I was thinking about Zelensky’s speech to a joint session of congress. He tied the war in Ukraine to the battle of the bulge, called the audience patriots, pushed that the war was fighting for democracy, compared the fight for Bakhmut to the battle of Saratoga, compared the US fighting for freedom in the revolutionary war to the current war in Ukraine, quoted FDR with “The American People in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory” , and said god bless the United States of America. He was really trying to make sure some hard line republicans stick with supporting Ukraine, so it made sense, but what things would politicans (or powerful people like Zelensky) do in your country do to try and get the same effect. I don’t just mean Trump with a bald eagle stuff, deeper things that reveal national values too.
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I think he’s genuine in comparing his country’s fight for survival to patriotic moments in America. Hell, when I listen to “When Johnny comes marching home” even I get patriotic for American values. American soft power has successfully imprinted such understanding to many other countries. We can easily compare things to our own countries that we feel patriotic about. I seriously doubt Republicans are the only patriots.
I feel strongly patriotic about Sweden’s freedoms. I can compare this to how many Americans feel about your first amendment.
I think Americans need to step out of this team thinking bubble that is tearing your country apart. Not everything outside is about your internal issues. Republicans seem to be on board already overall.
Jan Peter Balkende ( Former prime minister, Christian Democrat) once got a TON of backlash for calling for a “VOC-mentality”, VOC (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) was the Dutch East India company , the largest company in history and the first joined-stock company, nowadays kind of notorious for using it’s special military powers to commit genocides among a whole host of other problematic shit.
The royal families cult of personality goes back to [William the Silent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_the_Silent) , who kind of fills the role that founding fathers do in the US with Dutch vallues like tolerance being atributed to him.
The 80 years war are also a mainstay in Dutch politics , as are ww2 and floods.
In regards to the latter we often pride ourselves in recovering from destruction and ensuring it doesn’t happen again. Be it the bombing of Rotterdam or the flood of 53
We also kind of play up how small of a country we are and how special it is we manage to have such a big impact, when like really we have a larger population than Sweden and Denmark combined and we’re the larger country of the Benelux.