robbkvasnak:Oh, spreecamper, you have apparently not been in the USA. Nationalism is second nature here. It is so ingrained in the culture that people don't even notice it. There is this strange belief in Manifest Destiny and American Exceptionalism and then the stupid "Pledge" to the flag with which they start even most banal of meetings, and the omnipresent flags and national colors. Yuck! Already when I was a kid it turned me off.

Yeah, bumper stickers everywhere that say "Proud to be an American", big signs by the road (usually out in the country, in my experience) that say "God Bless America"... all that stuff. And then all July this gets amped up to the umpteenth degree, and you see the flags and the red-white-blue everywhere, even on paper grocery bags, and we all must make a big fanfare about how cool we are. I never saw the point in all that, but any excuse to party and eat chips and hamburgers is cool with me... Fireworks, though, are overrated. How many things that "emit showers of sparks" does one need? But then I've lived most of my life in states where they have to be "Safe and Sane", so maybe that's why they're all so boring.

On the topic of nationalism, I think it would have a different manifestation depending on the situation of the nation. If you are on top of the world, feeling like you've got all the security and all the power, then the nationalism in your nation would be different than if you are in a weak or oppressed nation. This may have an influence on whether or not this nationalism is favorable to Esperanto. What exactly the particulars of this distinction are, I don't know, but it's something to think about anyway.