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What you’re after is a country with an exaggeratedly strong nationalism, to the point of chauvinism, but not spilling over into racism. So you want a maxed out civic nationalism.

France invented civic nationalism, but they asssimilated all their indigenous minorities aggressively, and they’ve botched their assimilation of the Beurs, so that’s not a good example.

I’ve lived in three countries, Australia, America, and Greece, all with healthy chauvinism.

Greece.

There is a (popular?) school of thought in Greece that is xenophobic and racist. There is an (elite?) school of thought in Greece that emphasises culture over ethnicity, and exults that as long as you embrace our culture, you’re one of us. And they trot out Isocrates, Panegyricus §50 to support that: Isocrates

I have no problem accepting what Wikipedia says—that this is not what Isocrates meant at all, and the passage was actually an assertion of Athenian cultural chauvinism. And I don’t care. It’s a valid viewpoint, not because Isocrates did or didn’t say it, but because civic nationalism is a healthy thing that the Balkans needs more of.

Historically, “people are called Greeks because they share in our education” is what’s happened with the Arvanites and the Vlachs, to mention the two “loyal minorities”. And my (elite?) heart rejoices, when I see little second generation Zaireans speaking in Greek slang. Or knowing that the Nigerian Dr. Sam Chekwas so fell in love with Greek culture while he studied there, that he ran the only Greek bookstore in Astoria NY (Greektown, America), for decades.

You know the Greek Nazis chanting Δε θα γίνεις έλληνας ποτέ, Αλβανέ, Αλβανέ? (“You’ll never be a Greek, Albanian!”)

Those fuckers will never be as Greek as Dr Sam Checkwas.

… But. That’s the elite storyline. I think the popular storyline is winning. And that Greek nationalism is contaminated with racism.

Australia

Australian nationalism was contaminated with racism from the beginning. The White Australia policy wasn’t an aberration, it was part of what defined both the Commonwealth of Australia and the Australian labour movement.

It got up-ended in the late seventies, by the elite. The elite defined Australia to have civic nationalism. That was the actual point of multiculturalism—a point lost on the masses, who think it was only about “um… cuisine?”

Once again, I rejoice in that civic nationalism. I rejoice that I can be proud to be a citizen of this country, without having to genuflect at the altar of Damper (food) and Aussie Rules. I rejoice that no fucker gets to tell me “Go back to where you came from”.

But that’s a luxury of Greeks now being pretty well assimilated (I’m an outlier generationally—my parents came here at the end of the wave, and I spent time growing up in Greece). As you may know from the news, plenty of Australians never stopped telling people to Go back to where they came from; they just have been targeting more recent arrivals. And blocking even more.

So Australia’s not off the hook either.

America.

The US, too, was founded on racism.

But you tell me, American Quorans. Can an African-American, despite the lynchings and the whips, despite the microaggressions and the macroaggressions, despite feeling besieged and occupied in their own country—look at the flag, and still say “USA! Fuck yeah!”?

If they can, Dimitris, you have your answer.

For every meme, there is an equal and opposite, except even dumber meme. But somehow…

… I think the existence of this meme means something.

The mob will vote for what the mob likes. And the Quora Facebook feed will give the mob what it wants.

You’re Anon, which automatically makes you the enemy unless you’re that one Anon guy talking about Turkish, or that other Anon guy who is actually me; but I’ll answer.

Be the change.

Upvote the voices you like. Follow them and encourage them.

Know that they won’t get a mass readership, and that’s actually probably just as well. But for the topics you’re passionate about, curate good quality conversation. That includes A2Aing and asking good questions.

Post questions like, I dunno, Who are the 3 people you follow that have the fewest followers? How many followers do they have, and what are your reasons for following them? (Thank you again for the idea, Martin Silvertant.)

The Just-So story of antiquity is as Konstantinos Konstantinides put it: Thera the island was named for its colonist Theras, and Therasia for his daughter.

Yeah, I find that too convenient too.

I’m not looking up Pauly or anything reputable like that, but I will work from the corresponding common nouns. Thēr means a wild animal, and thēra meant the hunt, hunting for wild animals, game. Thērasios is the adjective of thēra, “of or relating to the hunt”. The feminine of Thērasios is Thērasia. So “hunt” and “hunting (island)”.

Oh, and Theresa does indeed come from the similar adjective Thēresios. It started out as a synonym of Artemis, the hunter goddess.

Melbourne isn’t Sydney, with its really obvious, beautiful sights. It doesn’t really have any obvious, landmark attractions. It’s more atmosphere and aggregate of experience.

In the CBD: walk around the alleyways for the funky graffiti and nouveau restaurants. Stare up, and admire the Victorian and Art Deco goodness of a confident, rich city.

Walk down Southbank, especially in decent weather (when that happens): it’s a lovely, bustling promenade.

Pop up to Lygon Street, Little Italy, for the gelati and coffee culture; less now for the students from Melbourne Uni, because uni students aren’t as interesting as they used to be.

Go down to the St Kilda pier for a stroll along the beach (such as it is, this is Melbourne after all), and take in the self-conscious bohemia of Fitzroy St and Acland St. You didn’t live here in the 90s, so you won’t feel the stabbing pain in Acland St of what it used to be: a slice of the shtetl turned into deracinated hipsterville. Just enjoy the hipsterville show. If it gets too much, the shtetl is still around the corner in Carlisle St.

Walk through the myriad of public gardens and parks. The Botanical Gardens, the Fitzroy Gardens, Flagstaff.

Go to the ethnic enclaves. Little Greece in Oakleigh; Little Vietnam in Richmond; Little Turkey in Brunswick St, Little Spain in Johnston St. Eat, and eat widely: we have a critical mass of culinary diversity, and culinary innovation.

There’s some critical nuance being missed in answers so far (though I strongly suspect it’s come up elsewhere here). The closest is in the sources mentioned by Mark A. Mandel, and the answer given by Matthew Carlson.

• The old use of singular they is with reference to an non-specific entity, where the use of gender would be misleading (the gender of the non-specific person is not known, and even if it is known, it is irrelevant). Hence, Shakespeare used:
  There’s not a man I meet but doth salute me
  As if I were their well-acquainted friend

  The singular they is not because the gender is not known, but because it’s an non-specific referent: not a man but = every man = any man.

• The grammaticality of singular they was disputed when the prescriptivists came to town, because “not logical”, i.e. “not how Latin does things”. It’s not how most languages do things. But it is how English does things. And it’s an asterisked logic, as language logic is.
• The new use of they as gender-neutral, and the even newer use of they as non-binary may take getting used to—although I find that hard to believe for the former (which after all, is still pretty much used in non-specific contexts). The latter is much harder, because it applies to specific referents; that’s not a “logical” constraint, but a semantic constraint. I know that I keep fucking it up in my correspondence with Sam Murray, just to namedrop. But the linguistic extension is straightforward, and it’s really a matter of familiarisation to get over the definiteness block.
• And as an English speaker, I’m profoundly grateful to those in the genderfluid community who choose to go with they. Singular specific they is nothing. Neologisms like zhe and hu: those are the real linguistic annoyance.
• And yes, if someone uses them, it is polite to respect that too. But thank you to those who use the resources already there in the language.

See Singular ‘They’ for a nice succinct summary of non-binary they.

Don’t read the comments offered via Facebook if you value human dignity. “Social engineering” my tuchus.

EDIT: Thanks to Clarissa Lohr for correcting me on specificity.

I am profoundly grateful to La Gigi, for asking this question, which has brought together three of the most fascinating personalities in living memory:

I am also profoundly grateful to those who have already speculated about why on earth I would be so relentlessly fascinated by Nixon, because if they are, then they’re still talking about me!!

Even if they’re getting it wrong.

Let’s run through the speculations, shall we?

SPECULATION 1.

When I was in Atlanta last year, I mentioned my fascination to one of my wife’s former colleagues I met there.

Note: May not be an accurate depiction of my wife’s former colleague in Atlanta.

When I mentioned my relentless fascination, and that my wife and I would like to make the pilgrimage to Yorba Linda one day, the former colleague asked excitedly:

“Are you a conservative?”

No, sir. No I’m not. I’m Australian, after all.

Do conservatives even claim Nixon as one of their own any more?

SPECULATION 2

Benjamin Thomas:

Besides the fact that he was a great bowler?

He’s looking a lot more informal than I gathered; I thought he always bowled in a tie.

But then, I haven’t seen The Big Lebowski yet, where the first pic features.

SPECULATION 3

I’ve started following Tom Ramsay as an echo-chamber antidote, on the recommendation of Clarissa Lohr. I A2A’d him as an icebreaker.

I might need to revisit my choice of icebreakers.

Well this is the first I’ve heard of this particular, um, passion. So I am completely going out on half a limb with this A2A…

Are you the son of Deep Throat? ;P

To the best of my knowledge, I am not related to Mark Felt.

Now, if all the theories are wrong, and Stavros Nicholas was in fact taking time off from running a fish & chip shop in Launceston, Tasmania to meet Bernstein & Woodward in some garage in DC, well, I admire his stamina…

SPECULATION 4

Uri Granta has done his research, bringing up the Greek angles of Spiro Agnew, and the infamous moneybags Tom Pappas (Τομ Πάπας – Βικιπαίδεια; it is so… weird reading about him in the Greek Wikipedia).

Uri has also done his research with the Nixon–Whitlam collision course, a subject I am infuriated that I know less about than I should.

Uri’s third para of course is the right answer, and I’ll come back to that.

SPECULATION 5

Michaelis Maus, welcome to my nightmare. Mwa. Ha. Ha. And thank you for chiming in!

Your vid was by Flight of the Conchords. I definitely should put them on the list, but alas, I stopped consuming popular culture a long time ago. But bless you for including them in your answer. God they’re good. I’ll delight in taking credit for them, as all Australians do with all good things that come out of New Zealand.

Dr Nick appreciates that Michaelis is, to use an infantilising classification scheme, Chaotic Neutral (Alignment (Dungeons & Dragons)), which is why Tricky Dick is a “a real, consistent nihilist after [his] own heart”. (He is also grateful that Michaelis has remembered his little “I’m arrogant enough to demand to be addressed as Dr” aside!) OTOH, I’m Lawful Good, with the Lawful exceeding Good—so much so, that I consciously try to force myself to be Lawful Neutral, all the time.

If you get my meaning.

Dr. Nick, to that effect, seems to appreciate the complexities of oft-caricatured humans.

Yes, Michaelis. You get my meaning. In fact, my first glance reaction was “yeah, but it’s more than that”; but come to think of it, reading your answer again, no, it was that.

Let me though trace my own journey of Nixon appreciation.

STAGE 0

I was 3 during Watergate, and living in Launceston, Tasmania. Little knowing that my dad was couriering information to Bernstein and Woodward, apparently.

My earliest political memory of anything involved Reagan. So Nixon is ancient history to me, in a time that already had the Iran-Contra affair. I did not experience the visceral sense of betrayal that Americans did with Watergate; I took it as given.

So Nixon does not viscerally offend me, the way it might someone who lived through his fall.

What I knew about Nixon until I was 17 was Watergate, and he’d occasionally show up on TV as a pundit. That was it.

STAGE 1

Stage 1 was hearing the premiere on the radio of Nixon in China in 1988. Nixon in China is an amazing opera, with an amazing libretto, that has stood the test of time.

Thing is, though, that the composer and librettist were both stereotypical Berkeley lefties, so they made a point of overcompensating in their depiction of Nixon. They did not want to make him a villain, so they tried to make him a hero. They didn’t pull it off: the real hero of the piece is Zhou En-Lai.

You see a Nixon comically out of depth in the opera, but also a Nixon strategising and reminiscing and nervous and genuinely hopeful. What you see only in passing, though, is the darkness in Nixon; just a couple of minutes, really—“The rats begin to chew the sheets” in the first scene, “Some men you cannot satisfy” in the last. It’s an interesting depiction, but a little too positive to be fascinating.

STAGE 2

1995, I caught Oliver Stone’s Nixon (film) on TV.

That’s what did it.

Nick Nicholas’ answer to What are your favorite movies and why?

I looked high and low for the DVD for years afterwards. Over a decade in fact.

Yes, it’s fictionalised and psychobabblised and operatic and conspiracy-theorised. And having read a lot of Nixoniana since, I still think that artistically, it is essentially true. It’s not a documentary, but that’s not what it needed to be.

STAGE 3

Stage 3 was getting together with another Nixon fan. Our bonding over Nixon is mentioned in my answer above. One of Tamar’s first presents to me was Volume I of Ambrose’s biography; and propelled by it, I’ve ended up reading most of Melbourne University’s holdings on Nixon.

Nick Nicholas, why are you so fascinated with Nixon?

He was a multi-faceted, complex man.

• Was the smartest man in decades in the White House. And turned the White House into a protection racket, with the dumbest enforcers imaginable.
• Used politics as a cudgel, but genuinely thought he was doing good for the world.
• Did good for the world with detente and China, but also did evil for the world with using SALT as a political football, and undermining Johnson on ending Vietnam.
• Had genuine outreach with Martin Luther King as a Vice President, but invented the Southern Strategy.
• Did great things for Native Americans—by accident, because that was Ehrlichman’s pet project, not his; and Ehrlichman was on his side, so of course he’d defend him against Congress.
• Nursed lifelong paranoias against the elite, but the elite really was out to get him, because of the excesses his paranoia caused.

He had a bushelful of hamartias, tragic flaws. The tragic hero doesn’t have to be Good. He just has to have potential to be better than his hamartias allow.

And I have the luxury of regarding Nixon from a distance, as a tragically flawed president, rather than as a visceral offence to my own polity and founding myths. Because I was 3 during Watergate, and living in Launceston, Tasmania.

Originally buried in a comment at https://www.quora.com/Was-it-app…

In response to:

Well, if you believe what the cast of Hamilton did was appropriate, then you’d be okay that if henceforth every theatrical performance would include the cast’s comments on the political scene.

… When Aristophanes invented comedy? That’s exactly what he did. Using the chorus to do so. That included making fun of Athenian massacres during wartime. And I’m sure people squirmed then.

If it’s a political play (and of course Hamilton is), of course that’s legitimate. And it’s just as legitimate from the right as the left.

Original Wording: What the fuck are you doing on Quora?

Oh yeah? And the horse you rode in on!

(No, Modbot, that was rhetorical. No BNBR violation here.)

Checking my inbox for interesting questions where I can help, in my own small way, to illuminate the human condition.

And chancing on this question instead.

Next!

The Jahwist, as in the hypothesised earliest source document of the Torah? I’m dismayed to find from Wikipedia that the documentary hypothesis is now falling apart, and increasingly scholars think there was no one unitary Jahwist document. Doesn’t matter to me if the Jahwist was a bunch of bits; that bunch of bits is still more interested in Judah than Israel, and still features Yahweh as a petty anthropomorphic figure.

The classic documentary hypothesis dates the Yahwist to the 10th century BC, although that too is now out of favour. That would certainly be the earliest date for a Yahwist corpus.

So the question becomes, what was the language of 10th century BC Judah?

Still Hebrew, although you can legitimately argue about how distinct palaeo-Hebrew and Phoenecian were at that early time. It’s the time of the Gezer calendar, discovered 20 miles west of Jerusalem.

This guy:

And not the fly-swatting end of it either.

My sister, my mother would have to chase around the house. I just dutifully held out my hand for it to be over and done with.

That may explain some things. I dunno.