It’s been a while.
This entry – and the several to follow in the immediate future – will be a little more political in nature.
In the U.S., the 2022 midterm elections will be held in 10 days. Similar to many U.S. election cycles – particularly those in recent years – this one stands to be needlessly expensive, unbearably prolonged, and quite revealing.
It also stands to be the most important election cycle since 2016. I would argue – in fact – that every election cycle since 2016 has – in a unique way – been the most important in recent years.
All of that aside, this is a very short entry on patriotism, more specifically, faux patriotism, a particularly hollow, yet increasingly common set of behaviors exhibited by some with the intent of establishing criteria for what they believe constitutes real patriotism.
The reality is that it’s little more than a show of insecurity, an admission to a lack of identity that extends beyond basic citizenship, a status – I might add – shared by over 300 million people.
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It should come as little surprise that the U.S. – like many other countries – is currently in the midst of another identity crisis, and like those of the past, it’s almost entirely self-induced, seemingly done for its own sake. The current political climate – an ongoing blight on civility years in the making – has created new issues and worsened existing ones. The concept of our national identity happens to be one of the latter.
This “issue”, like many, is a distraction from accountability. It is a distraction to preserve a system that works for the few and ignores the many. It is a distraction to maintain influence despite broader unpopularity. By speaking to the fear within voters, manipulative politicians create the illusion of a threat, establish its sources, and – more often than not – proclaim themselves to be the solution. In this iteration, national identity is threatened by numerous sources (immigrants, the media, institutions, so on and so forth), and the solution is to ignore reality and trust in those that fabricate these threats to address them; civic extortion under the guise of representation.
Many elected officials and election-eligible candidates – styling themselves as “patriots” who will “save the country” – openly choose to ignore or downplay reality at best, and at worst, reject and attempt to substitute it with a fiction of their own making, a fiction with deleterious effects on supporters, opponents, and the country as a whole.
To what end, some may ask: power. Everything more, nothing less.
Unfortunately, for these politicians and “patriots” – now more than ever – people have witnessed the full degree of disconnect between themselves and many of those in office. We have witnessed historically unpopular decisions made by historically unpopular political figures and entities, a growing disconnect from reality amongst many self-proclaimed “patriots”, and a growing, genuine concern for the future of the country.
Voters have an opportunity to show these politicians what patriotism truly means.
It starts by disavowing those that actively jeopardize the security of the United States, by holding accountable those that placate to persons and entities – domestic and foreign – that damage the world standing of the United States, by rejecting ideology that demonizes and ‘others’ any persons within or entering the United States, and by exercising the rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States.
Vote by 11/08/2022.
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