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- Feb 22, 2005
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lol...
My family came from Italy in the 20's, moved to Durango, CO and are all proud Americans. They served in WW2, Korea and Vietnam. I have nephews and nieces who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. My great aunt is 96 and still lives in the same house she lived in as a toddler.
She hosts an annual Italian dinner with all the surrounding Italian families (around 200 people show up) for 40 years and after 9/11, she has everyone say the Pledge of Allegiance before serving everyone. She's a treasure and everyone who's from there knows who she is.
I feel strong ties to my Italian roots, but I'm 100% American. Our system of government has issues, lots of issues, but I feel it's still the best in the world, or in history. There's a reason people around the world give up everything to migrate here with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
There's hardly no other place where someone can pull themselves up from almost nothing and live a better life than 90% of the rest of the world's population. Even the homeless have better lives than most.
Only the most entitled claim to hate living here or are embarrassed to be American. They have zero frame of reference of what the rest of the world is like.
Ask 1st Generation Cuban migrants (I know several here in Houston), ask 1st gen Mexican immigrants. My former business partner came from the Island of Dominica in the 80's and he's proud to have moved here with nothing and raise a family here. I'm dating someone who is from Peru. She came with nothing and is now a L&D nurse, making a great living. She would say she's Peruvian, but her kids are 100% American.
What are you asking here?
Are you aware that being an Italian-American, meaning having a hyphenated or plural identity is perfectly fine when it comes to National identity and actually provides a richness to the culture? Same with Mexican-American?
Aside from the weird claims about 90% and homeless people "having it better", which is just American exceptionalism, the rest is fine.
Having a National identity doesnt require exceptionalism OR Nationalism. It doesnt require flying flags in places flags dont belong. And it doesnt require any downplaying of heritage. Having a National identity is about how each of those things tie together, what aspects "American culture" adapts and moves forward with, some of which give birth to all new things. As an example there are plenty of Countries whose original language is whatever, and then they adapted teaching English. So now speaking English is part of their National identity because the newer generations all speak it. Doing dumb sh*t like yelling at people who may be speaking Spanish or Italian because we're in Murica!! is retard sh*t.