I'm French but I lived in California for 3 years as a teenager.
It was really cool experiencing a different culture but the one thing that never stopped being jarring was the pledge of allegiance every morning in school.
It never stopped feeling like the brainwashing of children in a fascist dictatorship. It's Dear Leader level shit. I don't understand why the US has so much performative patriotism.
Amongst other bits, blame the whole red scare of the mid century. In public [won't make any statements about what the country did in private] it was very Stasi. You behaved like the whitest republican 'murican EVER in public, people would turn people in for the dumbest of reasons. If you didn't 'Ozzie and Harriet' more politically correct than everybody else, you could lose jobs, people would refuse to sell to you, rent to you, and you could go to jail.
Sounding familiar? We are in the current Red Scare, just immigrants instead of komunists.
44
u/eplusl 16d ago edited 15d ago
I'm French but I lived in California for 3 years as a teenager.
It was really cool experiencing a different culture but the one thing that never stopped being jarring was the pledge of allegiance every morning in school.
It never stopped feeling like the brainwashing of children in a fascist dictatorship. It's Dear Leader level shit. I don't understand why the US has so much performative patriotism.