U.S. Presidential debate

[FireIceTalon]

Difficult to sling mud effectively, if you only have one outlet to get that mud to the people - Fox news. OTOH, Marxists have let's see....MSNBC, CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, PBS

I had a good laugh at this. Ironically, your inability (or reluctance?) to distinguish bourgeois leftism from Marxism is indicative of one of the many dangers of nationalism.

Yep, we Marxists sit around and watch liberal news stations to get all of our information about capitalist society and its guardians, as if we dont have our own sources

As for nationalism, Einstein summed it up best when he called it "an infanitle disease, the measles of humanity".

But more specifically, nationalism is intrinsically a reactionary ideal and usually is a slippery slope to racism if isn't outright racist to begin with. The whole idea that your country (which really isn't yours, btw), and its culture, way of life and institutions is somehow superior to another's is shallow, chauvinistic, short-sighted, and downright irrational. Too often, it's used as a means of getting people to hold racist and xenophobic views in order to deflect economic and social blame on foreigners and immigrants, when the real culprit is capitalism and its institutions. Nationalism, like religion, is one of the more prominent forms of 'false consciousness'.

It also helps to open the door for demagogues like Trump, the Yankee Mussolini who vows to make America white again (certainly not 'great again', since it never was great).

Trump pandered (and still continues to) to white nationalism flawlessly; and lots of people bought it hook, line and sinker. The message was that Mexican, Muslim, and black workers are inferior to white workers, and this was done to further divide the working class along racial lines so that BOTH white and minority working class people will be easier to exploit. And now, you officially have fascism in America. All the idiots who voted for him will soon have no one to blame but themselves when they see what this means. Although, I think his tenure in office will be a short-lived one, but that's another topic.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the working people of the world have no country. It is all owned by the capitalists. So it is foolish to take pride in what you do not own, and what is used as a way of both oppressing you and ideologically controlling you, so that you hold positions which are against your own objective interests. To be nationalistic or patriotic is to do the will of the bourgeois. At best, this is foolish and naive....at worst, extremely dangerous. You will never see ME saluting those stars n stripes, for any reason whatsoever. Come the victory of socialism, we will replace the 4th of July with a holiday commerating the defeat of capitalism and the liberation of humanity and planet earth.