Coca-Cola Super Bowl Commercial

[PawPaw]

Commercials? I don't remember the commercials. I spent the evening cringeing, and averting my gaze all too often. That was painful.

That first snap gave the whole game away. What a cluster-fark.

[HTRN]

I gave up watching it after twenty minutes - just checking back on it every 20 minutes or so... It was like watching the class bully beat up the crippled kid..

[SoupOrMan]

The commercial? I dig it. How many other countries have people singing in foreign languages about how awesome they are?

Pepsi already pisses me off with all of its sweetheart deals with the State of Illinois and city of Springfield where I play hockey. Give me Coke and a commercial which tells people how good America is in their native language. Do I want English to be the official language of the government? Yep. From the Feds down to the townships. Do I want it to be the only language? No, not really.

[Jericho941]

If you wanna play politics with your soda purchases and are a fan of Israel, you can always get yourself a SodaStream setup.

[Vonz90]

I think the whole speak english thing is significant. Without a common language, and secure borders, you really aren't a sovereign nation.

Well, this first generation American agrees with you.

Multi language is fine for an empire, not a nation.

[Aglifter]

The US has always been a type of empire - but the sovereign was to be the US CON.

A nation is defined by a homogenous culture or race.

The US never has been, the colonies couldn't stand one another, for the most part. They certainly didn't have a homogenous culture.

[blackeagle603]

and yet inspite of it all we've managed to do and be more "E Pluribus Unum" that any other, ever, anywhere.

[Jericho941]

The issue of nation vs empire was put to bed when Manifest Destiny became a thing.

[Vonz90]

The US has always been a type of empire - but the sovereign was to be the US CON.

A nation is defined by a homogenous culture or race.

The US never has been, the colonies couldn't stand one another, for the most part. They certainly didn't have a homogenous culture.

Very few are. Including ones you probably think of as gimmies.

For example - In 1600 very few Germans thought of themselves as "German" in the sense we think of today and did not even speake the same language. Martin Luther invented what we consider "Modern" German as a amalgamation of the different dialects for his Bible translation though. This became first the standard German for education and the burgers who started mixing in the cities and needed a common language. A common culture developed out of this and was mostly a middle class thing, the peasants were down on the land and spoke their dialects while the aristocrats were mostly concerned with class.

In the end it took a common enemy (Napoleon's heavy handed attempts to control much of Germany and absorb many of the smaller states) to get it going.

The same thing has happened here (for the most part). It was compressed in time because we already started out as a mixed bag but with a comon language.

Take away a commaon language to build that culture around and you end up with nothing. Especially here.

[Aglifter]

So, you think the US started with a common language?