When there are at the last only two scruffy human beings left alive on this planet, they will paint a line down the middle, retreat to their portions, and start throwing rocks at The Other.

Posted by: Antifa | Aug 10 2005 1:41 utc | 3

F.Fire: Fuck knows what will happen in Iran.
It looks to me like Cheney could be in handcuffs before he gets his filthy hands on Iran. Rummy too. At least for now I can hope; I have a lot of faith in Fitz and his crew.

Posted by: rapt | Aug 10 2005 2:24 utc | 5

Pretty much covered this the other day in another thread but from reading the excerpt of Monbiot’s article, he believes that people have a choice in whther they feel patriotic or not.
I couldn’t disagree more because the innate need to protect one’s culture from encroachment is just as instinctive as the self preservation and reproductive urges most people feel.
There are times when the heart will always over rule the head and the emotions that give rise to patriotism are a case in point.
Instead of denying that such feelings exist and trying to repress them when they appear it would seem to me to be much smarter to overtly acknowledge their prescence and learn to use these emotions positively.
When we own that we do have an almost irrational need to protect what is around us we can become much more able to recognise when someone or something is trying to use those feelings to achieve some selfish goal.
Because I believe that is the real problem. Thse ‘patriotic’ instincts are as natural for most as breathing but many people fail to understand when those emotions are being played like a Stradivarius.
One of the reasons for the failure of 20th century socialism was that all too often the social engineers designing the ‘ideal’ state failed to pay sufficient attention to humanity’s emotional ideals. We see the same thing now from the economic rationalists who have placed the need to fulfil one’s selfish desires ahead of every other emotion that humans may feel. The result is a community where material desires have been mostly met for a significant portion of the population yet people are still dissatisfied and turn back to old superstitions like xtianity or judaism. Even now the left is far too dismissive of religion and seeks to ignore it rather than offering an alternative which would allow people to self actualise without giving away significant power.
We need to be patriotic while recognising when others are abusing our patriotism or extracting irrational responses from us by threatening our patriotism, but mostly only when we recognise that patriotism is felt by most of our species will we fully comprehend the likely result when our actions make another’s patriotism rule their head.
If all people in the US and UK recognised that invading Iraq would cause Iraqis to become bound by their patriotism ahead of most else, then it is unlikely that the invasion would have occurred.
This problem arises when we deny the existence of this emotion or imagine that our own patriotism is caused by the fact our own country really is the best there is. When we all understand that people naturally feel patriotism, even in a country where life is miserable and hard because they live under a tyrant then we may understand the futility of trying to ‘save’ another people from their own society.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Aug 10 2005 2:44 utc | 7

If all people in the US and UK recognised that invading Iraq would cause Iraqis to become bound by their patriotism ahead of most else, then it is unlikely that the invasion would have occurred. — DD
And yet it was Monbiot — and millions like him — who saw this Iraq disaster coming, while the self-proclaimed patriots among us were totally blindsided. People who feel as Monbiot do are not ivory tower idealists, hopelessly detached from everyday realities, as you seem to think. It’s the neocons and the liberal hawks who are making the mistakes of the 20th century socialists, and talk about social engineering “sick” societies.
I don’t believe that humanity will ever fully overcome it’s tribalism, any more than we’ll completely eradicate racism and superstition, but that doesn’t make the effort ignoble or impractical.
However, right now, I’d be happy if we could just act in our own national self-interest with realpolitik policies — it would cause a lot less damage to all concerned.
If man commits suicide, it will be because we obeyed the cliches of state sovereignty and national honor. — Erich Fromm

Posted by: Vin Carreo | Aug 10 2005 5:47 utc | 9

Well, I’m with him. Ultimately, there’s no difference between patriotism and nationalism, and there’s a thin line between that and fascism. If it’s innate in mankind, then mankind has to change, period. Because preferring the good of one’s people or country to the good of mankind and life on Earth will doom us all.
When i saw War of the Worlds, I was so pissed off at all these rows of little crappy NJ houses with the huge US flag before every single one of them I couldn’t wait for the tripods to come and trash the whole town – but it would have been poor taste to cheer too openly in the theatre for the Martians’ rampage.
If mankind’s survival and progress required the sheer annihilation of my country or my people, then so be it, I’d accept it without much problem. Then of course I know enough about history to see that there isn’t any single people that wouldn’t deserve such a fate if past crimes had to be accounted for…
It’s time to see that most people and most peoples are dead wrong on most issues, and that this has only led us on the threshold of complete destruction and extinction. Though usually people only woke up when the shit hit the fan, and most of the time it’s too late.

Posted by: CluelessJoe | Aug 10 2005 8:34 utc | 11

Even speaking of negative and positive sides separates it too much. For, the “positive” side first makes room for the “negative”.
“Positive patriots” prefer emphasize the good in the record of their imaginary community, even the positive that never happened but is popular myth, as Good Example To Follow. However, the result is a distorted view of history and people’s imaginary community, the kind of widespread cluelessness wich “negative nationalism” first needs to thrive on.

Posted by: DoDo | Aug 10 2005 12:22 utc | 13