joaksl

An american anime geek does not have more in common with a japanese anime geek than an american evangelical. Race, nation, language, history, etc are far more potent than what naive utopian people wish it were.

Communists used to think like you. They felt that a german factory worker had more in common with a french or russian or chinese factory worker and that introducing communist ideas would let awaken them to this "fact" and they wouldn't join the army to kill each other. WW1 and WW2 proved that german, french, russian, chinese, etc factories were more than willing to kill each other by the millions.

The geek thinks, ‘Meh: here, Canada, London, Japan, Singapore—as long as FedEx can reach me and there’s a good Internet connection, what’s the difference?’ (Nor are the technically-inclined alone in this.8)

I guess the "geek" hasn't tried to getting visas or immigrating to those places.

Also, you have to realize that all it takes in just one nationalist movement to spur nationalism almost everywhere. Nationalism has that kind of virtuous cycle.

Look at the current US-China trade war. It not only increases nationalism in the US, it also increases in China.

Policemen are above the law because that's how the system was created. At least in the US, police departments were primarily created by the elites to protect the elites from immigrant masses. When the elites were all mostly anglo-saxon protestant, we didn't have a need for police. But when cities started attracting immigrants - particularly german and irish, the elites needed a forceful mechanism by which to suppress and control these people. Of course when the germans and irish moved up the social ladder and the new arrivals were italians and blacks, the germans and irish suppressed and controlled these people. Now in a "post-race" age, police exist primarily to serve and protect the rich elites against the less wealthy masses.

The idea of police existing to protect you ( Protect and Serve nonsense ) is just PR/marketing. Just like "Don't be evil".

I suspect in most countries, these same pattern holds.

It's even more recent than the norman french from a 1000 years ago. The standard english accent ( King's English ) was intentionally "effeminized" to mimic the french language in the 1800s ( when french was viewed as lingua franca and "cultured"). It's one of the reasons why Standard American accent and Standard British accent diverged. The standard american accent was the way the brits used to speak.