{"id":26068,"date":"2017-09-25T05:27:43","date_gmt":"2017-09-25T10:27:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=26068"},"modified":"2017-09-25T05:27:43","modified_gmt":"2017-09-25T10:27:43","slug":"patriotism-flags-and-referendums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=26068","title":{"rendered":"Patriotism, Flags and Referendums"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Patriotism, Flags and Referendums<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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Robert Frank London <\/b>1952-53<\/center>\u2018Tis the jolly time of elections, referendums, flags and other democracy-related issues. They are all linked in some way or another, even if that\u2019s not always obvious. Elections, in New Zealand and Germany this weekend, referendums in Catalonia and Kurdistan the coming week, a looming Party Congress in China, quarrels about a flag in the US and then there\u2019s always Brexit.<\/p>\n

About China: the Congress is only in October, Xi Jinping looks sure to broaden his powers even more, and it ain\u2019t all that democratic, but we should still follow it, if only because party officials will be either demoted or promoted, and some of them govern more people than most kings, queens, presidents and prime ministers. They say everything\u2019s bigger in Texas, but in China everything really is. Including debt.<\/p>\n

New Zealand: the election very early this morning didn\u2019t bring a much hoped for win for Labour, or any clear winner at all, so don\u2019t expect any grand changes in policy. New Zealand won\u2019t wake up till its economy dives and the housing bubble pops.<\/p>\n

Germany: Angela Merkel has set up today\u2019s election so that she has no competition. Though she will see the ultra-right AfD enter parliament. Still, her main \u2018rival\u2019, alleged left wing Martin Schulz, is a carbon copy of Merkel when it comes to the main issues, i.e. immigration and the EU. An election that is as dull as Angela herself, even though she\u2019ll lose 10% or so. The next one won\u2019t be, guaranteed.<\/p>\n

As for the US, no elections there, but another round of big words about nationalism, patriotism and the flag. Donald Trump is well aware that 75% or so of Americans say the flag must be respected, so criticizing people for kneeling instead of standing when the anthem gets played is an easy win for him. No amount of famous athletes is going to change that.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Patriotism, Flags and Referendums Robert Frank London 1952-53\u2018Tis the jolly time of elections, referendums, flags and other democracy-related issues. They are all linked in some way or another, even if that\u2019s not always obvious. Elections, in New Zealand and Germany this weekend, referendums in Catalonia and Kurdistan the coming week, a looming Party Congress in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2674,117,5376,16132,442,16133,474,16134,3581,13924,672,10522,818,822],"class_list":["post-26068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-automatic-earth","tag-catalonia","tag-election","tag-flag","tag-iraq","tag-kaepernick","tag-kurds","tag-nfl","tag-patriotism","tag-raul-ilargi-meijer","tag-referendum","tag-trump","tag-turkey","tag-un"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26068"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26069,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26068\/revisions\/26069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}