National Conglomeration #28

[antrobus178]

I've just realized that people don't refer to this country as "America" (solely) because they don't understand that America refers to a continent. They call it America because calling your country "United States" is pretty damn dull when you think about it. It's not a name, it's a designation, a vague description of your country's general

Comments

[before]

Well, the federal government has been carefully refocusing citizens' attention on the nationwide "America" feeling rather than the "United States" portion ever since 1865. Before that, most citizens felt far more loyalty to their individual state than to the nation as a whole; that's one reason the Civil War happened. See, technically speaking, we aren't a country. We're a union of 50 individual states that agreed to hang together. But an increase in national patriotism, as well as an increase in interstate travel, has been watering that down ever since.

Join my militia!

[a_crude_wisdom]

Since there isn't actually a place called America, only a North America and a South America, I'd say whoever uses "American" should get to keep it. Canadians can be dicks about Americans snagging "American" as their own, but really, dicks are what they are being when they do that.

Northern Irish consider themselves, variously: Irish, British and both-at-the-same-time. Which is dangerously confusing since if you get it wrong, polite conversation can turn into a kicking pretty quickly.

The confusion over what is British and what is English is exacerbated by the English, who are stupid.

My personal pet peeve is "the original 13 colonies" of nation-birthing folklore. There were a bunch of "American" colonies at the time of the revolution - 20 odd, I think, but those never get mentioned. Colonies like West Florida, East Florida, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Quebec, all of whom were happy to help pay for the French and Indian War without whining like babies, thank you very much.