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My thought exactly. Such claims as the one from the video, in fact, are attractive, partially because they are catchy and counter intuitive, a lot like conspira
by oh-kumudo 9y ago
My thought exactly. Such claims as the one from the video, in fact, are attractive, partially because they are catchy and counter intuitive, a lot like conspiracy theories.
While extreme nationalism is dangerous, nationalism is an effective way, not the most effective, to establish order and reach consensus to tens and hundreds of millions of people. And it is awkward to see that the creator of the video highlight the US exceptionalism to end their argument, which by itself, IMHO, is pretty nationalistic.
- allemagne 9y agoI didn't get the impression at all that mentioning US exceptionalism undercut the video creator's argument, or that they were really trying to argue that nationalism isn't an effective way to establish order. The creator went to lengths to describe how powerful of a force nationalism is. The point is that it's remarkable how much effect it has, given that it's a concept without a clearly defined delineation (categorizing languages, shared history, culture, ethnicity, and even borders is a whole other thing) that didn't exist a few hundred years ago. Taking umbrage to how the author uses the concept of "existence" or "being made up" as basically a philosophical shorthand in the context of deconstructing what national identity really is seems overly semantic. Is the issue really just that it's controversial and click-baity to say "national identity isn't real" as a headline out of context? Because that's irrelevant to the thrust of what's being said.