Reclaiming Patriotism

 The sickening imagery of 1/6 has led many people from the center left to become deeply uncomfortable with patriotic symbols and expressions of patriotism in general. Sickening images like Hair Furor literally humping the flag have soiled the garment in many people's eyes.

Matt Yglesias has been trying to resurrect left of center patriotism, especially as the Far Right has moved to embrace fascist movements abroad like Viktor Orban's Hungary. As American culture moves continually leftward, the Right seems willing to abandon American values like democracy. They simultaneously wrap themselves in the flag and shit all over the founding documents and ideals of the country.

The Rightist attacks on what they have vaguely labelled "Critical Race Theory" (really anything that accurately describes the racist past of this country) are part of this last gasp attempt to preserve the White Ethnonationalist state that prevailed largely until the 1960s. It began with the 1619 Project, which accurately placed both African Americans and White Supremacy in their proper historical context. If you grew up with shitty, inaccurate, white washed history, it was a shock (and likely an unwelcome one) to read that essay.

Except you probably DIDN'T read that essay. You read someone criticizing it. There was one sentence that I thought was bad about the Revolution, but what was striking about the essay was how the author's father remained intensely patriotic, even in the face of Jim Crow. If there is a fascinating truth to the American story, it has been the steadfast patriotism of many groups that have traditionally been excluded at times from American power. Immigrants have been targeted well before Trump came along, and yet they continue to come here and become our most devoted citizens. Black Americans are certainly familiar with America's history of racism, yet they (mostly) refuse to give up on America.

My worry is that the one group that has never really bought into the promise of America are Leftists, and their ideas are increasingly gaining traction beyond their usual grip on Academia. (This is not something I worry about from Joe Biden.)

If the Right wants to embrace anti-American regimes like Orban's, Bolsonaro's and Erdogan's, then they are ceding the field to the Center Left.

What I find weird is that "Doomers" who see 1930s Germany around every corner in America are so blind to our own country's history. I'm reading Fawn Brodie's biography of Thaddeus Stevens and the politics of the 1840s-1870s were more fraught, violent and repressive than anything the GQP dreams of today. 

If you're worried about attacks on democracy in America, there are other examples than freaking Hitler. America's commitment to its ideal has always been a conflict, an argument, not a settled case.

The proper attitude for the center left should be to reclaim American patriotism along the lines that Obama did: focusing on "in order to build a more perfect union." It is the fight to make America what it claims to be that is the truest expression of patriotism. Not coddling Viktor Orban or claiming against all available evidence that America is the only or even most racist country in the world.