I know we are 3 days past the Fourth, but since Patriotism is the cheesy plastic hurdle that gets reset in the mud of every election year, I have to get this off my chest.
First, as an illustration of my larger point, it is typical – but nonetheless ridiculous – that so many on the right are lionizing Jesse Helms and expounding on the “appropriateness” of his Independence Day passing.
In my mind, his death on the 4th of July would only be “appropriate” if the Declaration of Independence itself grabbed a stiletto and did the deed, in order to redeem its original promise:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”
Nope. Can’t see old Jesse signing on to that.
But back to Patriotism. The shocker?
I do not love my country. I do not love the flag of the United States of America.
I do not love any country or any flag.
I love my family, my friends and my pets. I love my tae kwon do school. I love my neighborhood. I love the taste of an exceptional port or a great rare steak or a large wedge of lemon-vanilla cheesecake. I love my artist mother-in-law’s paintings. I love the writing of Michael Chabon and Jim Harrison, and I love the fact that I can express myself and read the impassioned opinions of others on the internets. I love to be at the beach – any beach – with the sun beating down on me and blue water beckoning. And I love most of the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence.
All of these things have a direct connection to me and mine, and enrich my life over and over.
But my country only enriches me because of an accident of birth. Had employment prospects and antisemitism not driven my ancestors to leave their birthplaces, I could have been Canadian or British or Czech – or the family line may simply have stopped around 1944, thanks to the Holocaust.
But even great-great-great-grandfather Jacob P.’s emigration and escape from modern European history makes it hard to find gratitude for my U.S. citizenship: How many of Jacob’s Sudatenland nieces, nephews and cousins died at Terezin because the U.S. refused them visas, just two decades after Jacob’s arrival in New York? And how many families like mine have lost the thread of their Jewish heritage because their ancestor, fleeing antisemitism only to confront it afresh in New York Harbor, discarded that identity in favor of Catholicism or another Christian (and therefore acceptable) sect?
Now, despite that heritage, I am seen as part of the white, Protestant, prosperous top 20%; I have neither paid for my country’s transgressions nor earned the rewards I reap simply by being the white daughter of a successful white man.
My country has only grudgingly granted equality to its non-white, non-male, non-straight, non-Christian citizens, and has yet to do so completely, or with anything approaching generosity or a recognition of past wrongs. My country continues to assert its primacy in the world based on the accepted exceptionalism of its white, straight, Christian males, enforcing that primacy through force of arms and killing millions without justification beyond its own greatness. My country regrets little and repents nothing.
And my country’s flag is nothing but a symbol, and too often an artifact of patriotic artifice, an easy pass-key into the cynical black heart of American politics.
Certainly, there are those who believe in the flag and “all it represents” with purest sincerity, but those good and trusting citizens are not the ones wielding the political and economic power in this country; they are not the ones who downsize and outsource and warmonger. They are the ones being told to hate their Hispanic neighbor, to hate the Iraqis, to hate the gays and the atheists and the feminists. They are the ones who hold tight to the flag, because its fleeting promise is the only hope that remains. And they are the ones being asked to volunteer themselves, and their sons and daughters, to the nation’s armed forces and whatever our government chooses to do with them.
“Patriotism” hides so much craven opportunism that even if I did love this country, I could not easily call myself a patriot.
Perhaps it is correct, then, that Jesse Helms be crowned as the quintessential American Patriot; he fought all his life for the privileges of his white, straight, Christian male cohort and its right to step over anyone, invade any country, steal any resource in the name of the American exceptionalism.
Is it any wonder few others love our country as much as our own American Patriots?
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