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BS ‘n’ About…
Patriotism
Patriotism has been used as an excuse for thousands of years to get the farmers of one country to march off to do battle with the farmers of another. Yet, the fathers, sons, and husbands who do all the dying almost always have more in common with those they are shooting ‘at’ than those they are shooting ‘for’. Patriotism relegates the citizenry of a country into unquestioning pawns to be used in the chess games played by its leaders. In an Information Age built around a global economy, patriotism is a very dangerous thing.
Its most dangerous aspect is that it effectively precludes opposition or even free democratic debate. Feeding as it does on that primal sense of whatever it is that holds a people together, it makes an outsider of any voice out of line with ‘The Party Line’: “If you’re not with us, you must be against us”. Black or white. No gray area.
Most of us over the age of thirty were weaned on the black and white patriotism of the Cold War. We viewed the other guy as an Evil Empire with a million automaton soldiers, steroid-cheating Olympic athletes, and a Wall of Mother Russian brick. Yet, the Russian émigrés who have come to our neighborhoods, workplaces, schools, and churches aren’t all that different than us, (whatever us is). They laugh. They cry. They tell dirty jokes. They raise their kids and bury their parents. The Russian people could see that Soviet Communism was a failed ideology almost from the start, but feelings for Mother Russia kept them silent until the system collapsed from within. Patriotism kept them in chains.
The Us vs. Them mentality that drove the Cold War wasn’t about people. It was about ideology. Yet the vast majority of the citizenry of any given country are too busy keeping themselves fed, housed, and loved to have any time left over for ideology. History shows that having their patriotism stirred up has almost never been in the best interests of a people. Governments play their games while the people pay the price in bodybags.
Patriotism was a necessary evil when history rode on horseback and cultures had to protect themselves from whatever showed up on the horizon. Without it humanity wouldn’t know the cultural diversity that has resulted in French art, Chinese cuisine, or Russian literature. But it is an Old World motivator that doesn’t quite ring true in modern day America.
Made up as we are of the cast-offs of every nation on Earth, how can we unconditionally unite against the very nations and cultures that gave birth to us in the first place? Our ancestors. How can we unconditionally oppose that which we know so well first hand? Our neighbors.
At various times the cauldron of American patriotism has been stirred to unite us against Rebs, Yanks, & Injuns, Krauts, Japs, & Dagos, Gooks, Ragheads, & Charlie. But today these very same people are our neighbors, co-workers, and fellow Americans. We eat their foods, enjoy their arts, and their festivals and ritual have become part of the American experience. We are them.
Ronald Reagan was once asked what made America special. He said one could move to France and never become French, move to Japan and never become Japanese, but that the minute one got here, they were American. We were the most unique nation on Earth, an evolution away from the xenophobic pockets of cultural sameness that dominated nation building prior to 1776. Ours was a nation that embraced the change brought about by new faces and fresh blood. Ours was a nation that threw its doors open to the world. Ours was a nation symbolized by the Statue of Liberty.
Yet when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, we did not embrace the world as a ‘we’. The future was ours to build. We had the military, diplomatic, economic, and cultural might to have our way with it. Yet we held no serious peace talks or demobilization summits. No serious plans for a better future. No vision. No lofty goals.
Instead we built World Trade Centers and created one Bad-Guy-of-the-Month after another until we’ve managed to antagonize most of the nations on Earth. We disregard our allies and scoff at the United Nations. We embargo ideologies we oppose, even though it is the people who’ll starve, not the potentates.
America’s view of the world has changed much in recent years. As has the world’s view of America. We have closed ourselves off from our fellow nations in ways that must terrify them. We’ve turned into a police state with no respect for our own Constitution. We are one of the biggest human rights violators in the world and initiator of the world’s biggest and most dangerous current war.
We, the People of America need to use the unity of our patriotism to make a stand for the principles upon which we were founded. When the Berlin Wall came crashing down, history cried out for the kind of vision we’d shown with the League of Nations, Lend Lease, and the Marshall Plan. Instead we gave it a million automaton soldiers, steroid-cheating Olympic athletes, and a Wall of Homeland Security.
It is our patriotic duty to speak out, not shut up. It is our democratic duty to demand a government that reflects our will. If we do that, maybe someday patriotism will be obsolete. If we do that, maybe someday we’ll learn to live in peace. Humanity should be so lucky.
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