On QuakerQuaker, Kirby Urner starts a discussion on pronouns which is not the discussion you might expect:
I pay a lot of attention to pronoun use. People often say “our nuclear weapons” and/or “what we did in Vietnam”. I don’t have any nuclear weapons, nor do my friends.
Kirby’s lost reminds of the classic “What do you mean we, white man” Lone Ranger / Tonto joke.
Part of the deal of the modern nation state and its trappings of democracy is that we all own it together. The peasantry could be lacksidaisical when they were jiat doing the bidding of whichever duke/warlord/king controlled the plot of land in which their ancestral village now sat. But now we fight national wars because the state is us. It’s mostly a load of huey but it disarms what should be the natural Christian (and plain human) distaste for jingoistic tribalism.
http://www.quakerquaker.org/m/discussion?id=2360685%3ATopic%3A159446