Welcome to The Girl Next Door.

I'm Erica and I'm Kelsey.

In every episode, we bring our different perspectives to candid conversations that feel like chatting with good friends.

We started this show years ago when we were next door neighbors and still haven't run out of things to talk and laugh about yet.

Today's episode is continuing in our

Let's Talk About It series, where we talk about hot topics or perhaps hard things in a

conversational, candid way. And we would love for you to join in the conversation. In light of

celebrating the 4th of July here in the U.S. and how the term patriot has kind of taken on different meanings

in different spaces lately. We wanted to talk about what patriotism means to us and the intersection

of patriotism and nationalism and what patriotism looks like in this day and age. And also on

Patreon, as always, we carry the chat a bit further. So over there, we'll be talking about

how we feel about patriotic symbols. So if you're not already a friend of the show over on Patreon,

you can check that out by following the link in the show notes. All right, let's start by talking

about what we feel patriotism means right now and how that's changed over time, at least here in the U.S.

Okay, I approach this by thinking about what patriotism meant to me or what I observed it to be as

I was growing up. And when I think back to growing up, to me, it just seemed like patriotism meant

loving your country, being proud to be

American. And I just had a general sense of, well, yeah, of course we are. It just kind of felt like a

collective, like, sure. This is a nice place to live. Yeah. We're proud to be American. It felt

obvious and pretty easy. Now, part of that could definitely be just me being young and naive

and not being an adult. Enjoying the Fourth of July parade. I would have to ask my parents what they

felt about that during, you know, 80s and 90s. But I do think maybe it was a bit more straightforward

...