Like dread smothering a child’s spirit when a promising and wide-open Sunday morning is perverted into going to church, I fucking hate patriotism. What precisely defines this banner-waving devotion? Certainly, “the love of one’s country” merely rephrases the initial notion, though part of that easy and insufficient description adds “vigorous support”, and here’s where one recognizes its boisterous display. Grim-faced white males swerving pickup trucks with American flags planted in the bed and fluttering in the hot winds, they will thump their chests and grunt the loudest.
But how does one love a country? Loving the craggy, fog-enshrouded cliffs of Northern California’s winter coastline is at least specific, as is loving chocolate ice cream, or loving this particular human being. Try scooping up the worn strips in the barrel of American platitudes: land of opportunity, the American Dream; we have freedoms that other countries don’t; we’re a nation of laws, not men (a good one to remember these days); we’re the leader of the free world, and so on. One could drape any or all of these taglines across most of our fellow First World countries, and for these reasons immigrants don’t just stream to our shores, but also to France, England, Germany, the Netherland, and the citizenry of these countries don’t value “freedom” any less than we do. So what is it?
Why fly the flag? To remind yourself and others that you’re an “American citizen”? Shall we raise another flag symbolizing we too have blood running through our veins? Patriotism nowadays resembles rooting for the winning home team, cheering to feel a raucous solidarity with fellow fans, that invigorating flush of glory as a return investment for a riveted faith in the players for a game played once a year, July 4th. You love the home team, even though the players rarely call their civic location home. They’re all recruited from elsewhere. But what about everyday patriotism, one’s political commitment? This is where the platitudes disintegrate, the picture loses focus.
The most forthright and strident folks in this country who in self-aggrandizing tones vociferously declare themselves American patriots are white nationalists suffused with suburban, clean-sheeted, superficial christianity: and that’s what I fucking hate. They see themselves as the real Americans, and have long steeped themselves in a mythologized past of American greatness and rightness from their origins up to the 1950s and 60s when people of color dared to raise the question of their guaranteed civil rights.
For what precisely does “Make America Great Again” mean? I’ll tell you. A coded call to re-cognize and present exclusively a whitewashed American mythology whose origins and evolution were divinely ordained by and for the white race, its destiny manifest. Patriotism is nationalism, and gravely insulting to we Good American Continentals, sharing our hemisphere with our brothers and sisters in Central and South landscapes of this land mass. What a joyous diversity of political and social perspectives and cultures and genders and sexualities and histories and languages and art and literature and music and dance we can gather and celebrate! Patriotism as performed and expressed is the myopic and sneering boast to ignore those diversites and historical realities. Patriotism is petty, unimaginative, and boldly expresses resentment that other peoples besides white christians dare lay claim to respect and citizenry in our lands, and woefully lacks the necessary nobility and humility, especially considering our dark and dreadful past.
Death to that pettiness. Long live the Ghost Dance.
But how does one love a country? Loving the craggy, fog-enshrouded cliffs of Northern California’s winter coastline is at least specific, as is loving chocolate ice cream, or loving this particular human being. Try scooping up the worn strips in the barrel of American platitudes: land of opportunity, the American Dream; we have freedoms that other countries don’t; we’re a nation of laws, not men (a good one to remember these days); we’re the leader of the free world, and so on. One could drape any or all of these taglines across most of our fellow First World countries, and for these reasons immigrants don’t just stream to our shores, but also to France, England, Germany, the Netherland, and the citizenry of these countries don’t value “freedom” any less than we do. So what is it?
Why fly the flag? To remind yourself and others that you’re an “American citizen”? Shall we raise another flag symbolizing we too have blood running through our veins? Patriotism nowadays resembles rooting for the winning home team, cheering to feel a raucous solidarity with fellow fans, that invigorating flush of glory as a return investment for a riveted faith in the players for a game played once a year, July 4th. You love the home team, even though the players rarely call their civic location home. They’re all recruited from elsewhere. But what about everyday patriotism, one’s political commitment? This is where the platitudes disintegrate, the picture loses focus.
The most forthright and strident folks in this country who in self-aggrandizing tones vociferously declare themselves American patriots are white nationalists suffused with suburban, clean-sheeted, superficial christianity: and that’s what I fucking hate. They see themselves as the real Americans, and have long steeped themselves in a mythologized past of American greatness and rightness from their origins up to the 1950s and 60s when people of color dared to raise the question of their guaranteed civil rights.
For what precisely does “Make America Great Again” mean? I’ll tell you. A coded call to re-cognize and present exclusively a whitewashed American mythology whose origins and evolution were divinely ordained by and for the white race, its destiny manifest. Patriotism is nationalism, and gravely insulting to we Good American Continentals, sharing our hemisphere with our brothers and sisters in Central and South landscapes of this land mass. What a joyous diversity of political and social perspectives and cultures and genders and sexualities and histories and languages and art and literature and music and dance we can gather and celebrate! Patriotism as performed and expressed is the myopic and sneering boast to ignore those diversites and historical realities. Patriotism is petty, unimaginative, and boldly expresses resentment that other peoples besides white christians dare lay claim to respect and citizenry in our lands, and woefully lacks the necessary nobility and humility, especially considering our dark and dreadful past.
Death to that pettiness. Long live the Ghost Dance.
