What does it mean to love one\u2019s country?\u00a0<\/p>\n
I found myself asking this question upon reading an article in the New York Times last week: Trump\u2019s America: Aggrieved and Adoring Voices From Inside the Presidential Bubble. I was taken in by the accompanying photograph: two women decked out in head-to-toe USA paraphernalia. They look like rabid fans at a football game or pop concert\u2014patriotism as Beatlemania. But is that love? Or is that something else?\u00a0<\/p>\n
When it comes to other forms of love\u2014for family, friends, and especially romantic partners\u2014we subject our bonds to endless scrutiny. In early adolescence, borrowing narratives from novels, TV shows, and celebrity culture, we understand love mainly through fantasy. Then, as we gain experience and grow into adults, ideally, our understanding evolves. Relationships, we realize, are \u201cnothing like the movies.\u201d For better or worse, love, like the people who engender it, is mutable, mysterious,\u00a0and rife with contradiction. Gradually, we let go of the fantasies of youth. People are flawed, we realize. Love isn\u2019t easy. But there\u2019s immense value in that. Love rooted in reality is richer and more rewarding. Love rooted in reality is, well, real.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And yet, when it comes to love for country\u2014as the photo of these two women suggests\u2014nuance is supposed to go out the window. There\u2019s a rigidity to love for America in America\u2014a resistance to growth and complexity. Patriotism, we are told, should be simple, unwavering, and pure, free of criticism and dissent\u2014much more like loving an object (or objectified person) than an actual human being.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But does that make sense? A country, after all, is comprised of human beings: it\u2019s an organism, not a \u201cthing.\u201d As such, the love we feel cannot, on principle, be simple. As in marriage, love for country is dynamic, meant to be \u201cworked on.\u201d As citizens, it is crucial we acknowledge and accept that complexity\u2014not pretend it isn\u2019t there. To do otherwise is to remain in a sort of suspended adolescence\u2014to prefer an idea over reality.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And that isn\u2019t patriotism. It\u2019s nationalism.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s dive further into this distinction. Merriam Webster defines patriotism as, \u201clove for or devotion to one\u2019s country,\u201d and nationalism as, \u201cloyalty and devotion to a country.\u201d The definitions are deceptively similar, and one might be tempted to see them as virtually interchangeable. But look closer. \u201cLove\u201d appears once, as an ingredient integral to patriotism, not nationalism. In love\u2019s stead, nationalism requires loyalty. While loyalty is an action, and relatively straightforward, love is a feeling (as well as an action), with infinite varieties and expressions. Famously, the Greeks have six words for six distinct categories of it\u2014loyalty gets all of one.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Which underscores the initial point: patriotism, like love, is complex. Nationalism is not. Patriotism tolerates\u2014even requires\u2014criticism. Nationalism does not. Patriotism demands maturity. Nationalism does not. Patriotism is akin to relating to another human being, acknowledging their myriad flaws and idiosyncrasies, the good and the bad, the dark and the light\u2014while nationalism is akin to worshipping a Justin Bieber poster on your closet door, what Junot Diaz describes as, \u201ca shadow blasted in the wall.\u201d It doesn\u2019t interact with you. It doesn\u2019t exist or change or challenge. It\u2019s an idea, not a reality. When you love an idea over reality, then you\u2019re a groupie, not a partner.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nAnd yet, many prefer it, seduced by the \u201call or nothing,\u201d thinking country-singer Merle Haggard exemplified in his wildly popular 1970 song, \u201cThe Fightin\u2019 Side of Me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nBut consider these lyrics through a relationship lens.\u00a0In \u201cHarpin\u2019 on the wars we fight,\u201d Haggard personifies the dismissive husband telling his wife to, \u201cdrop it, already.\u201d Hardly the model for a healthy partnership.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to another New York Times article:<\/p>\n
\nBut what he is describing here is lack of loyalty, not love. Does anyone, even his most ardent supporter, believe Trump capable of mature love?\u00a0 His relationships are transactional, not transformative, and objectifying, not personal. Why should his brand of patriotism be different?<\/p>\n
America is far from perfect. The country was founded on slavery and genocide. Our economy depends on the exploitation and oppression of minorities. We are one of the richest countries in the world, yet millions toil in poverty. Our public education system is tragic: ineffective, underfunded, and (increasingly) unsafe. We quake in fear of \u201cterrorists\u201d and \u201ccaravans\u201d while homegrown killers invade our places of worship, concert venues, dance halls, and schools. Our healthcare system is a joke. We self-medicate with spending, trolling, opiates, and fast food.<\/p>\n
America is deeply, overwhelmingly flawed.<\/p>\n
America is also wonderful.<\/p>\n
America is Route 66 and purple mountains majesty, baseball games and surfing, fireworks, and Mardi Gras. America is Bruce Springsteen and Elvis, Billie Holliday and Tupac, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King. It\u2019s the Statue of Liberty and Watts Towers and bald eagles and rodeos and Halloween. It\u2019s light bulbs and telephones and the polio vaccine, the constitution and cat memes. It\u2019s all the pride-generating stuff that fills our hearts\u2014the reasons we fell in love with the damn place to begin with.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But to only see that side: that isn\u2019t love. It\u2019s fantasy. It\u2019s back to Bieber, idealizing a two-dimensional image\u00a0instead of an actual human being. It\u2019s not patriotism. It\u2019s Americamania.<\/p>\n
Only through acknowledging America\u2019s flaws\u2014whether that mean taking a knee at a football game, cornering Senators in elevators, protesting injustice, or, yes, criticizing the president\u2014do we engage with the country as it really is, and allow ourselves to experience \u201clove for country\u201d in its truest and finest sense: powerful, complicated, messy, expansive, frustrating, rewarding, and\u2014above all\u2014real.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What does it mean to love one\u2019s country?\u00a0 I found myself asking this question upon reading an article in the New York Times last week: Trump\u2019s America: Aggrieved and Adoring Voices From Inside the Presidential Bubble. I was taken in by the accompanying photograph: two women decked out in head-to-toe USA paraphernalia. They look like…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}