People have accused me of being unpatriotic. Having read “In Support of the Troops…Who Frag,” or, more recently, “Against Helping (Bombing) Syria,” some people have questioned my loyalty to the United States of America.
They should. I have none. And neither should they.
What is “patriotism”? At base, it is a belief in loving, supporting, and defending one’s country. That’s what the dictionary tells us.
Now, accepting that definition, what does it mean? Well, first and foremost, to believe in loving, supporting and defending your country, you have to have one. Someone who is country-less cannot very well love a country they don’t have .
So, before I can be patriotic, I have to ask: Do I have a country?
I suppose if I had some sort of “ownership” over a country, that would make it mine. In the U.S., we have this pervasive mythology, almost a civil religion of sorts, the idea that all of us jointly “own” this country. Of the people, by the people, for the people. But I can’t imagine that anyone except the most unthinking rube could still be buying into that faerie tale when everything we see and hear and experience directly contradicts that mythology.
Is there anyone in the U.S. who is not part of the ruling elite who says, “This is running exactly the way I think it should…”? Or are there millions of people deeply disturbed by the conduct of a government that has long ago stopped consulting them and has, for some time, dictated the terms to them?
I am reminded of a protest sign I saw prior to the invasion of Iraq. It featured a picture of George Dubya with a voice bubble that said, “I don’t care what the American people think…They didn’t vote for me anyway.”
The U.S. government long ago stopped caring what we think. In that sense, it has “gone rogue,” has assumed the right to operate without consent of the ruled. That being the case, the United States is no longer out country—it is a country under the control of complete strangers who reserve the right to act like your enemy if it suits them, and reserves the right to treat you like their enemy if it suits them.
Can you feel like an “owner” of a country where you wake up every day with a shotgun in your face? Where the Apache attack helicopter (you paid for) has its cannons pointed at you?
I can’t. All mythology aside, I have to face the reality that the entity declaring itself my government is not “my” country. My relationship to that entity is not voluntary, not consentual, but is one of forced obedience.
We are reduced to slaves.
I don’t believe that slaves owe any allegiance to a master. I believe slaves owe allegiance to themselves and to their own liberation, by whatever means necessary. But that’s me.
At any rate, if we do not “own” a country, if we are, for all practical purposes, excluded from the joint ownership of the United States, then it is no more “our” country than is Bolivia or Iran or Belgium. It’s just geographically closer to us and excercises its power over us in a more direct way—which, reasonably, is all the more reason to hate it rather than love it, if you think about it objectively. Yes, Bolivia and Iran and Belgium do exist, but they aren’t in your face and in your wallet if you’re in the U.S.
But the U.S. is.
Important to point out, I think: We’re not working with “What I believe,” and, therefore, everyone is entitled to their own beliefs and all beliefs are equal; what I’m describing is a factual truism. I’m not declaring that the United States is not my country; the United States, through its actions, declared that a long time ago.
It makes no real effort to hide its animosity and distrust of its subjects. We are enemies to be spied on, controlled, manipulated and neutralized.
I cannot “love,” nor “support,” nor “defend” anything that spies on me, controls me, manipulates me, and neutralizes me. Anyone reasonable could only despise such a creature as that, not pledge allegiance to it.
One can make the false argument, I suppose, that the U.S. government isn’t “so bad”–that is to say, that a lot of other governments treat people worse than the U.S. generally treats us. This is a kind of relativity argument—that the U.S. looks good relative to other governments. But, this is a false argument. First, we have no way of knowing for certain what it’s like to live in any other country under any other regime because we don’t live there and we don’t know. Second, it’s really irrelevant anyway, because to say the U.S. is not treating us terribly is to say the U.S. is not treating us terribly yet. But if we accept that the U.S. operates without our consent, and we are subjects in a ruler-and-subject relationship, then any argument that the U.S. treats its citizens better than some other regime treats its citizens is nothing more than an observation that we haven’t yet provoked a really serious atrocity—not that a serious atrocity isn’t possible. And we know that in any situation where the government operates without the consent of the people, not only are serious atrocities possible, not only are they probable, but on a long enough time line, they are inevitable.
It’s probably worth pointing out that of all the millions and millions of Germans who lived under the Third Reich, only a small percentage were jailed, killed, or tossed into concentration camps. So, the same argument that “the government’s not so bad” could be (and probably was) used by the vast majority of Germans, just as it is now used by the vast majority of Americans.
Relating all this back to the question of patriotism, do I—or, of any of us– “have” a “country” to “love,” “support,” or “defend”? At the very least, I would have to say that if this is “my” country, it certainly doesn’t seem to know it.
Having said all that, all of the traits that should define a “good American”–honesty, integirty, courage, loyalty, kindness, responsibility—all these virtues militate against “loving” and “supporting” and “defending” the United States. Given the conduct of the United States, it is not possible for freedom-loving, honest, life-affirming, conscientious people to love, support or defend the United States. Good, decent people cannot support things such as genocide or the purposeful and deliberate murder of children.
After the bombing of Iraq, U.S. government documents were declassified, detailing a well-thought-out plan to bomb water-treatment facilities (a crime under international law) because the resultant lack of water would cause dehydration, which kills children much faster than adults; all the dead children would then provoke the Iraqi people to ruse up against the ruling regime.
The U.S. government deliberately murdered children. All tolled, the U.S. murdered more than 500,000 children in a 10-year period, a death toll that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said was acceptable.
To love and support and defend the United States is to love and support and defend child murder, wholesale child murder. And that’s just one event. If you look at the conduct of the U.S. in world affairs, that atrocity is not an exception to the rule. (In fact, the language and perception is so utterly twisted that, in 2008, in the presidential elections, candidate John McCain, who participated as a cog in the U.S. death machine in Southeast Asia, disparaged opposing candidate Barack Obama for Obama’s “associations” with Bill Ayers—a man who sacrificed in order to end the illegal war. The American conception of things is so upside-down that a mass murderer candidate questioned the integrity of someone who opposed wanton violence by calling him a terrorist.)
No one with vaulted American virtues can love or support or defend the indefensible. No one can love or support or defend a ruling elite that has highjacked our world imposed an agenda to the benefit of a few and to the injury of many—all maintained through forced and the treat of force.
Allegiance to tyrants is never patriotism. It is treason against conscience.
