q&a

Q: Why "nationalistic pig"? It sounds so harsh. I get the point, but how about something more like "nationalistic firefly"? Same fierceness and passion I envision with you minus the fat and gluttonous connotations. :)

A: We Swedish people (so it's not just me, and it actually goes for at least the Finns too) tend to apologize when we are nationalistic. We were raised to think that is bad. It comes from wanting to distance ourselves from the nationalistic views of Hitler's Germany. We don't like to wave our flags because that's what the Germans did then, claiming superiority. (My generation was raised to be international-istic, rather than nationalistic, so that comes more easily for us.)