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Dear America:
Most countries don’t do this shit. At all. It’s weird and off putting
Does anyone else also fly bombers and fighter jets over stadiums at the start of a game? Do you take 2-5 minutes to honor some guys in the military during half time?
NK does i believe
When you connect the dots of modern history, you realize America was most of the way to fascist dictatorship the entire time.
Many of us have been waiting for it to drop the facade for decades.
Fascism is just capitalist imperialism turned against your own citizens.
YuppppP
to be fair, that one (afaik) is a legitimate training exercise. it’s useful to train pilots to be at an exact place, in an exact formation, at an exact speed, at an exact time… and if you can get marketing and morale out of it, welllll why not
Also, jets are just plain old cool. Everyone likes a mini-airshow.
I mean yes, I love airshows, but there’s something about a mass celebration of these machines of death where a crowd gathered for a completely unrelated purpose gets to see the last thing an afghan child at a wedding sees gives ick in a way that normal airshows, even with all the military recruitment and propaganda don’t.
It doesn’t even apply to all flyovers, sometimes it’s like F-14s or Chinooks or WWII era planes where the message isn’t so dark.
where a crowd gathered for a completely unrelated purpose gets to see the last thing an afghan child at a wedding sees
I know this probably makes it worse, but the Afghan child most likely wouldn’t even have a chance to see the plane (or more likely, predator drone) that fired the missile that killed them.
It’s one of the many reasons these children are fucking terrified of clear skies and sunny days.
yyyyyyyes but it’s also expensive and thoroughly weird when compared to the rest of the world… so whilst it does serve a legitimate purpose, it’s worth noting those points too
Piling on the list of negatives - they use leaded fuel, which is bad for you. I still like planes though
No they don’t. Jets use jet fuel not avgas.
You’re right, my bad.
Lol, as opposed the the drills and formations that NK/Russia etc do?
not at all - they’re all exactly the same… i’m just noting that there are reasons to do them beyond only propaganda and nationalism
It’s fucking weird and creepy
It’s also dope AF. Frankly, I’d rather have those planes boosting morale here than dropping bombs somewhere else. I see it as a win-win.
The whole purpose of those flybys is to glamorize and advertise the same planes they use to drop bombs.
In many other countries, their military acrobatics teams don’t even use true military jets.
New Zealand’s Black Falcons use propeller-based trainers. Japan’s Blue Impulse team uses Kawasaki T-4 based trainers. Britain’s Red Arrows and Finland’s Midnight Hawks use BAE Hawk trainers. Australia’s Roulettes use turboprop trainers. Canada’s snowbirds use Canadair Tutor trainers.
You can train the pilots in other time and area. The combination with an unrelated game makes it propaganda.
you can, but as i said at the end of the comment: you have to do it anyway… you either entirely waste the fuel, maintenance, and pilot time, or you use it for something
in a couple of comments people have said they think it’s “plain old cool” and “a mini air show”
propaganda? perhaps
but people also seem to enjoy it… better than entirely wasting it
I stopped in elementary school.
At the time, it was because I was convinced that the pledge was essentially worshipping a false idol, and if I continued to do it, I would go to hell. Teachers couldn’t fight that argument. Students didn’t fuck with it either. I stood. I didn’t cross my heart, and I didn’t say it.
About 6th or 7th grade, I started challenging my “faith” and realized that the pledge was essentially swearing fealty to something that was supposed to serve the people, not the other way around. By highschool, I didn’t even stand for it anymore. It was nationalism.
If only there were more in this world with such critical thinking, maybe we wouldn’t be in such a shit state.
It doesn’t make sense. Critical thinking enables survival. Sometimes it’s not fun. Sometimes it doesn’t feel great.
But it’s typically more rewarding that not. That’s what I don’t understand.
Unfortunately for us tribalism also enables survival
To get those rewards you typically have to endure some hardship or struggle first tho, and many people can’t tolerate that. They just want their creature comforts. It’s how you get hoarders drowning in their takeout buckets.
Given a choice, the brain will always take the laziest path. Which is why watching a screen and turning off your brain is so easy. The fact that it’s also designed to give you a dopamine hit makes it hard to stop.
I did the same. Stopped in elementary school. Cited religion and worshiping “something above God”
Never stood up for the anthem in homeroom again.
I was about the same. Around junior high I was like, “wtf am I doing?” For me the first part was “under God,” that got to me. I had found it weird as a child even to say that and then I realized I didn’t want to say that at all. I thought it was strange when supposedly, we’re allowed to believe whatever we want. I never felt the connection or belief in the Catholic God (what I was, very, loosely raised under) and it started there. Hand on heart omitting , “under God.” Slowly it progressed to just standing and saying nothing. It’s probably been well over a decade since I’ve been in a situation to say the pledge, but if I were, I know I wouldn’t stand anymore.
I also, do not always stand for the National Anthem.
So the Anthem thing I sort of get, at least for like sports. Lemme explain:
Sportsmanship keeps the games fun. Establishing sportsmanship starts in the mind - “we’re all here to have a good time.” In nation exclusive sports, (NFL for example) the entire stadium gets “in sync” at that moment. It’s also a useful way to start. In international sports, standing for the opponents anthem is a sign of respect for the other team.
I don’t really remember where else it plays though.
I don’t think I could even silently protest the pledge of allegiance anymore. Fuck nationaism.
Fiest time I had to do the pledge, I just got to America from Taiwan and I honestly thought the pledge was a Christian/religion thing because of the “…under god” thing. So I told my teacher that my family is Buddhist and can’t do the pledge.
You weren’t wrong, exactly
Fun fact! “Fun”, actually.
Under God wasn’t in the original version. It wasn’t added until 1954 because they didn’t to be like communist countries and be seen as a secular government.
Good old fashion forcing religion on your citizens.
That makes sense. It did seem like the under god was out of place. Everything else flowed pretty well until the under god part.
This was also the same time “In God We Trust” was added to all coins and paper money.
This shit has always been creepy. Always. Greetings from Germany o/
True, but they start you off doing it at the age of 4 or 5 so it is completely normalized before our brains are developed enough to question it
I moved to the US as a kid, and this shit gave me massive cult vibes from the start. I refused to participate.
I was suuuper popular in middle school…
Agreed
“Our country is really the best, all the other countries suck… God bless Johnson & Johnson…”
Brought to you by McDonald’s, on behalf of Nike.
Good choice with the forward slash. Good choice.
Internet Germans convinced me to sit down for it in high school. And yeah its such cult shit
Generally, the main problem with being “far left” is being ridiculed for being right earlier than everyone else.
I sat down every time and my teacher would get pissed. I finally told her that my grandpa fought in WWII for my right to protest and that shit her up real fast. I’m not going to pledge my aliegence to an inanimate object, I shouldn’t have to prove my love for my country with a pledge.
This is the kind of shit that leads to nationalism over patriotism. Blindly teaching kids to pledge allegiance without teaching them what comes with that or why.
That or the fact that your government should be pledging allegience to you, not the other way around. We the people do not serve the government.
Americans are cultists
Pledge oft what? Eli5 pls
Wtf. Hard to believe this is real… Do only certain far right private schools do nationalistic stuff like that or is it a common phenomenon over there, like are public funded schools allowed to do bs like this as well?
EDIT: WWWWTTTTTFFFF
" All states except Nebraska, Hawaii, Vermont, and Wyoming require a regularly scheduled recitation of the pledge in public schools.[13] Many states give a variety of exemptions from reciting the pledge, such as California which requires a “patriotic exercise” every day, which would be satisfied by the Pledge, "
To be honest its a miracle you guys didn’t turn facist earlier with stuff like that.
The Nazi party of America - the GOP - has spent so much time and money creating fascist propaganda for decades. The country largely ignored it, because it didn’t really “do” anything and most people were like “ok. It’s a bit strange, but whatever.”
The military is to be praised. The boy scouts of America have promoted flag ceremony, and allegiance to state. Sports are practically religious events, so your team is part of where you live. The more you buy, the more you help America. America’s international superiority is paramount to our health. It’s been ready for a long time. It just needed ignition.
And the worst part is that it was created in cooperation with a flag company partly to hopefully sell more flags.
That’s capitalism for ya.
Is this true? Honestly it wouldn’t surprise me but I’d never heard this before
If you go to the Wiki article linked above, you can find the whole story of how multiple vows of fealty have sprung up over the years under the Origins section, but the last bit on Francis Bellamy is the important one as that’s the one used today.
Some useful highlights from that section:
The Bellamy “Pledge of Allegiance” was first published in the September 8, 1892, issue of The Youth’s Companion as part of the National Public-School Celebration of Columbus Day, a celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas. The event was conceived and promoted by James B. Upham, a marketer for the magazine, as a campaign to instill the idea of American nationalism in students and to encourage children to raise flags above their schools.[28] According to author Margarette S. Miller, this campaign was in line both with Upham’s patriotic vision as well as with his commercial interest.
Francis Bellamy and Upham had lined up the National Education Association to support the Youth’s Companion as a sponsor of the Columbus Day observance and the use in that observance of the American flag. By June 29, 1892, Bellamy and Upham had arranged for Congress and President Benjamin Harrison to announce a proclamation making the public school flag ceremony the center of the Columbus Day celebrations. This arrangement was formalized when Harrison issued Presidential Proclamation 335. Subsequently, the Pledge was first used in public schools on October 12, 1892, during Columbus Day observances organized to coincide with the opening of the World’s Columbian Exposition (the Chicago World’s Fair), Illinois.
James Upham “felt that a flag should be on every schoolhouse,”[27] so his publication "fostered a plan of selling flags to schools through the children themselves at cost, which was so successful that 25,000 schools acquired flags in the first year (1892–93).
Thanks for the detailed response. That is absolutely wild
Yeah, it’s absolutely insane, which is why I remember it lol.
I wouldn’t be surprised if my town was the exception and not the norm (I’m from a relatively progressive town in a consistently blue state) but at my public high school I only knew of 1-2 people out of the 500 people in my grade that stood up during the pledge of allegiance and a good percentage of the grade hated them because they were high key homophobic.
No it’s basically universal
Texas also has its own that kids have to do after the US one, every day.
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You don’t have to do it. I stopped doing the pledge around 6th grade. 9-11 made me read into our history a bit more, and pledging allegiance to a flag that is supposed to represent “of the people, by the people, for the people” seems a backwards. Then you realize that it’s straight up McCarthy-era bullshit. It’s more patriotic to not say the pledge.
I mean I was punished for not doing it one time. Agreed otherwise
I was lucky enough that my parents had engaged with the school system overriding my (and my siblings) civil rights in the past. A little bit of push-back from them quashed a lot of school bullshit. As long as I wasn’t endangering myself or my class, and not disrupting the education of other students, I had carte blanche to do what I wanted.
When the whole “trapper keepers only” thing went down around 8th grade, I kept using my backpack, since I walked a little over a mile home from school every day, and the trapper was dead-weight.
Yup, when I heard about it it was really weird. And when I said I won’t let my children do that, I learn they’d be ostracized not only by peers but by teachers as well. And considering there’ll bullying in schools and teachers don’t do much. It doesn’t seem like a good place to send your children. (And there’s shooting)
I would say I went to a fairly typical public high school and most people didn’t say the pledge or stand, although it was definitely read over the loudspeaker during the morning announcements
In my state, which is extremely conservative, it is illegal to force a student to participate in the pledge. Most teachers are ignorant of this though so you have to bring it up when they try to make you do it. I haven’t been in high school for well over 20 years though.
I get the sense Lemmy people are generally less likely to participate in this weird shit, as I also sat it out and we kind of select into this sort of “fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” mindset by rejecting mainstream apps.
I didn’t know it was an option in elementary, but as early as I remember I always adjusted the words to make it silly. I especially remember saying “under frog” when they got to the under God part, with liberty and French fries for all.
I used to piss people off by adding a very loud, drawn out, “amen” to the end to show how fucking weird and cultish it is to make kids say it every day. come like 7th grade tho I just stopped participating at all.
Yeah I stopped doing it in High School after realizing that it’s some North Korea level bullshit. Got a few other kids in my homeroom to stop too, which really angered our teacher. She was a military spouse and would actually yell at us for refusing to participate. In the end, we compromised by standing but not reciting it. Was the begining of my political and social awakening.
I had an amazing American Government and Politics teacher in senior year of high school, but I knew about her much earlier. She kept a file of print-outs of the section of State law which codified that no child could be forced to participate in the pledge. She was so awesome. I happened to just arrive at her class after the first plane hit on 9/11. I don’t think there could have been a better place for me to be trying to make sense of that.
how did it go down for you that day given you were in her class?
It was really hard to process. I was about to turn 18. So I didn’t know shit about shit, but I sure as shit thought I did.
A friend ran up to me in the hall when we were changing classes and says dude a plane just hit the world trade center. I started laughing, imagining some idiot in a cesna. He gave me an ugly look and walked away. I got to class and it was on the TV. Our amazing teacher was clearly in shock in retrospect, but she tried to guide us and we had a little discussion on terrorism and the US involvement in war in the middle east. We talked about how Bush was going to handle it.
We had only one conservative in class who was also loud out and proud gay. This was unusual for the time. He had a big personality but even he was quiet. I remember talking to a friend trying to estimate casualty numbers.
We watched the second plane hit and the towers fall live. Saw all the people jumping out the windows. The rest of the day is a blur. We got sent home early. I rode the bus home and watched live TV all night.
I think the pledge has fallen off in recent years honestly. The year after covid lockdowns ended I was in highschool and I remember one of my first classes 0 people stood for the pledge.
High schoolers have every reason not to stand for the flag after COVID, so that’s nice to hear.
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My son is in second grade and ha, chosen to not to say the pledge of allegiance (his own decision because we talk about how the country won’t take care of its people). He says he teachers never force him, but subs always do claiming we’re the greatest country in the world.
I stopped in third grade. I walked to school so had to hang out till the busses were gone and I asked my teacher after school one day why I had to say it. She said I didn’t have to if I didn’t want too but that I should stand. It made sense to me . Never said it again.
I asked the same teacher why she said Columbus “discovered Smerica” when there were already people here. She could not answer that one and I don’t think the thought ever crossed her mind. I knew school was all bullshit after that and didn’t really participate much after that
I don’t think kids should even stand for it. Our loyalty should be to the people, to our communities, to the scientific pursuit of truth, to the health of the planet, and to defending the unalienable god given right of dignity for all people.
I have never once done the Pledge of Allegiance. Grew up a Jehovah’s Witness, who think that giving allegiance to a country would mean putting that country over God. Even if any of my teachers didn’t like this reasoning, they were obliged to keep quiet and accept it. There was a Supreme Court case about this exact issue.
Left JWs as an adult, so I never had to do it.
Being the person that won’t stand for the national anthem at a hockey game is fun too. You fully expect some asshole to give you shit but it hasn’t happened yet.
it me lmao
Im guessing that’s a lot of us here lol
Lmao saaaame
Same. But I didn’t do it because of a different indoctrination, not because I understood anything special.
Worth a read for the “secede from our marital union” part alone!
