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This is a trad-neurotypical exhortation. I'd guess about 30% of humans are neuropsychologically incapable of thinking this way. You can make people wave flags and sing anthems, but you can't make them feel poetic heart stirrings unless they're a certain type
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Hello, Twitter! Bet you weren't expecting a holiday tweetstorm. No one expects the holiday tweetstorm; surprise is our chief weapon. But there's another reason I held this tweetstorm for today: it's a column on why America needs more symbolic patriotism. washingtonpost.com/opinions/ameri
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Semi related. My family narrative growing up was all about populist political movements. My grandma grew up in Nazi occupied Holland and all our stories were about outwitting nazis, smuggling out Jewish children and remembering we were Catholics /1
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We were not allowed to join the scouts, play sports with uniforms- because of the horror my grandma had seen it cause. I remember her talking about the people on the street corners shouting “heil Hitler, heil heil Hitler” - the horror to her /2
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Wasn’t that you *had* to join in - she’d been smuggling children past Nazi guards she knew how to lie - it was that part of you *wanted* to join in. She was doing the salute saying the words - and a small part of her actually enjoyed it. EVEN THOUGH SHE WAS
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Certainly! But, for achieving the goal of common knowledge of shared values, though, positive plans of eliciting shared poetic heart stirrings compares favorably to, say, careful discourse. Outrage at the outgroup might be more effective, but the externalities! 😬