What an Abject Embarrassment to be an American
What an abject embarrassment to be an American.
Patriotism is an abstract snake oil that has been sold to us at the cost of any reality-defined relationship with our country’s misadventures the world over. It is the rallying cry of a delinquent, derelict governing order that has come to realize “patriotism,” in its current state, is at best, a band-aid for the heinous wrong that has been done in the name of Uncle Sam, and at worst, a societally ordained gag-order for any wandering minds who have come to understand that the concept of a government for the people and by the people differs hugely from the ruling class we have in place today.
Most of us understand patriotism today as “pride in one’s country,” a formless thrill usually employed to justify both rhetorical dismissal or physical violence; violence that is unleashed with unthinking cruelty at American citizens with brown skin, as well as foreign “enemies” so geographically removed from our borders that when we read about the American bombs destroying hospitals and the American bullets ripping through civilian flesh, our heart rates remain stable. We do not blink. We have been trained to accept these horrors as a necessity of living in our own free, ethical, and just society.
I am exhausted of applauding the representatives of this undeniable oligarchy when the interests of the amoral capitalist machine occasionally align with the ethic of the public interest. When this does occur, our government demands pomp and circumstance — lavish praise for the eventual (and wholly incidental) arrival at the “ethical decision.” Women’s suffrage, the end of the original Jim Crow era, and the legalization of gay marriage are but a very few of these examples; and not one of them ever would have come to pass unless very powerful people saw a potential within these decisions for enormous profit.
A governing body that does not operate from a strict and absolute baseline of compassion toward its citizens has failed its citizens from the outset. As Americans, our daily lives operate within the framework of this failure. Where we could have rehabilitation, we have imprisonment and the continuation of slavery under the guise of the 13th amendment. Where we could utilize our vast economic power to develop countries in the throes of famine and unending war, we instead feed the ever-salivating maw of the military-industrial complex: a cyclical evil that quite literally trades human lives (including, yes, American lives) for the sake of pure profit; lining the pockets of men who wouldn’t dream of setting foot in a war zone themselves.
This Independence Day, I am reflecting on the fact that being an American is a fundamental abstraction of thought, and any pride derived from it is a self-delusion. Until my country’s ethic is modeled on compassion rather than capital, I will refrain from the slimy, synthetic propaganda that we have come to know as “patriotism.”
