this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2025
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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These are not the same thing. At least in America, these terms are only superficially similar in the sense that they are "people who say they love their country".
When someone points out a country's shortcomings and how it could be fixed, a patriot listens and makes plans, while a nationalist denies those shortcomings exist or blames them on external factors.
When someone says we should learn from our history and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, a patriot pulls out the history books, while a nationalist instead goes through them with a black highlighter.
When someone burns the country's flag as a protest, a patriot asks why, while a nationalist will say they should be thrown in prison.
When abuses of power happen by the police or government agents, a patriot will demand an investigation and accountability, while a nationalist will say that actually, they deserved it.
Tbh, I have to disagree here.
Even in its best form, patriotism is about being proud of things you did nothing to contribute to and about tribalism and exclusion of others (namely people from places where you don't live).
In my city we have great public transport, great public healthcare, strong worker protection laws, a large public housing sector that keeps rents low, good free education, pretty old buildings, lots of nice parks and many other great things that I like.
I did nothing to contribute to these things except of voting every few years. It's not my achievement that these things exist, so pride would be misplaced.
I also know that all it takes for these things to vanish is the wrong people getting elected once or twice, and if that were to happen, the city could quickly be turned from a great place to live to a terrible place. It has happened before, specifically between 1933 and 1945, but also from 1809 to 1848 and 1914 to 1923.
Being patriotic would elevating my city and/or country to something more than it is: from a place to live to a place to worship or something like that, and it would mean I would have to support things that cannot be reasonably supported.
It's totally ok to like the good things you have. It's also totally ok to get behind good causes and further them. But it's weird to "love" a place and bind yourself to it even if it goes bad.
Thank you for this comment. I completely agree with you: I think all it takes is people who act according to their conscience—that results in a community worth living in. That's all it takes.
I think you're more of a patriot than you realize. A patriot loves their country for what it does and criticizes it when it does things they don't like, while a nationalist loves their country regardless of what it does and criticizes those who want to change it.
That's pure projection. I don't love my country and it would be stupid to have romantic feelings toward a made-up thing that doesn't exist.
I live here because it's a good place to live. If the country goes to shit, I move on.
Do you feel patriotic love towards the supermarket you shop at? Or do you go there because it's currently the place where you get the best deal? Do you love your petrol station? Do you love the highway or train you use to get to work?
Maybe it's the american weirdness that you guys don't value love so that you mistake thinking that somethig is ok is automatically deep love or something weird.
Patriotism has exactly on purpose: to keep idiots in line and stop them from thinking.
My argument is that terminology is irrelevant; what matters is how both concepts are used in practice: both are employed and explicitly emphasized to persuade people to serve a centralized power, usually against their own interests. This was the case in the Third Reich and is also the case in the US today (and in many other countries as well).
What I'm getting at: Theoretical distinctions are only relevant in theory, but not when you look at practice – and there it makes no difference whether someone calls themselves a nationalist or a patriot if both can be used to suppress dissenters by force.
It would be nice if people who call themselves patriots were good people, but history teaches us that they are usually not.
Of course nationalists are going to drape themselves with the term "patriot". You're right that one should observe attentively when someone uses that word. My notions of nationalism vs patriotism align with @NateNate60@lemmy.world. Just because someone uses a term in a way I disagree with doesn't make the concept that that term represents to me invalid.
If you agree with me that patriotism has been misused for the most horrific atrocities ever committed by humankind, where do you see the value of this concept? Even if one starts from a purely utilitarian ethic, what could ever outweigh that?
Misusing a term does not necessarily make the underlying concept invalid. For instance, ICE is subjecting people to rendition in the name of “national security”.
National security, in reality, is a good thing if it is used justly and wisely to prevent loss of life and real threats against the people. When it is co-opted and misused to target minority groups, it becomes a verbal cloak to disguise injustice, but that doesn’t mean that the original need for protection has been invalidated.
Likewise, patriots who love their country enough to criticize it and change it towards becoming a decent and fair place for all people to live both exist and are an asset to the nation. When the word is co-opted by nationalists and jingoists, it is used as a cloak, but the role of the true patriot still remains vital.
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” - Thomas Jefferson
All I want to say is this: if you insist on portraying patriotism as something good and lose sight of reality in the face of idealism, however desirable, this leads to situations like those in Nazi Germany—and history is currently repeating itself in the US. The reason will always be the same: unfortunately, people are not inherently good, and the bad ones know how to exploit this.
With regard to the US, my point is simple: patriotism is an abstract idea that is currently being massively abused by fascists to create an unjust state very similar to Nazi Germany, which fortunately came to an end. They are using exactly the same propaganda techniques that the Nazis used in Germany to establish their reign of terror.
Ok, I’m willing to follow along that line and say we’ll drop the word patriot as it may have been too corrupted to be aligned with its original meaning.
In lieu of that term, what shall we call people who love their country and criticize its faults while working for positive change so it can be a better place for all people to live, and how do we keep bad actors from co-opting whatever new term we want to apply to that?
Decent people.
How do we keep the party of “family values” from co-opting “decent people” next?
One, I don't recall agreeing with that.
Two, if I see you wearing a green shirt, and you say you're wearing a yellow shirt, that doesn't invalidate the concept of "green".