Patiotism
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
'Patriotism is the love of one's country. Nationalism is the hatred of everybody else's'
So where does this leave a people who love their own country and ignore everyone else's?
Patriotism is often benign. Stupid and ill informed but often benign. ill informed, willfully and deliberately incorrect but benign. Just as a cancer can be benign. It may not be actually harmful but it certainly isn't useful either.
To love one's own country is fine, like appreciating a good wine. It's when you begin to say your country is better than anyone else's that the problems begin. Only an idiot would say that a claret is 'better' than a bordeaux (or vice versa). These things are not objective and to be deliberately and proudly lacking in objectivity is stupid.
So many people see patriotism simply as an appreciation of the positive aspects of one's homeland. It isn't that. In my experience patriotism must contain some exclusive element or at least a deliberate irrationality.
At the moment we see posters in shop windows...'proud to be an American'. Why, exactly are you proud to be an American? I'm afraid on this matter I can't go along with the liberal tolerant crowd. To be proud to be of one race or nationality involves feeling that being that is better than being of another. And that's not only stupid it's dangerous. It's the seed of racism and one element in the armoury of the warmonger. If you can fool a people into believing a war for an oil pipeline is actually a war against terrorism then you might get public backing to pinpoint foreign targets but if you've got a population asleep beneath the blanket of patriotism, if people consciously believe that America and Americans are somehow different and better and more human than Afghans then you're far more likely to obtain that people's approval for carpet bombing. Not since the first world war has love of one's country been enough to start a war on its own but it still sure does help. Bin Laden lumps all Americans together because they voted in Bush. Apart from being inaccurate that is inverted patriotism, the mindless hatred of others, which comes from the thought free acceptance and belief in a warped form of religion. And this belief that the love of Allah justifies the murder of the civilians of another country is blind and stupid just as the belief that the love of America is sufficient excuse to kill the populace of Afghanistan.
I love my country. I do, there are elements of it that are unequalled anywhere in the world but I don't think it better than any other country and I'm not proud that I was born on that sticky out part of the Earth's crust rather than this piece or the other piece. North America has natural beauty but there are higher mountains in Tibet, more beautiful beaches in Brazil, more splendid deserts in Africa. And there are more democratic and forward thinking governments in a large number of countries. Some Americans are friendly people but so are some Spaniards, some Irish, some Iraqis. America is founded on a splendid constitution but the government is not run according to it and even if it were those freedoms embodied within it are insupportable in a modern technological society. Too often those who trumpet patriotism and the freedoms afforded by the constitution are using those freedoms to make a quick buck at the expense of the rest of us. Their patriotism is the love of this country’s forests which they cut down for timber to make the money to buy a 12 mpg SUV which they drive through the desert they love so and so they can use the ski lifts to zip up and slide down the mountains they also love. This is certainly true of the current 'president' (incidentally George, some of us still remember that you got less votes than your opponent and that, legally entitled or not, if you cared a whit for democracy or at least fair play you'd have stepped aside and called for a re-election). His despicable use of the September 11th tragedy to start a war that has bolstered his ratings to higher even than any real president is disgusting but pretty much par for the course and perhaps unavoidable in a democracy. What is unusual and perhaps worse is his use of this war of his to push through a bill saying that we must dig for oil in the parts of America of which we can, right now, be justly proud. Now that really should make a patriots blood boil.
He implies that if we dig here we could be free of the yolk of the middle east. How much oil would these areas provide? 2% of Americas needs and by needs I mean wants. The Saudis must be quaking in their boots. Is it a coincidence that Bush is from a family of oil tycoons and that large sections of his administration and lots of his friends stand to be the ones who profit from such digging? The rest of us stand to lose. That's freedom, folks. Freedom for anyone to make a buck at the expense of everyone else.
The freedom to pursue happiness made sense and was a wonderful cause before the days of chain saws, derricks and those stupid, stupid trucks.
And patriotism is used subtly as mind control. When even the more liberal radio stations such as NPR refer to the plane crash in Queens as ‘another body blow for America’ that leads us, through the use of oft repeated semantics, to view America as a whole, a single entity. Well, it’s not. It’s made up of many small, disparate and often desperate groups. And this view of us all as united is propaganda plain and simple. It teaches us that it could be worse, we could have been in the WTC when it went down and so we have to accept that Boeing are going to get a huge handout and not give a penny to those thousands of employees it has decided to lay off because we’re American and we all have to pull together. When NPR asks ‘what can we do as Americans?’ it is incredibly easy to accept that and see it as a perfectly acceptable term but it also has its level of social control behind it. We are being persuaded that above all we are American. That is just accepted as a given. But I’m a member of the working class, a socialist, even a punk rock fan but above all a human being before I’m an American.
Society through the media has whipped up the concept of ‘family values’ to the point where it is simply accepted as another word for ‘good’, they now use the word family in much the same way as the Nazis used the word ‘Aryan’ and now they’re elevating the word ‘American’ to the same status. Well, it doesn’t wash with me. The family is a source of love and trust but it is also a home for disgust, incest and abuse, a source of misery as well as a source of happiness. America is a beautiful country with many friendly people and a rich artistic history but it is also the home of trash, cultural imperialism, war mongering, pomposity, hypocrisy and intolerance. ‘And the home of the free’ doesn’t include the Native people does it?
Patriotism and this view that a blow against the people of New York is somehow a bigger blow than a blow against the people of Kabul leads us to acts of such blatant racism and we still don’t see it. Every advertisement and banner ad implores us to give to the American Red Cross. DON’T give to the American Red Cross. The people injured and made homeless, jobless and lacking a family member in New York will have some assistance from the government. Those in the same situation in Afghanistan will not. So don’t give to the insular American Red Cross, give to Oxfam (WWW. ), an international relief agency which will use your money to help anyone, anywhere in the world, wherever it is most needed.
America is the least tolerant of the democracy's I've been to, excepting perhaps Turkey. Patriotism here is equated with approving without question anything your leaders choose to do. Which is ironic bearing in mind the rebels held up as the lands great heroes of the past. I suppose that's the way of all superpowers. Stalin continued to encourage the worship of Lenin even though Lenin certainly would have urged the Soviet people to rise and string Stalin up from the nearest lamp post. That way you can, surprisingly, fool the idiots amongst your populace that Lenin or Jefferson would have approved your every move no mater how destructive or clearly self motivated.
Of course, for many these facts simply show that patriotism's name has been taken in vain and that it is still a valid emotion if used wisely. Well, no. Patriotism is illogical and even when it is not destructive it's still not constructive. Patriots don't have a monopoly on wanting to make this country a better place to live any more than Christians have a monopoly on brotherly love or compassion however much they may claim it. The loss of patriotism wouldn't result in more laissez-faire destruction of the nation any more than the loss of Christianity would result in a less caring people. If anything the reverse is true. The stars and stripes are not transparent. Too many people are blinded by them. Putting eight or ten flags on your Dodge CatCrusher doesn't make it all right. That's not doing your bit. Lenin did his bit for his country, Stalin did not but Stalin had more flags. Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. It is a part of the propaganda of war as surely as is heroism. Kids should be taught to work for their families, friends, communities and the people of the world. Work for people not for countries.
No, patriotism isn't for me and may I suggest it shouldn't be for you. Love America for its beauty and the tolerance and friendliness of its people and let's stop submerging and inverting those qualities in a sea of flags, bombs and gas guzzling behemoths.
