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Unpopular opinions

I tend to somewhat agree with you guys about us overvaluing patriotism when it comes to our military, and how being too nationalistic can be dangerous.

However when it comes to sports I'm in the Top 1% of all patriots. If the USA is playing, I'm in.

I don't even really like hockey, and Olympic Hockey is one of my Top 5 favorite sports. Mostly because of the patriotism angle, but also because the style of play is much more appealing than the NHL.
 
Golf is pretty fun, but it is not as super-duper awesome as some people make it out to be. I've played since I was 5 or 6 and its cool, but reading magazines about it and talking about it for more than about 5 minutes at a party is ridiculous.
 
there's nothing wrong with patriotism/nationalism. americans are just awful at it.
 
agreed in large part with the latter. somethings i think are important, and it relates mainly to things like bullying gay teens and ish. awareness is needed there. wish i still had my gay fine by me tshirt from wake. but we all know about breast cancer by now.

It's not really that I mind when people are trying to "raise awareness", it's that the passive, ribbon wearing, jesus fish public that wears a WWJD braclet for every cause in the book yet they don't really do shit for that cause. Now, actually doing shit to raise awareness can actually be annoying in it's own right (but for a different reason), but I can at least respect that that person is putting some kind of effort into his/her cause and not walking around like they are some enlightened individual because they wear a puzzle piece to support autism awareness....(yes, yes, we all know autism is terrible, but if you cared you'd do something, not just "promote awareness" of something we're all acutely aware of)
In the same way that if you really cared about the troops you would send care packages to deployed troops, not just listen to Toby Keith
 
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agreed in large part with the latter. somethings i think are important, and it relates mainly to things like bullying gay teens and ish. awareness is needed there. wish i still had my gay fine by me tshirt from wake. but we all know about breast cancer by now.

Yeah. I don't think anybody watching NFL games who saw a smoking hot cheerleader with cleavage coming out of her pink top said, "Holy cow, those things get cancer!"
 
Along the patriotism lines, I don't the US is that great of a country. We suck at a lot of important things, chief among them education and health care. And we're also too close-minded (closed-minded? see previous education comment) to listen to ideas from other societies that might be good ideas and no longer make us suck at those things.
 
i don't necessarily disagree with you that most ribbon/awareness campaigns are for show, and don't do much, but i don't think awareness/advocacy and actual help are mutually exclusive. plenty of people who wear ribbons are also actively involved in campaigns or give $ or supplies or whatever. idk, just seems like a weird thing to get upset about.
 
Along the patriotism lines, I don't the US is that great of a country. We suck at a lot of important things, chief among them education and health care. And we're also too close-minded (closed-minded? see previous education comment) to listen to ideas from other societies that might be good ideas and no longer make us suck at those things.

we're number 1 at defense spending and incarcerating our population! eff off!
 
It's not really that I mind when people are trying to "raise awareness", it's that the passive, ribbon wearing, jesus fish public that wears a WWJD braclet for every cause in the book yet they don't really do shit for that cause. Now, actually doing shit to raise awareness can actually be annoying in it's own right (but for a different reason), but I can at least respect that that person is putting some kind of effort into his/her cause and not walking around like they are some enlightened individual because they wear a puzzle piece to support autism awareness....(yes, yes, we all know autism is terrible, but if you cared you'd do something, not just "promote awareness" of something we're all acutely aware of)
In the same way that if you really cared about the troops you would send care packages to deployed troops, not just listen to Toby Keith

This is one of my biggest pet peeves in life as well. And I think hyper liberals and hyper conservatives are both equally guilty of it. However at the same time I do realize that most of the time I'm making an uninformed judgement about someone who is wearing a shirt or bracelet to support a certain cause. How do I know if they do anything beyond just that to support that cause, or if they have other reasons (family or friends affected) for wanting to bring awareness to the issue.

Now organizations who use it mainly for their own PR or economic benefit, can all DIAF. Their motives are usually a lot easier to figure out.
 
i don't necessarily disagree with you that most ribbon/awareness campaigns are for show, and don't do much, but i don't think awareness/advocacy and actual help are mutually exclusive. plenty of people who wear ribbons are also actively involved in campaigns or give $ or supplies or whatever. idk, just seems like a weird thing to get upset about.

I definitely come off as more upset about it via my explanations than I actually get IRL, but it does kind of irk me, even if I would rarely, if ever, show it publicly (or publicly w/o the veil on internet anonymity)
 
yeah. we're no germany, i guess.

i assume you're being sarcastic to illustrate your idea that nationalism is bad, but germany is actually a pretty great example of a country that has had to, by necessity and shame, be wary of their own nationalism, but who have also managed to retain pride in a cultural heritage and toe the nationalism/jingoism line well in post-WW2.

and it also kinda illustrates my point further. patriotism/nationalism without self-awareness, or just blind patriotism is dumb. but having pride in your country is awesome. now, america has done a bunch of fucked up shit, and has a weird identity that is totally heterogeneous and complex. that doesn't mean we don't have things to be proud about.
 
According to Wikipedia, Aziz is of Muslim heritage. His family followed the religion of Islam. And according to my Indian friends, theres a significant Muslim population in India and theres been a large influx of Muslims moving in from Pakistan in recent years.

India has a substantial Muslim population, though it is dwarfed by the Hindu population. But more importantly, I don't know of a lot of Hindus named Aziz. Pretty Muslim name, even though he himself is not Muslim.
 
According to Wikipedia, Aziz is of Muslim heritage. His family followed the religion of Islam. And according to my Indian friends, theres a significant Muslim population in India and theres been a large influx of Muslims moving in from Pakistan in recent years.

Cool. I was just pointing out that India is predominantly Hindu and the major reason that India has such a large raw number of Muslims is because there are so many people in India. It's something like under 15% of the country is Muslim.
 
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