• Taleya@aussie.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    1 month ago

    Dear America:

    Most countries don’t do this shit. At all. It’s weird and off putting

    • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      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?

        • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 month ago

          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.

      • Pup Biru@aussie.zone
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        edit-2
        1 month ago

        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

        • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 month ago

          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.

          • real_squids@sopuli.xyz
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            edit-2
            1 month ago

            Piling on the list of negatives - they use leaded fuel, which is bad for you. I still like planes though

          • Pup Biru@aussie.zone
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            1 month ago

            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

          • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            edit-2
            1 month ago

            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.

            • spooky2092@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              1 month ago

              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.

        • angrystego@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          29 days ago

          You can train the pilots in other time and area. The combination with an unrelated game makes it propaganda.

          • Pup Biru@aussie.zone
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            28 days ago

            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

  • jaschen@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month ago

    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.

    • w3dd1e@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 month ago

      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.

  • w3dd1e@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month ago

    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.

    • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      edit-2
      30 days ago

      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.

  • 257m@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    30 days ago

    I have never seen a kid sit down for O Canada unless they are in a wheelchair. Of course getting sent to the principle’s is not worth it but I would admire a kid who had the balls to do it.

    • Monzcarro@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 month ago

      I’m from the UK but I have my own version of this.

      I went to a Church of England school. When I was about 8, we had this super religious teacher start. She was Methodist so made us change the words of the lord’s prayer to her version. I loudly and defiantly said the old one every time.

      It wasn’t long after, that I stopped saying prayers altogether, making sure to stare ahead with lips tight and hands unclasped, so nobody could mistake me as being pious!

      I probably would have been that annoying kid had just been schooled in the USA.

      • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        30 days ago

        Pious - adjective

        Strongly believing in religion and living in a way that shows this belief: She is a pious follower of the faith, never missing her prayers


        For anyone else who has never in their life encountered this word, lol.

  • frezik@midwest.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    1 month ago

    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.

  • phoenixarise@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    30 days ago

    There was always one kid that sat down during the pledge in my class. None of us thought he was annoying or weird. I admired him.

  • First Majestic Comet@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    29 days ago

    I never liked doing it. Got in trouble a few times for not doing it, though that didn’t matter to me since I got in trouble a lot when I was in school. Those dipshits (the counselor) thought I had “Gender Identity Disorder” and was reacting because of “distress” (Not because I wouldn’t say the pledge, I did many worse things than that), they also used the fact that I also had long hair and sometimes would wear a skirt as evidence I had GID. What fun people I spent my childhood with sarcasm I’m glad my parents are and were nice people otherwise I might not be here today.

  • BaldManGoomba@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month ago

    Less of the annoying kid more of an annoying teacher, admin, and staff. Like peer pressure and desire to follow along made me do it but the teacher and the staff couldn’t explain why we should and that made me question it and leading me to consider the kid right

  • 𝓔𝓶𝓶𝓲𝓮@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    1 month ago

    I still have a feeling that me breaking down the whole classes in elementary school alone was a glimpse of genius and not some kind of sociopathy

    In any case I am in the business for an article on how I was right all along, nurturing my indomitable rebellious spirit of America or something

    • 𝓔𝓶𝓶𝓲𝓮@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 month ago

      Actually I instructed GPT to write such article to stroke my ego a little:

      Title: “The System-Smashers: Why the Kids Who Dissect Social Hierarchies Aren’t Sociopaths—They’re Visionaries”

      By Dr. Eleanor Voss, Sociologist & Author of “Unseen Structures: The Hidden Architecture of Power”

      Every generation has its truth-tellers—the ones who refuse to accept the world as given. Today, they’re the young people ruthlessly deconstructing social class, power dynamics, and institutional hypocrisy, often to the discomfort of those around them. To the outside observer, this behavior might seem cold, obsessive, even sociopathic. But what if it’s something far more radical: the birth of a new kind of critical genius?

      The Deconstructive Mind: Pathology or Insight?

      Modern psychology has a habit of pathologizing what it doesn’t understand. A teenager who meticulously dissects the unspoken rules of wealth, race, or privilege isn’t necessarily detached or antisocial—they might just be seeing the system more clearly than most adults ever do.

      Research in cognitive development suggests that pattern recognition peaks in adolescence and early adulthood, a time when the brain is both hyper-analytical and idealistic. Combine that with today’s hyper-transparent, data-saturated world, and you get a generation that doesn’t just question authority—they reverse-engineer it.

      The Rebel Gene: A Historical Perspective

      This isn’t new. The same impulse drove Enlightenment philosophers to dismantle divine right, civil rights activists to expose systemic racism, and Silicon Valley disruptors to topple entire industries. The difference? Today’s system-smashers aren’t waiting for permission. They’re crowdsourcing their critiques on TikTok, gaming out power structures in Discord servers, and treating societal norms like lines of code—to be hacked, rewritten, or discarded.

      Why Society Fears Them

      The backlash is predictable. Institutions (whether schools, corporations, or governments) rely on unexamined hierarchies to function. When someone—especially a young person—points out the emperor’s lack of clothes, the response isn’t gratitude. It’s panic.

      • They’re called “too intense.” (Translation: They make us uncomfortable.)
      • They’re labeled “obsessive.” (Translation: They care more than we do.)
      • They’re accused of sociopathy. (Translation: They don’t perform empathy in the ways we expect.)

      But history shows us: The people who refuse to perform social niceties while exposing uncomfortable truths are often the ones who move culture forward.

      The Future Belongs to the Systems-Thinkers

      The kids aren’t just alright—they’re ahead. In an era of crumbling institutions and algorithmic inequality, their willingness to dissect power isn’t a disorder. It’s an evolutionary advantage.

      The question isn’t whether they’re “right.” It’s whether the rest of us are brave enough to listen.

      Dr. Eleanor Voss is a professor of sociology at Columbia University and a senior fellow at the Institute for Social Futures. Her latest book, “The Deconstruction Generation,” will be published next spring.

  • Dragonstaff@leminal.space
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month ago

    Generally, the main problem with being “far left” is being ridiculed for being right earlier than everyone else.