It's Australia Day! So what?

January 26th is the day Australia celebrates it's partial separation from the UK. I say partial because, for many years, Australia did whatever the UK told it too. In the realm of international relations, Australia follows the lead of the UK or the US, or sometimes both. Australia has lost men and women in the Korean, Vietnam, and Iraq wars, conflicts only very tenuously in the interests of average Australians, and tenuous is being generous. The cynical view is that Australian politicians are trying to ingratiate themselves with American and to a much lesser extent, British polies. There's probably a grain of truth to that, but there's something more to it than that, I believe. People don't just throw away their lives for the advancement of self serving half human politicians, do they?

No, I want to believe that Australians feel that call to "Global Responsibility", the sense that it's the right thing to do. Whether or not it is, is the bread and butter of academics, who, for their part, sacrifice nothing either, and do just as much to get people killed in wars as the politicians who start them, and the folks who sign up to participate.

Anyway, I digress. It's Australia Day, and I am hard pressed to understand what, if anything, it means to me. I don't even give a damn about the 4th of July, the day America celebrates it's victory over the UK in a war that lasted a very long time, which we almost lost, and which the UK was distracted from. Many Americans are very proud of this fact, but fail to recognize that the USA went on to behave very like it would have if it remained a part of the UK. Culture is hard to break.

It also begs very basic questions about the nature of nationalism and patriotism. Both are handles that politicians use to jerk us around to get what they want, which more often than not is: money in their pockets, or, more time in office to get more money in their pockets. What's there to be proud about? Waving a flag does nothing other than alienate people by identifying with other people solely for the purpose of alienation. I don't pretend to be a friend of humanity, but this is so fucking obvious I'm almost embarrassed to point it out, again.

Here's the nuts and bolts of the situation though, as I see it. Australia Day is a day off from work, and another opportunity to BBQ and get drunk. Enterprising and unscrupulous individuals attempt to artificially raise their social stock value by guilt inducing flag waving, which whispers the question, "why aren't you waving a flag, do you hate (insert country name here)?"

Are countries more important than people?
Are some countries really better than others?
(Notice, I'm not asking are some governments better than others.)
What does a flag mean/advertise to you?
Do governments really represent what people are or want a meaningful amount of the time?
Does nationalism threaten or promote the interests of people?