Oh, well - I guess I'm the only person who still believes in romance. Who still believes in love, and that true love is worth fighting for...It isn't that you are too beautiful for this world, or that the rest of us no longer care about... well, about abolishing slavery, the Lincoln comparison seems to suggest.
I'm going to ask the moderators from other countries not to interfere with our discussion of American politics. It's more difficult for them to deal with this, because we can all get crazy every four years about this and we need to do that, and they need to let us get crazy about this. I'm not going to mention specific instances, but they exist. Please chill out about this. Things will get back to normal afterwards.What is this, the political equivalent of pon farr?
There are non-americans?Nah. We're just role-players, it's all made up like Dungeons & Dragons. I mean, c'mon, countries like Iceland couldn't possibly be real!
The "UKer" example does actually make me think that there is a kind of equivalence over the pond, where non-British people often use "England" and "Britain" basically interchangeably - and thus frequently apply a term that the subject would feel was neither accurate nor (in some cases) at all flattering, without really having a sense that they are doing anything wrong.Yeah, this is a terrible practice. It makes me retch to be called "British", and I would much rather be called "English" or "Englander". Please, whenever you feel the need to type "British" or "Brit", stop and find out which country they're from or identify with. If you don't know, just say "a person from the UK". "British" is destructive of our national identities and needs to stop now.
"When you call British people English it is annoying, because of the centuries of complex and often bloody history between the nations now making up the United Kingdom" seems, I think, to be a makeable statement - as a Texan might object to being called a "yankee", maybe, even if done in a friendly spirit?
running order squabble fest:The only one with any weight would be its use as a pejorative. It is generally why I'm not fond of the word, but as long as it's not being used that way I don't let it ruffle my feathers. Especially since the last go around I took part in about USian. I had begun as more strongly against the word until I did a search for its usage and found it was 95% benign.
"So, "when you call me a USian, it is annoying because of..." would be the same formulation, and I'm not sure what the end would be."
Just for the benefit of Americans, this view is by no means common or the only one. If in doubt, prefer "British" over "English". Scots and Welsh will be massively less insulted (if insulted at all!) by the former.No, if you are in doubt, say "from the UK" for at least it is legally correct. British can be insulting to Scottish people. There was a time when the elites tried to wipe Scotland from the map by calling it "North Britain". Why support such an oppression? But even then, if you are in doubt, stop and think. You shouldn't confuse Wales, England and Scotland any more than you would confuse Canada, the US, and Mexico. They are distinct places, and always have been despite the efforts of some. Look, even Ireland was once considered "British", yet nobody would call them that now.
You speak like you're telling a universal truth here, but this is a deeply minority view. Insisting that there are four separate "identities" goes against most of the studies that have been here, which say that a majority of people identify themselves as both, not one to the exclusion of the other. You are doing the equivalent of saying "Don't dare call them English, they are Mancunians and you're destroying their identity".We'll see. I don't doubt for a moment that I'll live to witness a shift in attitudes and the breakup of the UK. And what a wonderful moment that will be, when we can resign those colonialists to the dustbin where they belong. When we can begin to look back at the history of the UK without the senseless jingoism of empire and assess all the crimes they have committed.
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One could always go hang out at Kos or whatever rightwing equivalent one fancies.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:51 AM on September 6, 2012 [7 favorites]