Comic Strips

In a way, that's true of most of us.

I like to remind them about the devout girl that was kept in a basement and sexually abused by her father. Whatever she did to "deserve it", they certainly did worse, so they should go through the same. But I personally refuse to worship such a god.

Because they know the top of their head is about to become detached at the mouth

US bullshit aside, Canada has been struggling for a while. Cost of living is out of control, many folks are struggling. Housing prices are completely unmoored from reality, especially in major cities.

I too would not want to be neighbouring US at the moment

Housing prices. They know they'll never be able to afford a home, even with help from their middle class parents.

Nationalities are just arbitrary labels that you had no power over deciding

I thought of a Russian phrase "Россия для грустных" (Russia's for the sad ones), which refers to that sangry expression you can often see Russians wearing.

Yes, true.

I also know another side to Russia culture, though. The Russians I know call working people the plebs, homeless people garbage, and feel the need to express that anyone in the LGBT scale should be murdered.

These are not just a few random people, mind you, these are Russians from different walks of life I had the misfortune of meeting. I've met many Russians, and all of them have this deep seated hatred against anyone and anything that isn't pure Russian.

Yes, I know that not all Russians are like this, but my point is that way too many Russians are, and are quite happily supporting all the shit that Putin is doing right now.

I'm neither proud nor ashamed of being a Russian, personally, given it's a simple fact. Although, I also have a hard time understanding feeling pride (or shame) for something I wasn't a part of (as in, a member of a team of researchers who discovered XYZ, not some arbitrary stuff like nationalities)

Most people are trying to be somewhat proud of their country of origin. And basically every country in the world does have some cool stuff in their history to be proud of. Be it Russia, Germany, the USA - every country's history has dark sides as well as achievements (non political) to be proud of. At the end of the day, it is a longing for community and identification with one's community. If you are Russian, as a part of Russia, then it is also your people, your homies, who built sputnik or sent Jury Gagarin into space.

At the same time, overidentification with a national identity is odd in itself. You may be proud that your country invented something 100 years ago or pioneered into space, has cool traditional clothing or dances, but this has little to do with you specifically, or with the state of the country today.

People who say they are ashamed to be Russian (or any other nationality) usually say this in reference to either the negatives in their country's history (e.g. slavery in the US, WWII in Germany, Stalinism in Soviet Russia), or in reference to their current government. But a government is not the same as the people, history and culture.

But most importantly, these things don't exclude each other. You can both be proud to be a Russian as in not hating your genes, your heritage, your identity and ancestry, cherrypicking achievements and parts of culture, as well as condemn the current government and state of the country, while simultaneously seeing your nationality as an abstract part of your identity. Your passport or your MyHeritage results do not make you who you are. What you believe in, what you care about and how you act do.