What patriotism means today
On the Saturday before the 2016 election, my friend Neil passed away. A week or so later, his widow, our friend Linda, joked that if her husband hadn’t already died, the election results—Donald Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton—would have killed him.
I can only imagine what Neil would think and feel about what has happened since that dreadful 2016 day. How impossible it would have been for him to imagine that we would have elected an idiotic, swindling, incompetent, racist charlatan. How unimaginable to him those awful four years and their terrible culmination, in pestilence and finally violence.
And what would Neil think about that same cretinous liar, the one who had fomented an insurrection, a convicted felon, a court-affirmed sex offender, being on the verge of getting elected again—and having the support of a partisan, Constitution-bending, corrupt Supreme Court?
Unlike Neil, we are still here and on this day of national independence it’s particularly tough to be a patriot. We can raise as many flags as we want, but what are we raising them to?
What kind of country do we have, what kind of country will we be? Despite all our stumbles—including the original sin of slavery—we’ve had, as countries go, a pretty good run. On this day, of all others, it seems appropriate to wonder if that run is ending.
It’s been a particularly bad few weeks, for us, for the country, with appalling news coming at us in endless, inescapable torrents. Some of us now talk wistfully of leaving this country for another, for Canada, maybe (they don’t want us) or perhaps France (they seem to be heading down the same road).
Maybe, on this day of performative patriotism, the most patriotic thing we can do is stay. And fight. And work to prevent the end of that good American run.
As that astute political analyst Yogi Berra put it, it ain’t over till it’s over.