patriotism is nothing but loyalty to real estate. - dr. gregory house.
seriously, though. it’s high time we thought of ourselves as co-passengers on a single planet-sized ship rather than attributing memberships to everyone on the basis of arbitrarily drawn lines on a map.
Plot twist: the comic has a single MC. He wears a red shirt, then he gets his morning coffee, then he wears a yellow shirt.
I’m being cheeky to highlight that the comic is artificially creating a qualitative distinction where there’s none. Patriotism is at most nationalism lite; if not just an euphemism for the later.
It does so through two (IMO rather disingenuous) resources:
- A bad analogy between house and country. It’s bad because it grossly disregards what matters the most in a country (its population).
- By making the nationalist sound angry so the patriot looks nicer in comparison. Not too unlike this:
What I’m going to say below is simply showing the above.
[P] I’m gonna work on my house because it’s the best house.
Put people into the equation there. Both P and N will happily ignore what happens with people who live in other houses, for the sake of people living in their own. Except that they are not related to most people in their respective houses (remember, metaphors break).
Your neighbour is starving? “Sorry, as a patriot I need to focus only on people living in my house. One of them is peckish. They take priority.”
[N] My house is the best house because it’s my house!
People claiming to be “nationalists” typically defend the superiority of their “house” with shit like: it’s the oldest house in the bloc, someone who lived in that house did something great, the garden has 0.19% less weed etc. Pretty much the same as the “patriot”.
[P] Hi, neighbour! Could I see your house? I’m trying to improve my house.
More like “hi neighbour! I need some quality dirt for my house. I’ll try to convince you that it’s in the best of the interests of everyone living in your house if you had sand instead, so you can give me the dirt. And if you don’t agree I’m going to convince every neighbour in the bloc to throw their rubbish on your garden. Do we have a deal, or do we have a deal?”
[N] Gimme your house […]
P would instead spam propaganda until you’re convinced that you’re better off living of favour in someone else’s house.
[P] Come into my house… / [N] Stay out of my house…
Okay, now the comic is simply making distinctions up of thin air, given that both are typically OK with tourism but heavily suspicious of immigrants.
[N] Now I am patriotism
Ouroboros, please. You were patriotism since the start.
I’d say “a plague in both houses”, but I can only see one house there.
