Am I A Patriot If My Country Is Earth?
I can’t help but wonder if the value of patriotism is actually as noble as you claim it to be. When you call somebody a patriot, the way it resounds from your mouth with pride, it is clear that you think it’s as awesome as some of the highest virtues; virtues like being loving, or humorous, or brave, or sexy, or compassionate, or mindful. But is patriotism really as irreproachable as these characteristics?
Sure we use “patriotic” in the same sentences that contain words like unity, sister/brotherhood, and collective responsibility. But is it really as pure a concept? Before we elevate “the p-word” to be a crucial human virtue that we are all aspiring to, maybe we should really break down its meaning. Before we start going around on a witch hunt (or a son of a bitch hunt, in the words of the POTUS), calling out activist football players for being unpatriotic, maybe we should really interrogate the concept itself and decide whether we actually believe in it. After we unpack the p-word, we may just discover that it contains a whole lot of baggage that we don’t even want to inherit in the first place.
Patriotism is love of country. But every American child learns by the age of 5 that love of country is a bit more loaded than simply loving your countrymen. Love of your countrymen is unquestionably gorgeous. There is something divine and beautiful about loving our neighbors as we love ourselves. There is something fucking awesome about loving the elderly schoolteacher in Appalachia, the black businessman selling books on 125th Street in Harlem, the Cherokee women cooking frybread on the Indian reservation in Oklahoma. I love my countrywomen without abandon. It is why I have become a teacher and a writer and it is why so many of us get up in the morning; to serve.
But love of country means something a bit more loaded and convoluted than a love for the countrywomen and men within it. Love of country involves loving the country beneath the country (‘Mericuh), the narrative of the country (American exceptionalism), the brand of the country (the stars and stripes), the ethos of the country (technological advancement and consumerism), the history of the country (manifest destiny), and the military decisions of the country (going to war in the name of freedom). Often times it feels like all these pundits that rouse us into a frenzy about being patriotic want us to have an uncomplicated devotion to all of these aspects of America (its symbols, its histories, and its ideologies), which is pretty unreasonable…
You know what, unreasonable is a major understatement. I’m trying not to offend the patriotic pundits but I’m going to just out and say it. Loving this country (in the patriotic sense) often outright requires hating on other ones. One reason I know this is true is because I have been told that I am not allowed to be patriotic toward two countries, or three, or fifty-seven. What if I were to say “I’m patriotic and devoted to every country where I’ve visited and connected openheartedly with the people.” What if I were to say I’m patriotic toward South Africa because it is my fiancée’s homeland, and I have sat in the townships there and talked with Black youth about their hopes for a better tomorrow and learned that I loved them like the kids in my own Midwestern town. What if I were to say I’m patriotic toward the people of Palestine because I have seen with my own eyes young men desperately grab rocks to throw at armed soldiers that were expelling them from their land, and thus I want to protect their homeland as ferociously as I want to protect my own. If I were to exclaim proudly and patriotically, “ALL COUNTRIES MATTER,” the patriots among us would see that as a violation of patriotism, not as me being the patriot with the largest homeland of all time.
With that said, I have known for some time that patriotism is not a big enough container for my love. Patriotism at its root is quite different than the agape of the Greeks (the love of mankind). Patriotism is rooted in the willingness to elevate one’s particular nation above other nations, and above other identities. That is not how I roll. A president and his pundits may guilt trip us and ask us to sweep all of this complexity under the rug. A president and his pundits may love an opportunity to present to the world, emotional photo ops of stadiums full of people who seemingly all equivalently believe that we should put America first. But quite frankly, if they ask me to place my hand over my heart and pledge allegiance, and it also means that I must ignore my allegiances to Black boys and girls killed at the hands of the police, to undocumented migrants, and to my fellow humans and non-humans beyond and below these arbitrary borders, I will always, respectfully, take a knee.
