Remember when the word "Patriot" didn't immediately make you cringe or worse?

[PurgedVoter]

Lots of words have changed, tarnished or gotten extra or different meaning in the last few years.


Twenty years ago having a Harvard or Yale education was something I would have said meant you were probably smart, and well read. If you added "Lawyer" to it, I would have expected a person to be brilliant. Now, I shouldn't say what I think of when I hear "Harvard Law," since I don't want to be sued.

"Republican," "Libertarian," and "Conservative" were always a tainted words, but now they positively reek.

Part the change in meaning may be the mask coming off and part of it may be my blinders being peeled back.

I expect a lot of things get revealed over time, and a lot of things have been revealed by the cell phone cameras that did not exist in my youth. Cell phones have changed my perception of law enforcement pretty strongly.

When I hear "Christian" I now think, "If they were Christian, they wouldn't be trying to seem holy by saying they were a Christian."
In the seventies I went from church to church. I went to them all just to see what I was missing. A lot of them were pretty bad. I stopped going to the Episcopal Church when I found out the man who I took communion from believed that water boarding was fine. Now I wonder if there is a secret society somewhere that practices Christianity. I probably wouldn't qualify, but it would be nice to know if the religion was still being practiced somewhere. Jimmy Carter reminds me that it can still exist in a persons heart, so I don't quite feel like screaming when I hear about Christianity. Instead I just feel like running.

Patriot used to mean something positive to me. Now it means, "Defacing the flag while pretending you respect it. Boldly advertising your loyalty to the nation while trying to destroy democracy, twist the constitution out of shape, succeed from the government, celebrate the sale and destruction of all that is great in the nation, and hating the majority of the population." Pretty much the opposite of what it used to mean. Now when a person says they are a patriot, it just means they are insane, probably brainwashed by Russian propaganda, and love guns.

[mopinko]

1. honestly? not really.

born in 54, and mostly only seen the people who shout it as blustering assholes and con men. cuz they were.

[RAB910]

2. When I see a flag on a house these days, I assume it's the home of an anti-American traitor

Hell I saw one house flying one that had a huge sign on his lawn

Trump 2024

Make liberals cry again


Imagine hating your country so much that you would vote in (betray our country) a treasonous criminal just so you could harm a huge portion of our population

[brooklynite]

6. Yes, but consider...

they were able to do that because Liberals tended to shun the flag on the grounds that the US reputation was so tainted that it wasn't worth commemorating. we gave them exclusive rights to the symbolism.

[Gore1FL]

11. I don't recall the flag being "shunned" by the left.

The right has worshipped it like the golden calf and the left doesn't. Is that what you mean?

[liberal N proud]

3. Same feelings here

The damage done by the MAGA cult makes me sick.

[JI7]

4. The people who were always loud about AMERICA AMERICA AMERICA were always trash

the difference is they had an advantage in terms of perception just because of the demographics of the country . But now this is changing . These people hate the country because of it's diversity and how we work towards equality . They hate these things.

Pro Choice and Pro Life is also changing in terms of popularity . I guess the meaning hasn't change in most of these cases but rather the number of people that support/oppose it.

[Ferrets are Cool]

5. Yes, they have taken some of our favorite words and smeared them with shit.

[dalton99a]

7. Fascism is Liberty

[harumph]

8. When I see those dumb fish and crosses on a tradesman's

truck, I make a mental note of who not to call. Anybody that advertises their company
operates according to Christian values - I don't wanna know. Like fucking flagshaggers.

[dalton99a]

9. +1. They are the worst scammers

[PurgedVoter]

14. I used to repair office equipment.

If they had one indication of faith in the receptionists area, they might be okay. If they had more than one, it was a guarantee that they were going to try and talk me into ripping of my employer for parts, service and time.

[Johnny2X2X]

10. Neighbor

I have a neighbor with a huge older Chevy Suburban with a special exhaust pipe that makes it louder. He flies a huge America flag off the back of it occasionally that sometimes drags on the ground. The flag is in rough shape now and tattered and dirty. I’m sure he thinks he’s a Patriot while he’s desecrating the flag and making a point of driving a loud vehicle that is helping to destroy the planet.

This idea that the flag is a prop for them to own Libs with is disgusting and I wish there were a movement to educate these idiots in the flag code.

[MuseRider]

12. Only when I was very little.

Vietnam came into our lives and that was pretty much it. Since then the word makes me suspicious and kind of sick when used in terms of groups of people. When used for one or a few you can usually figure it out.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

13. Kraft and Brady ruined it for me

[eppur_se_muova]

15. Uglican "patriots" claim to love their country, while hating most of the people in it. nt

[DET]

16. Freedom

The word that most sets me off now is ‘freedom’. We used to know what freedom meant. Now we know that freedom really means the ability to be a self-righteous a**hole who wants to deny bodily autonomy to half the population while forcing their aberrant religious ideas down your throat and refusing to take common sense health measures that protect other people. All while threatening us with their arsenal of guns if we don’t respect their ‘freedom’. I really can’t stand these people.

[PurgedVoter]

17. Remember the painting "Freedom from Want," by Norman Rockwell?

When I think of "Traditional Values," I want to think if that sort of thing, but "Traditional Values," at least here in the South, mostly translates to being content with hatred. Heritage is another ruined thing here in the South. They started screaming "Heritage!" before they had two generations to establish it and all of their culture was taken from somewhere else. No one wants to take their German, Polish, Italian, or whatever roots and culture from them. They just want to take culture from another race, call it theirs and deny the rights of other races to have culture.

It isn't just the South though. Cultural appropriation, destruction and commercialization, can be summed up in one word, "Christianity."

[Iggo]

18. Nope.

I was born in ‘61. It didn’t take long for me to understand that the people who call themselves that are heavily implying that you ain’t. Kinda like good christians.