Reclaiming real American patriotism

I don't hate the concept, but I don't personally have a lot of reasons to be proud of my country right now. I know things can always get worse, but over the past 20 years it looks like we keep heading in the direction of worse.

If we can get rid of the massive wealth disparity, I'll start thinking about it.

I find it hard to believe in a country where a significant minority of ultra conservatives can pass special rights to harm people like me. I find it hard to be patriotic when America has betrayed me first and foremost because we as a people have decided catering to ultra conservative feelings takes precedence over my civil rights. Over my rights to medical privacy as a woman who happens to be transgender and pansexual.

The only rights my country seems to believe in is the right to lie, to deceive, to spread as many recycled and tired variants of blood libel (against Jewish people, against my people, against people with darker skins, etc).

How can I believe in a country like that? “Free speech” has become a nifty excuse to make America into something more akin to a Christian Pakistan than anything else.

The only thing I believe in is my state. America is a dead idea, killed dead by mendacious rightwing agitators and propagandists.

All of human history could be described as a continual struggle against the idea that 'might equals right'. This includes economic might. There is no reason to believe that humanity reached the pinnacle of egalitarianism in 1776. It is possible to want things to be better while acknowledging the good (and bad) that extant nations have done. That said, nationalism and patriotism are both merely versions of ethnocentrism under a different name.

In my opinion we should all be environmentalists or at the very least humanists, but not nationalists in any way.

Patriotism, unlike its ugly half brother, nationalism, is rooted in optimism and confidence; nationalism is a sour inferiority complex, a sullen attachment to blood-and-soil fantasies that is always looking abroad with insecurity and even hatred. Instead, I was taking in the New England shoreline but seeing in my mind the Blue Ridge Mountains, and I felt moved with wonder—and gratitude—for the miracle that is the United States.

• This envisions a "before-time" when America was not divided, see below:

How I miss that feeling. Because usually when I think of West Virginia these days, my first thought tends to be: red state. I now see many voters there, and in other states, as my civic opponents. I know that many of them likely hear “Boston” and they, too, think of a place filled with their blue-state enemies. I feel that I’m at a great distance from so many of my fellow citizens, as do they, I’m sure, from people like me. And I hate it.

• This is the "now-time" when we feel divided as a country. Were we ever fully united? I will admit, it does feel palpably different to me as well. But, I was never this age before - I only have my previous memories, at different ages, life experiences, and chapters in my own life. It is impossible for me to reflect on things with the same mind, brain, and body as I have now, in the past.

If, however, we ran into anyone else from the United States, perhaps during a tour or in the hotel, most of us reacted as if we were all long-lost friends. The distances in the U.S. shrank to nothing. Boston and Jackson, Chicago and Dallas, Sacramento and Charlotte—all of us at that point were next-door neighbors meeting in a harsh and hostile land. It is difficult today to explain to a globalized and mobile generation the sense of fellowship evoked by encountering Americans overseas in the days when international travel was a rarer luxury than it is now. But to meet other Americans in a place such as the Soviet Union was often like a family reunion despite all of us being complete strangers.

• Yes! I can relate to this experience while traveling abroad. For me, it is most salient when I am in a country that does not commonly speak English, and I find someone I can communicate directly with. Not only by a sense of national identity/origin, but commonality in general! In fact, it appears that it is the sense of common ground, found in a remote place that makes it feel so much more stark. Scarcity breeds a sense of worth and value. Perhaps it is also the unexpected nature of this encounter! Contrast, after all, stands out from the baseline in a new environment, land, or situation.

When I think of [[Ohio]], for example, I no longer think (as I did for most of my life) of a heartland state and the birthplace of presidents. Instead, I wonder how my fellow American citizens there could have sent to Congress such disgraceful poltroons as Jim Jordan and J. D. Vance—men, in my view, whose fidelity to the Constitution takes a back seat to personal ambition, and whose love of country I will, without reservation, call into question.

They’re Americans, and like it or not, we are bound to one another in one of the greatest and most noble experiments in human history. Our destiny together, stand or fall, is inescapable.

Tomorrow, we can go back to bickering. But just for this Fourth, I hope we can all try, with an open spirit, to think of our fellow Americans as friends and family, brothers and sisters, and people whose hands we would gratefully clasp if we met in a faraway and dangerous place.

I don’t think there’s use in distinguishing between patriotism and nationalism. Patriotism, at best, is simply a step on the road to nationalism. One is devotion to and vigorous support of, one is identification with and support of its interests, especially (but not only) to the exclusion of others.

In practice, American patriotism is nationalism. The idea of “American exceptionalism” is nationalism. Saying a pledge of allegiance in school is nationalism.

The American obsession with flying the flag outside of one’s home is wild if you have traveled. I don’t think any country’s citizens are as likely to fly their flag as Americans are. But the growing reticence to fly the flag seems to reflect Germany’s complicated relationship to its national symbols. They’ve already been co-opted and tainted, and the only thing exceptional is how impossible it is to get that stain out.