Photo by Rene Bernal on Unsplash

I Pledge Allegiance

Kai Chan
Kai Chan
Aug 31, 2018 · 5 min read

This is part of my experiment to write regularly and publish every day with the help of 365 Days of Writing Prompts. Today’s prompt: “Are you patriotic? What does being patriotic mean to you?”

Am I patriotic? I do not know. This might appears to be a very easy, non-trick question, but it is not.

I still remember when September 11 happened during my first years living in the U.S. I did not realize right away how unprecedented the event was. For example, there were western countries who had to deal with domestic attacks regularly, such as the United Kingdom with the Irish Republican Army. It turned out that no, the U.S. was not like that before.

People came up with ways to cope. Merely days after the attack, some business people decided that we should display as many flags as possible. Before long, they were on sale everywhere. A version was made with a hook at the bottom of a short plastic flag pole. It was for putting the flag on a car window. It was on every car that I saw. Yes, we bought one too. One evening, while my family was traveling in our car, my mother had this brilliant idea that she should roll down the very window that had the flag. As soon as the window was rolled down, the wind blew the flag off the window and onto the road. It would have gotten trampled over and over again, right? But it did not. As I watched from the rear-view mirror, one car after another switch lane. Any other day, they would have run over plastic bottles on the road without blinking. Yet, this day, they seemed to have purposefully avoided trampling the flag. We stopped the car. I ran to retrieve the flag and come back, with an unharmed flag in my hand and a sense of triumph in my heart.

Some of our neighbors blasted supposedly patriots songs such as “God Bless America”. They did it loudly, day and night. Normally, I hated such nuisance. However, given the patriotic nature of these songs, I did not care. The loud music was exactly what we needed. It showed that we were patriots, and that was a good thing, right?

George W. Bush, then-President of the United State, ask Congress for $20 billion for the response effort of September 11. For some reason, Congress responded by approving not just the $20 billion requested, but $40 billion. Yes! What a compelling display of unity, I told myself in excitement as I watched the news.

But then the ugly reality set in. Within a month or so, the country was at war with Afghanistan. Less than two years later, someone was beating the war drums once again. This time, it was about Iraq. After flip-flopping, the media decided that the upcoming war would be about the freedom of Iraqis. The land of the free is going to set them free! Wait. Since when did the U.S. care so much about the freedom of people half a world away? U.S. soldiers were still being killed in Afghanistan on a weekly basis. There was some speculation about the possibility of declaring a draft. It made me uneasy because I was still eligible for that.

The ugliness was rampant within the U.S. too. An extraordinary amount of “go back to X” was thrown around. Muslims (and some Sikhs who got “mistaken” as Muslims) were told that they had blood of September 11 victims on their hands because they could somehow be ethically or religiously linked to the attackers. The Cordoba House was called “Ground Zero Mosque” by the media and strongly criticized, even though it was neither a mosque or on Ground Zero.

I have looked up several dictionaries about the word “patriotic” and here is what I have found: Being patriotic means having patriotism, which means having love, pride, and devotion for one’s country.

I could do something about devotion. I have studied hard and graduated from college. I have worked hard at jobs that I think are purposeful and contributing to the country in their small ways. I have voted and served as a poll worker. I have served quite a bit of time on jury duty. By this narrow definition of patriotism, I think I am rather patriotic. Nevertheless, I somehow did not choose to join the military, which has been considered by many to be the way (even the only way) to be patriotic. While I was in community college, recruiters from the military often came to advertise themselves as an alternative to chasing perfect GPAs, fighting for limited seats at top schools, and paying for college with devastating amounts of student debts. They hauled in very tall climbing walls and other things that signaled what kind of candidate they were looking for. I got that they wanted people with physical prowess and I had none of that. Maybe I missed out. Maybe I lucked out. I will never find out.

Love and pride, though, they are more complex. Some people think they are as simple as thinking that one’s country is “great”. The problem is that everyone can have a different picture of what a “great” United States looks like. Inevitably, many of those pictures are idealized so that people like me, “foreign” or whatever they call, do not exist. Many of those pictures reminisce a good old time when only some of the people here, based on things like race and gender, are treated like a part of this country. Those pictures scare me.

It is ironic that it is so difficult to have a civic conversation about patriotism. As soon as the discussion picks up and people’s opinion diverge, someone is bound to shout down anyone else who is deemed less patriotic. It often boils down to the shouter thinking that they are righteous because of their present or past occupation, or skin color, or country of origin.

I have observed that whenever patriotism is invoked, it is mainly to make us accept absurd reasoning, support poor collective decisions, etc. We support our workers by ensuring that they earn living wages and work in safe environments. We support our first responders by ensuring that they have top-notch training and protective gear. Yet we support our fine people in some hereby-unnamed occupations by sending them to some particular harm’s way mainly because some politicians think it is a good idea.

Instead of being patriotic or not, I would rather describe myself as someone who feels comfortable enough with their country. Such a person has the capacity to talk, about both the greatness and the problems of their country, without framing the country as either a utopia or a junkyard. It is just sad that nowadays, such a person is more likely to be considered unpatriotic than not. Patriotism can be a pissing contest that I can never win — not that I want to win anyway.

Written by

Kai Chan

Changing the world that talks too much, one piece of writing at a time. Leading the leaders, when they can lead and when they cannot.

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