Nov 2, 2022 06:44 AM
https://www.publicbooks.org/small-nation...oslovakia/
EXCERPT: Feeling patriotism for a foreign country is, when you think about it, odd. Usually our love for country is for our own country, and we roll our eyes at any student who returns from study abroad still wearing a beret. Of course, we care when wars or disasters beset other countries.
But we usually do so because of universalistic values, because we care for humanity wherever it may lie. The sort of fervor we feel for our own country typically stops at the border.
It’s therefore hard to recall a recent time when many Americans have waved flags for a country that isn’t their own, or with which they didn’t have a diasporic connection. Then this February, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.
Already in March, the president of the National Flag Company, Artie Schaller III, spoke to the New York Times on the skyrocketing demand for Ukrainian flags in the US. “This would be the biggest increase in volume for another nation’s flag that I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Schaller observed. “I can only compare it to—in my time—9/11, for just how quickly people are willing to show support and are using a flag to do that.”
-American enthusiasm for Ukraine extended beyond flags: for months, Instagram feeds have filled with recipes for traditional borscht; choirs for Kyiv have appeared on Saturday Night Live; and a small town in upstate New York has loyally followed the daily trials and tribulations of one Ukrainian man through his column for their local newspaper.
It seems most Americans have rejected Putin’s effort to present the war in Ukraine as an ideological proxy battle between East and West. Instead, they have elected to support Ukraine in a way that looks more like Davenport’s: an embrace of the intimate, the local, the very, very national.
Perhaps some of this is racial. Saudi incursions into Yemen haven’t led to Yemeni flags flying high in Boston and Dallas, whereas the invasion of a European state has stopped traffic in Chicago.
Yet systemic racism alone does not provide a complete answer for why Ukraine has received such widespread support, nor does it explain this particular kind of flag-waving support. The plights of Central European states do not automatically garner global sympathy.
Consider Marcia Davenport’s own era: British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain referred to German incursions into her beloved Czechoslovakia as “a quarrel in a far away country, between people of whom we know nothing.” More recently, Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 did not provoke an outcry anywhere near the scale of what we see today.
If we consider why and how the current Ukrainian crisis gets so much attention, we may learn something new about how Americans think about international issues... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPT: Feeling patriotism for a foreign country is, when you think about it, odd. Usually our love for country is for our own country, and we roll our eyes at any student who returns from study abroad still wearing a beret. Of course, we care when wars or disasters beset other countries.
But we usually do so because of universalistic values, because we care for humanity wherever it may lie. The sort of fervor we feel for our own country typically stops at the border.
It’s therefore hard to recall a recent time when many Americans have waved flags for a country that isn’t their own, or with which they didn’t have a diasporic connection. Then this February, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.
Already in March, the president of the National Flag Company, Artie Schaller III, spoke to the New York Times on the skyrocketing demand for Ukrainian flags in the US. “This would be the biggest increase in volume for another nation’s flag that I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Schaller observed. “I can only compare it to—in my time—9/11, for just how quickly people are willing to show support and are using a flag to do that.”
-American enthusiasm for Ukraine extended beyond flags: for months, Instagram feeds have filled with recipes for traditional borscht; choirs for Kyiv have appeared on Saturday Night Live; and a small town in upstate New York has loyally followed the daily trials and tribulations of one Ukrainian man through his column for their local newspaper.
It seems most Americans have rejected Putin’s effort to present the war in Ukraine as an ideological proxy battle between East and West. Instead, they have elected to support Ukraine in a way that looks more like Davenport’s: an embrace of the intimate, the local, the very, very national.
Perhaps some of this is racial. Saudi incursions into Yemen haven’t led to Yemeni flags flying high in Boston and Dallas, whereas the invasion of a European state has stopped traffic in Chicago.
Yet systemic racism alone does not provide a complete answer for why Ukraine has received such widespread support, nor does it explain this particular kind of flag-waving support. The plights of Central European states do not automatically garner global sympathy.
Consider Marcia Davenport’s own era: British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain referred to German incursions into her beloved Czechoslovakia as “a quarrel in a far away country, between people of whom we know nothing.” More recently, Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 did not provoke an outcry anywhere near the scale of what we see today.
If we consider why and how the current Ukrainian crisis gets so much attention, we may learn something new about how Americans think about international issues... (MORE - missing details)
