“They love their country in good times and bad, and they are always proud of America.” That is a quote from Sarah Palin’s convention speech. It is typical of the type of dribble she sprinkled throughout the speech – a whoop for small town pride there, a shout out to folks who were American enough to marry their high school sweet heart here.
Of course, the terrifying reality is that rhetoric like this works. It more than works – it is required in political discourse. The bad guys are always those in Washington and the liberal elitists, and the virtuous are always the simple, honest folk in the American heartland. This shared assumption is so pervasive and so deeply held throughout this country, that it makes intelligent political discourse basically impossible.*
To illustrate the problem with a detailed case: being proud of your country. What does this mean exactly? I’ve always wondered this. Am I proud of America? Well, I don’t know. I can’t see how I could be. Not because America has been an imperialist, racist regime for much of its history – surely it has but, so has pretty much every other Western country in the world. To pick on America for that as though it is something special is the domain of the ideological left who put about as much critical thought into their analysis as George Bush – the Michael Moores of the world, to be short.
I’m not “proud” of America because I don’t see how it could constitute a single thing to be proud of. It’s a country, for goodness sake, and a democratic one at that. This means that it has a million different people pursuing a million different interests. It is composed of several subcultures and geographical regions – New York and Georgia are two totally different worlds. If that is not complicated enough, its history has some euphoric moments, and some horrific ones. We do great evil in the world, we do great good. We are white, black, Indian, Native American, Muslim and Jewish. And I just can’t roll that up into one holistic entity called “America” and state whether or not I’m proud of it.
But this is a complicated understanding of America that a populace which is actively opposed to analytical thinking would not accept. Because “the people” are always right in the end, right? It’s the elitist politicians and academics who are going to ruin our simple (read “stupid”) values and American wholesomeness (read “ignorance”) right? Right? Because we love being stupid and ignorant. We feel so great about ourselves when we are stupid and ignorant. Because we can’t handle thinking about history, or racism, or imperialism, or the fact that most of the things we believe in are constructions pumped up with a bunch of hallow rhetoric.
No. That would be devastating. So let’s just wave some more flags, talk about how we will always be proud of America, and we’ll hang the fags before we let them marry.
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* I want to note that the Democrats are usually as guilty of this as the Republicans. Just the other day Obama was accusing McCain of being “out of touch” with the American people and what they are going through. Now, regardless of whether or not this is true, I don’t buy the premise that this is a bad thing. “Getting in touch” with “real” Americans would help you define what the problems are, but it won’t help you solve them. Why? Because most Americans don’t have a fucking clue. And they don’t have a fucking clue because they either don’t have the time to investigate it, or, more likely, their solutions are based on the shallow, thoughtless political narratives I discussed through the rest of this.
Thus, I hate it when all politicians do the “but you don’t really understand Americans” game. Why is that a legitimate issue in trying to solve policy problems? You’re actually probably better off if you aren’t in touch with most Americans. That will make it easier to speak and act as intelligently as you should.
