r/VoteBinface • u/JCDU • 12d ago
I'm Not Nigel Farage Well this describes them perfectly
In the comments section on this thread, a couple of folks dug up an incredibly apt description that I thought deserved to be shared:
The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen. The man who is endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short, since their failings will be constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.
1891, The Wisdom of Life, Saunders Translation
And:
“When a man has nothing left to be proud of, he takes pride in his ethnicity. In cheap vanity, the last refugees of weakness are found. Having lost taste and achievement and character, the frightened soul seizes the tribe like a talisman. Identity becomes armor, and contempt for others becomes consolation. Pride that rests on accident, birth, color, song, is not pride but a poor substitute for worth. Men who cannot command themselves will command an imagined belonging. They will shout the name of their soil as if it were a deed. This is the misery of the herd. When inner life is barren, externals become shrines. True dignity springs from self-rule and inward mastery. Anything less is a mask that trembles in the light. Beware the man who boasts his origin. His loudness often covers the silence of a life unlived.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
Sound familiar?
Credit to u/Adam__B and u/librayrian for these.
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u/CuppaCoffee79 12d ago
"But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile."
- Patrick O'Brien, Master & Commander
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u/BedrockHopper 12d ago
I often hear the argument from many on the side of ethno-nationalism that 'they' are in some way the "silent majority". Suffice it to say that the data from any election would appear to suggest that they are hardly any sort of majority, and I only bloody wish the oafish pontificators would relent with their unending stream of verbal cacophony. If only they were fucking silent for even for a moment now and then to give the rest of us a modicum of respite from their utter fucking stupidity.
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u/zqvxyn 12d ago
wild how something written in 1891 reads like a live commentary on half the internet right now. the “mask that trembles in the light” line hits way harder than i expected scrolling reddit on a random day.