Wingnuts Praying for Obama's Death

Wotcha Oni I dunno whether I disagree with this or not. So I am gonna disagree to see where you take it.When we say "America did this" or "Europe did that" or "Israel stands for X" what do we mean? Just the government? I am not convinced.When we use this sort of terminology we do of courrse mean that those in power took certain actions or stated certain beliefs but does it not also require that these actions or beliefs are also advocated by a large section of the grouping in question?Is it not true to say that "America voted in Obama hoping for change"? Yet that hardly reflects the wishes of the government of the time.

Fair enough. I am not really gonna argue with any of that. My take on this is that these sorts of statements (nation X believes Y) are highly contextual and can thus be desperately misleading.When it is said that "Britain supported the Iraq war" this is of course true in the sense of official diplomatic relations, government foreign policy etc. etc. But it remains the case that this was done with a great deal of public opposition. Enough to make the statement that "Britain supported the Iraq war" highly questionable in any sort of non-government capacity.On the other hand the statement that "Britain opposes further European integration" (for example) is more a statement of public opinion than dependent on particular government policy (which may or may not be in accordance with tha public opinion). The present Labour government has largely avoided pushing relatively pro-Euro policies because of such opinion.Basically I think that such statements are so open to contextual conflation that they become almost meaningless. Even though I think we all kinda know what is meant when they are used by those without obvious intent to deceive.

On a purely anecdotal note I have found Americans much more prone to this sort of thinking than any other nationality. Say the same sort of thing to most Europeans and they kinda shrug and go "Yeah my fucking government sucks shit. I know". Say this sort of thing to a Yank and they are much more likely to take it as a personal insult or an indication of more general anti-Americanism of some sort.This may be because of America's status in the world and thus the prevalence of genuine anti-Americanism of sorts breeding a degree of justifiable paranoia. It may be because you guys are generally more patriotic in ways that seem slightly alien to modern rather cynical Europeans. Or it may be that I am talking out of my wholly subjective arse.I don't know.

Personally I don't have a problem with the way that you said what you said. I think I knew what you meant contextualy despite the phrase "America did X" being open to question taken on it's own if over analysed.Oni's point I think (and it is a fair one) is that there are those who did not take this in the way that I took it and who have labelled you as "anti-American" as a result.What is the answer? Be completely specific in everything we say? But then you end up with posts as specifically worded and overly long as mine usually are and still everybody interprets what you say with their own subjective twist.All you can really do is keep putting people right when they take what you say the wrong way. Sorry I don't have a better or less frustrating answer.

Fair enough. It's not like we don't have patriotism in Europe too. But nationalism of any sort often doesn't sit well with the colonial past of so many of the major European countries. It gets kinda conflated with nationalistic extremism of one sort or another. So (I think) the patriotism here gets kinda watered down and the whole thing is much more cynical. Americans seem to be much more overt and unembarressed about the whole thing (except in the context of sport where we all go bit mental).A friend of mine recently moved from London to Washington. He was telling us about the flag holder he has for his desk. We were absolutely pissing ourselves at the idea of such a concept existing here. It would end up being a contest as to who could create the stupidest flag or something.