Patriotism versus Nationalism

The guy with the giant American flag flying from the bed of his gazillion-ton pickup truck thinks he’s a patriot. He’s not.

And with that line, I want to welcome you to the first post of my new blog, the New Patriot. Just what the world needs, right? Another political blog. Geez, aren’t those tough to find (note: that was sarcasm). You may ask yourself, “what could this guy possibly have to say that hasn’t been said a lot of times already, and probably a lot better?” Fair question, one which I will address.

I guess you can think of this post as the let’s get acquainted post. By looking at the title, you might think this is a repub or conservative blog. And if that’s what you did think, then that right there should give you an inkling of a big-time problem we face in our nation today.

It’s anything but conservative, or as I prefer to say, right-wing. So why do I pick that title? Well, it gets to the very heart of why I have begun this blog and began my quest to save the world (did I need to point out that that, too, was sarcasm? Or is it irony?)

As I sit writing this in the summer of 2018, the United States of America is on a clear slide to authoritarianism (this is not sarcasm or meant to be funny at all; some are working hard to complete this slide).

We have in office one donald trump, perhaps the greatest grifter of all time, a man-boy patently unfit for the office which, due to some quirky and anachronistic provisions of our constitution, in which he sits. One thing you will never see me do on this blog is refer to him as “President.”

Yes, I understand that by those quirky rules, despite getting three million votes less than Hillary Clinton, he inhabits the White House, but as we watch, day-to-day the United States slide into banana-republic-hood, I cannot afford him the respect of occupying that position.

Add to that the Democrats, whose fecklessness and passivity leads me to conclude that they should be arrested for impersonating an opposition party.

One of trump's shining moments as it mocks a disabled reporter.

The easiest thing in the world, though, would be to turn this into a trump-bashing and repub-bashing website, but there’s enough of those and frankly, they do a much better job at that than I ever could.

What I’d really like to dive into is how we got into this position in the first place. The mainstream media and liberal outlets like MSNBC, plus what little there us of liberal talk radio there is, do accurately depict what’s going on, but no discussion of why. It’s mostly about how terrible the repubs are – and godawful they most certainly are in a zillion different ways – but we also need context and perspective, and maybe even some counter-arguments.

Often, here’s a lot of “hurray” for Democrats that I’m not sure is deserved. In fact, I’ll probably bash Dems a lot more than repubs, though let me make it clear, it’s tough love and any Democrat is better than any repub any day of the week and I'm very much a vote-blue-no-matter-who person. And I hold a special contempt for anyone – lefty or rightie – who says the parties are the same, or that Clinton was just as bad as trump.

But I digress. Any sense of history has been cast aside, much to the country’s detriment. As the old saying goes, how can you expect to know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been?

By now, even a two-digit IQ person has figured I fall on the left side of the spectrum. And rest assured, I will call out the repub party for its role in putting the USA on the fast-track to third-worldhood.

But here’s fair warning for you right now – this will NOT be a cheerleading site for the Democratic Party, or liberalism/progressivism in general. But what I will also NOT do is try to split the difference or try to blame both parties equally. I'm NOT straight down the middle. I'm very much on a side.

Sorry to say, folks, but we Democrats, and we liberals or progressives or whatever you want to call yourself (we’ll address that in the future), we could have avoided this calamity. We have allowed this cancer to spread at least since the early ‘70s, and we’ll spend much time soon talking about that.

Now, back to Mr. Super-Patriot flying the flag from his flatbed, or kid rock wearing American-flag clothes, or any number of corporate country and rock artists with their American flag bandanas. They’re not patriots. They’re nationalists, and there’s a big, hugely-important difference.

Yours truly is a patriot. I love the United States of America. I am proud of what we have accomplished – the first true democracy in modern times, as well as a cultural powerhouse we have become. As trite as this may sound, our culture – our music, our books, films, fashion and so much more -- has accomplished about as much as anything to bring us admiration around the world.

This could get really long, but here’s the nitty gritty: patriotism is a matter of pride and love for one’s country, loyalty to its ideals and – here’s an important part – that it is the greatest country to one’s own self.

Nationalism is a whole other beast, and I do mean beast. It is a feeling that one’s country is superior to all others, along with an intolerance of anyone who does not endorse that view. Along with that goes the attitude that all others must bow down or submit to your country. The nationalist is focused on symbols and interests of the time more than ideals. And often, nationalism leads to things like wars of aggression and ethnic cleansing.

The patriot wants everybody to feel good about the country. Not flying a flag from their car, so much, but to actually, truly in their heart feel love for the country. The patriot understands that, for that to happen, citizens are in for the country and the country is in for them – all of them regardless of ancestry, or gender, or any other orientation. As Bruce Springsteen once sang – “We Take Care of Our Own.”

The nationalist just wants everybody to shut up and fall in line. If a fellow citizen has a problem with the country, its their own fault. The nation – or at least its majority population -- can never be blamed. And, of course, if they don’t like it, they can always feel free to leave. “America – Love it or Leave It” is a very nationalistic kind of slogan, one that completely misses the point of what this country is all about (more on that in future posts). Criticism and dissent, at least against a repub in the White House, to the little mind of the nationalist equals disloyalty.

The patriot acknowledges that as great a country as we are, we still have our warts. But, no small part of what makes us a great country as that we do try to right those wrongs, that however slowly or imperfectly, that more than any other country on Earth, we do try to fix what needs fixing. A patriot realizes that sometimes criticizing the country shows very loudly how much we actually love it (constant non-stop bashing, which some do, is a different story.)

The nationalist says the country is never wrong. The country must never apologize. If anyone feels wronged they can just go find the perfect place (which nobody tried to claim exists.)

Patriots say reasonable people can disagree, sometimes wildly and loudly. The nationalist says my way or the highway. The nationalist forces people to stand for the flag and the national anthem. The patriot usually stands, but rushes to support the right of those who see things differently to peaceably express themselves however they may choose.

And this is one of many ways where the Left has failed so utterly miserably – to make a case for true patriotism and stand by, pretty much idly, as nationalism has crept in and been tearing away at the country for a long time.

We have sat back, with out fingers in our behinds and let the right expropriate the flag, the constitution, and our culture and redefine it. They have mutated it from an ideal of hope and aspiration to a narrow-minded and bigoted agenda now personified in the White House.

For years, we have allowed the right to pound their chests about how “patriotic” they are with nary a peep to the contrary. How rare it is that I have ever seen a liberal or a Democrat ever make any kind of case for their version of patriotism, let alone tell the windbags to take a powder.

And let’s face it – many of us have done have allowed the right to repel us so thoroughly that we even shied away or disdained those very symbols of patriotism. I hate to say it, but myself, too, Mea culpa.

How many times have we seen a bunch of right-wing jocks chanting “U-S-A! U-S-A!” and decided we wanted to be nothing like that and, in the process, ceded that ground to them. We have let them hijack  the flag and all of our other symbols. And we did what Democrats and liberals often do – just walk away without a peep or even worse, start talking like them or try to out-nationalist them. Example: now, I’m hearing even Democrats refer to the “Democrat Party,” (a phrase that instantly makes anyone who utters it sound like a complete imbecile . You should immediately end any conversation the second they parrot this slur.)

That has also allowed us to abdicate the debate in many realms – from religion to guns to war. We have allowed the right to completely frame these conversations, due in no small part to our unwillingness to show a backbone and our propensity to elect – and re-elect-- people to office who have no stomach for a fight. Thanks to that passivity, we’re on the verge of losing the country altogether.

But part of the reason I am starting this blog is because we have a historic chance to re-establish ourselves and re-define patriotism, or at least try to bring back some semblance of what we feel this country really is all about. I remember after the election of Barack Obama, hearing snide and smug-ass rednecks from coast to coast scream “I want my country back.”

In June, 2018 we have, in the White House, a person who sits there in no small part, due to Russian help. This “person” not only advocates tirelessly for Russia, but has an affinity for dictators from the Philippines to North Korea to Russia, while badmouthing not just our traditional allies, countries like Canada and Germany whose level of freedom now exceed our own.

What’s worse is the rest of the repub party actively covers for him, interfering with investigations and utterly failing to do their constitutionally-defined duties of oversight and accountability. If, and only if, they begin to act like an American party again, maybe I’ll start typing the -ican after their name and capitalizing. At this point, I feel they deserve neither. I can honestly say I never fell for their faux patriotic crap and knew it was always that their loyalties, such as they are, lie with ideology and power, and “eff” the good of the country.

But, in the same USA that now has an orangutan-ish strongman wanna-be as head of state, the opposition isn’t even a joke. The DC Democrats have no concept of messaging, they play by the rules of the 1950s, they’re feckless, ineffectual, have no backbone, no skill to form winning strategies and no fresh ideas. They are led in the House and the Senate by really old people who have no track record of recent successes, terrified of calling out the mob-boss-in-chief or his repub toadies across the aisle.

They may well pick up a lot of seats in the November elections, but they’ll be anti-trump, not pro-Democratic wins.

So, Mr. and Mrs. America, we've got some very consequential choices to make. We didn’t get to this place overnight – it has been building for long time, and it’ll take quite a of time to fix it.

Thomas Frank

Very few, if any of the ideas I will present are my own. I have a long list of inspirations, but just so we’re clear, I’ll list them here. Chris Hedges and Thomas Frank have evaluated our situation for many years and at this point, I find it very difficult to find fault with their analysis of where the Democratic Party and the American Left have gone wrong, and I heartily urge you to study their writings carefully.

As much as I can, I do listen to what little liberal radio there is. As much as I enjoy listening to people like Stephanie Miller and Randi Rhodes, they’re very much in the liberal mainstream and very much hooray-for-our-team types.



I gravitate more to the likes of Norman Goldman and Hal Sparks, who are on the right side but not afraid to call out people on the same side who might be blowing it, and because of that, seem to see the other side extra clearly as well. Perhaps my favorite, though he’s been quiet of late, is podcaster Dan Carlin, who is truly an outside-the-box thinker whom, I think, sees things in crystal clarity.

As much as I can, I’ll make suggestions on how we fight this fight, but I’ll be honest, I’m just a working schlub like so many of you. But I will always pass on the best ideas I hear, and of course, acknowledge the sources.

There’s a lot we’ll cover in coming weeks and months. This post is already far longer than I intended, but I want to have discussions on all the pressing matters of the day, be it inequality, be it race, be it the environment, or the increasing fragmentation of our country and the rising authoritarianism that accompanies it.

I will never claim to have the answers, but if I further the conversation, I’ll feel successful. And if we can bring even more voices into that conversation, we all stand a better chance of restoring the United States of America to the shining city on the hill that not only we need it to be, but that the entire free world needs it to be.

Dan Carlin

What can you do? Of course VOTE VOTE VOTE. If everybody, especially Democrats, had voted in November, 2016, what the Russians, James Comey, and Jill Stein did wouldn't have mattered. If you vote every election, as I do, good! Do you know people who are not voting? nag them, bribe them, flatter them, do whatever you have to do. Do you know shut-ins that have trouble getting to the polls? Offer to give them a ride.

And vote EVERY SINGLE ELECTION. If there's only a city or town charter change that doesn't affect you very much, still vote. Many died or risked their lives for you to have that right. If you're not going to use it, you might as well go to a national cemetery and squat on the grave of one of the brave men or women who gave everything so you could have that right.

We can see, repubs across the country are lying awake at night finding new and creative ways to supress the vote.

And let's clear something up right now -- it doesn't matter if you live in a deep blue or deep red state.

Alabama right now has a Democratic U.S. Senator because Democrats -- especially African-American women -- got off their asses and VOTED. If you live in a solid blue state, it makes a difference if your representatives have 85% support instead of 52%; conversely, if you live in a red state and the repub only has 55% support, it may at least make that person think about their votes, or even affect the vote if your rep is one of the half-dozen or so repubs that still have a conscience or still use the logic center in their brain.

Understand, we're in a fight, and the evil-doers intend to win. Just remember this quote from Bob Marley: "The bad people trying to make the world worse never take a day off, so why should I?"