an important and vital role in the upbringing of their kids, but in the end, they are their own person, not an extension of yourself and your own ego.
You know this, and knowing this, you know it doesn't apply to you, so stop going out of your way to take offense.
I know my very existence offends you, but seriously, come on.

People who speak only English amuse me with their "You can't be proud of something you had nothing to do with" arguments. As if the word had only one meaning!

I suppose that because I speak French as fluently as English I just naturally see both meanings of the word easily. In French, "fierté" and "orgueil" are two different words that both translate into English as "pride." No one could meaningfully feel "orgueil" for something with which he had nothing to do. But one can easily feel "fierté" for something without taking any personal credit for it.

But it makes a nice straw-man argument for those who don't understand linguistics: "Since you didn't have anything to do with it, you can't and shouldn't be proud of it." By (correctly) pointing out that one sense of the word "pride" is innappropriate, they think they have somehow demonstrated that neither sense is appropriate.

Communication would be so much simpler if we all spoke several languages. Often, things that are ambiguous in one language become much clearer when you express them in another language.

Yes, we're all so fucking impressed with your multi-lingualism, but that's not what I'm saying as I clarified in ensuing posts.

It is important to point out at this juncture that, while basically correct, a crucial qualification must be made.

If public figures like Al Gore, Mrs. Obama, Mrs. Clinton mis-speak, it is imperative to keep the aforementioned principal in mind, and try to better understand the true intention of the speaker.

In the case of public figures like Dan Quayle, Richard Nixon and others of that stripe, it is important that we remember every misstep, and ridicule those points for as long as possible, making sure that we interpret and accept those statements in the worst possible context.

To break with such a tradition is heretical.

As long as he was attaining what he was capable of, and I was part of that process, I'd be equally as proud.

Primarily I want my child to grow up to be a happy adult. If he's a janitor and that's what he truly wants, that's fine by me.

My job is to provide guidance as he's growing so he has the most opportunities to find out what he wants to be. And that includes discipline, because a lot of doors close on you when you don't do the work.

If you are a janitor because you love it, more power to you.

If you are a janitor because you simply have no other options and you are miserable, then your parents didn't serve you very well.

Obviously they can't control it, but they certainly are the single largest external influence.

And saying that you are proud of your kids doesn't intimate that even minutely.

Being proud of them is just that - it doesn't imply an extension of the ego.

And I'd say the same thing with your country.

Certainly I am not responsible for the creation or growth of my country, but it is the one I chose to live in, despite knowing that there are alternatives. I could try to move to Canada easily enough, or any of the other hundreds of countries out there, but I chose to live in the country of my birth, and I find it something worth supporting.

In that way, I'm proud of it, even with my own little contribution. The contributions of my family also count in my mind, as they've sacrificed in the past. My sister, father, and both grandfathers were in the armed forces, my cousin is fire chief of Orange county, a great uncle was a California Highway Patrolman for 40 years, three other cousins are LAPD, and another is a marine.

So I'm proud of them for their contributions, and I have investment in what they contributed to.

How this gets twisted into 'if you are proud of your country you've turned off your brain' is absolutely repellent to me.

too short, did not rep

Let me tell you a little secret, one that linguists know but self-proclaimed philosophers tend to forget. The rest of the world doesn't change when you introduce new words. Just because you can squeeze an additional differance (sic) from your confusion between one English and two French words, pride without accomplishment doesn't become more reasonable.

I throw that back at not just you, but all of WF.

:lookatme:
:lookatme:
:lookatme::lookatme:
:lookatme::lookatme:
:lookatme::lookatme::lookatme:
:lookatme::lookatme::lookatme:
:lookatme::lookatme:
:lookatme::lookatme:
:lookatme:
:lookatme:

Fine. That's the "attaboy", pride I spoke of.

Didn't say that it necessarily did.

Depends on what you mean by supporting.

For me "my country right or wrong", can go take a flying leap.

That's a heartbeat away from "don't take him away officer, he's a good man, he' a good man, he didn't mean to hit me!!".

Well, for one, I didn't twist shit, I stepped you through my thought process.
I'd like to know what part of it you're going out of your way to misunderstand.

And for another, I didn't say "if you're proud of your country, you've turned off your brain", THAT'S twisting.
As is desperately contorting everything I say to be an attack on your family somehow.
Reminds me of how religionists credit God with everything good about themselves, so you can't criticize religion without them taking it personally.
Like God needs them to take a bullet for him.

This is one of the negative aspects of patriotism that bugs me.
This tying up one's identity and dignity up in the thing so much, you can't have rational discourse without the "what? You criticize America!? Then you HATE America, and if you hate America, you shat on my wife's dinner!!".

But getting back to the "if you're proud of your country, you've turned off your brain", contortion, what I said and clearly meant was "America fuck yeah!!", is a mindless slogan; and that mindless slogans, and the non-thinking behind them require turning off your brain.

And don' say it's not a mindless slogan, the movie it comes from is a fucking PARODY of mindless jingoistic patriotism fer chrissakes.

No thanks, your posts suck.

Your existence is, and always has been, irrelevant to everyone, everywhere. Nothing you typed makes any sense. What is this shit about retarded kids not being star quarterbacks? I mean how insecure about your own athletic ability do you have to be? Parents can take pride in their kids, even the retarded ones, for any number of reasons.

Of course, you admit that parents play an important and vital role in the upbringing of their kids so you already know your argument is bullshit. There is nothing strange about taking pride in something you played a vital and important role in.

This statement actually goes towards explaining what Michelle meant by her comments.

I know that to be demonstrably false.
I matter to a small handfull of people but that's all I need.

That's your problem with reading comprehension, not mine.

Again, improved reading comprehension would help you out there.

I didn't say otherwise.

Yes, I did.

If you mean the argument you made up in your head above, yes, that argument is bullshit, and I pointed out why it was within that same post.

Not to the point you think it's your accomplishment, and not the child's.
Like an over the top little-league dad, or a stage mother.
I believe I made that point quite clear.
How many ways do I have to say it before it sinks into even the thickest skull here?

It would probably seem like there was if you've never played a vital and important role in anything ever.

So, let's look at the other side of this issue.

Diacanu, do your parents feel shame due to the fact that you're an epic failure?

I can't help but think that you feel the way you do on this topic because nobody has ever had cause to be proud of anything you've ever done. You're bitter.

As opposed to your lecturing Paladin at the beginning of this thread (always good for a laugh) about his belief in patriotism being 'unreason.'

Speaking of twisting. Pointing out that your concept of pride when you make inane comments like you can't be proud of a retarded child because he won't be a star quarterback is flawed is not the same thing as taking personal offense.

Woohoo! Dicky! Topic is over here! *waves a flag*

Uh huh.

Did ANYONE in this thread make those claims? Paladin started it by saying if it was true Michelle Obama didn't have any pride in American at any time until now (one way her comments could be interpreted) then he had a problem with that.

So yes, blind unreasoning dogma in any way is annoying and ridiculous.

Of course, so is blind unreasoning criticism.

Ah, context, what a concept.

Needless to say, the fact that no one was spouting those platitudes here made it difficult to understand the context you were having your soliloquy in.

Ever?
Not the case.
My parents were quite proud of some of my accomplishemnts in school.
And when I passed my computer course.
And when I won the writing contest.
Lots and lots of little things here and there, but the whole "never, ever, ever", crap is factually incorrect.

Not at all.
I admit I went through a phase of it in the early days of WF.
I've been feeling quite good about myself lately.
In fact, the past 18 months or so.
You really haven't been paying attention.
Time to update your mental photo of me, it's really out of date.

Yes he did. What I'm not following is why his problem should also be her problem, or her husband's problem. Wisconsin would seem to agree.

All of his so-called reasoning was gut-level emotionalism, and he essentially admitted as much with his movie/spectator comparison.

Gut-level emotionalism by definition isn't reasoned thinking, therefore, yes, it was unreason.

I never said that.

And the reason he gave for both interpreting her remarks to mean that, and for his "having a problem with it", were fallacious at best.

Well, Paladin with his "I'm part of America the way an audience member moved to tears by a movie is", although sappily heartwarming, is exactly the mindless sentiment that's at the heart of "America, fuck yeah!!".

So, you're wrong.

Oh well.

Nah.

I think I'm going to stick with the one I've got...

Yes, that's nice, good for you, go play now.