U.N. Me - Tow Jockey Five Second Review

I can't wait for the UN to actually take over. Where is our global Hegemony already!

In all seriousness, nation states are pretty much the fucking worst thing ever and I really do think the world would be a MUCH better place with a real singular world government.

Nah, I prefer variety. Different languages, food, cultures, all part of the spice of life. 'One world' or 'One people' is lame. I don't want Mcdonald's every night.

You can still have all that stuff, look at the US and all the different regional cultures for example. It's about taking away the complete anarchy that is international relations between state actors.

Agreed Matt, fuck nationalism and patriotism

Nationalism is a weird thing. I don't understand how people can take pride in the accomplishments of others simply because they were born on similar soil. It's like sports fans being proud of their team... it's kind of surreal. Western nationalism kind of started as an anti Chruch movement at about the time as the printing press. Kings wanted more control over the church and tried to convince the people that there was this thing called a national identity, they used the printing press to get this message out there. It made sense at the time. But these days with the internet we're practically living in a global village anyway so there is really no need for it anymore. Nationalism is dead, it just doesn't know it yet.

In any case my short stint in the army taught me at a pretty young age that the UN is a fucked up organization. The horrors that the peacfull troops commit whether in Golan Heights or Cypress are disgusting.

But the UN is still better then the League of Nations was. I'll call it progess for the time being.

I think nationalism is getting more entrenched in many parts of the world as a reaction against globalism and cultural dillution. What was it, a year ago that the French president said that multiculturalism failed?

I don't know... to me, "singular world government" or any such thing is idealistic pap. Nationalism is the kind of deep-seeded bias that would take generations to shed, and who knows what the world will be like generations from now?

Nationalism has it's benefits as well. A people united by a common culture, a common language, and a common history can achieve much more than those without.

Tribalism is part of human nature and nations as an extension of that are also here to stay. A utopian longing for them to be abolished is one destined to be unfulfilled.

In so far as this movie is concerned. It wasn't really about "world governance" as about the end result of an idea born of idealism and wishful thinking rather than reality. The feel-goodism of the original intent cloaks the corruption and rot beneath.

Well them, imagine what a whole planet could acheive. Maybe one day we could get off this rock and compete with someone other than ourselves. I'm not for homogeneity, but Western nationalism isn't so old that it's impossible to get rid of, a few hundred years at most. Change is in the air. The increase in nationalism in some areas of the world is just a series of death spasms. Just ask Anders Behring Breivik. People will fight against it and nothing will change in our lifetime, not too drastically anyway, but give it time man, give it time.

I dunno, the US has so far been fairly impressive, especially in the early half of the 20th century and we are pretty much build on the idea of being a miasma of different cultures. Especially so during and right after the mass immigration period that preceded the height of US power and influence.

Loter: The period you cite was one of the most profoundly nationalist the US has ever seen. The whole thing about "American Exceptionalism" in the late 19th and early 20th centuries wasn't remotely about being a "miasma of different cultures"; it was much more about the shedding of those cultures in favor of a greater ideal. While there's no question that each wave of "huddled masses" left a lasting imprint on American culture, the primary point wasn't to celebrate the cultures the immigrants left behind but to assimilate as quickly as possible.

My great-grandparents got off the boat from Italy and Germany (in 1916, go figure...) and promptly forbade their children to speak Italian or German save when absolutely necessary because they didn't *want* Italian/German kids; they wanted "Americans," whatever that might actually be (because the language could go but they'd be damned if they were going see their kin become any sort of friggin' Protestant, too ;)). If anything, that's the bit that's kind of lost these days where it's much more about immigrant students and/or labor coming in and sending money home--a sort of "remittance culture"--than the sort of "whole village immigration" we saw with the Irish and Central European immigration waves of the 19th century.

I don't know what "the American Dream[tm]" is supposed to be any more, but I find the US to now be far more fragmented in terms of culture and community. With the end of the Cold War, which had a hell of a lot of broad cultural elements wrapped into the geopolitics, along with the move into a post-industrial economy, there just doesn't seem to be much in terms of a unifying vision or theme any more.

Oh I agree 100% that that was a period of intense nationalism, my point was in reference to the "common culture, common history" side of the comment. Cultures were blended, but not fully assimilated and the shared history was basically only that wherever you came from was pretty shitty at the time for you. Yet great things still happened. I think the miasma of different cultures, and those people being passionate about this place of opportunity, is exactly what allowed such transcendental shedding of the individual into the greater good. The shared culture of the US at the time was that everyone had different cultures but were brought together to form a sort of new mega-culture. Sort of what I'd like to think is possible if we do the same thing on a global scale. The privileged few get pissy about it, but the majority of people are stoked at the chance to improve their lot in life and embrace the ideal of something bigger and better.

I think now what the US has is a huge amount of blind nationalism and patriotism in the vein of "THE US IS AWESOME FUCK EVERYONE ELSE!" Whereas in the late 19th and early 20th, most people were stoked on "the land of opportunity and freedom" and what that meant to them coming from poverty and oppression.

Matt, you're so right about the blind patriotism rampant in the US today. It's embarrassing. I loved the song from Team America where they go, 'America, fuck yeah, coming again to save the mother fucking day yeah!' It's the satirical response to that horrible 'Proud to Be An American' song that made me want to hurl every time I heard it after 9/11. We assume that anything we're doing must be the best thing because we're the ones doing it, and ignore the fact that we lead the world in almost nothing.

Nationalism and patriotism are double-edged swords. They can be used to galvanize a nation into action, to make a people proud of its accomplishments, but they can also be used by manipulative assholes to persuade us into complacency and isolationism. Nationalism isn't bad, in and of itself, but it must be tempered by world awareness. I'm proud of my homeland, but I'm also aware of the black marks on our history, and the fact that lots of countries are doing lots of things a whole lot better than we are.