1968 changed everything for me as a "citizen" and "patriot." I turned 18, registered for the draft and my dad, a career USAF officer, came home from a year in Viet Nam. King and Kennedy were assassinated. The Tet Offensive nearly finished the Americans in Nam. At the Democratic Convention, Chicago's Mayor Daly turned his "pigs" on the peaceful demonstrators and they beat the shit out of those kids. Allen Ginsberg's chanting did not help. I saw for myself what I was worth, even as a young white w/all the "privilege" that comes from that (although that word wasn't used for decades yet): I was a trigger finger or a punk to be beat down. Since then I have refused to say the "Pledge" or sing the "national anthem," and if I can get away with it, I won't even stand for that bloody cloth. My father and I rarely spoke again until my mother died in 2020, when we finally found our way back to each other. But every morning he put his flag out and every evening he took it in. I learned to respect what it meant to him, but nothing more to this day.
I was 16 when JFK was murdered. JFK, MLK, RFK... Kent State. Four dead in my home state of O-hi-o. On May 4, 1970, I was in my barracks room in Officers Training School at Lackland Air Force base near San Antonio when the news came over my transistor radio... and that was it... that was the end... the end of my allegiance to all governments.
I’m a dual citizen and was raised without religion. Even as a young kid, I felt incredibly awkward about holding my hand over my heart and pledging to one of countries I felt close to, especially most of my family lived in the other. (Let’s not even go into my befuddlement about the insertion of religion into that pledge.) I stopped holding my hand over my heart during the Pledge of Allegiance and National Anthem since I was about 10.
That’s about how I feel now – standing silently, hands to my sides… more than slightly concerned that there are so others who are so staunchly entrenched in loving an institution that doesn’t love them even remotely in the same way, or even can.
I hadn't even thought about the pledge of allegiance for decades until they did one at the start of this weird Kiwanis Club thing I did a presentation at last year. I was dumbfounded. I didn't say it, but listened closely in a way I hadn't in a long time. So bizarre.
"Patriotism" is a complicated thing. Being raised with the history we were taught and the propaganda we were fed, I was definitely conditioned to believe in American exceptionalism. At the same time, as a youth I was keenly aware of the civil rights struggle, and later of the gruesomeness of America's involvement in Viet Nam. That realization led me to reevaluate US history and to ultimately see the imperialist, colonialist, racist foundation of this nation. Yet, I'm still torn. I hate the trends I see, and feel discouraged that nothing much has really changed in 400 years. And at the same time I belong to this place. My grandparents escaped here with the belief that America held something great that no other country had. Much as I want to believe we can make a difference to make America what it has always represented itself to be, I am not feeling in my heart that that is true anymore. What does the flag mean to me? Lies.
I could not tell you that it means anything to me. It doesn't represent the land - the land represents itself. It doesn't represent the people - I couldn't even tell you what an American is. It doesn't represent an ideal - our national ethos seems to a fractured isolationism that seeks to sap us of our community's strength. It seems to mean things to others, and that is fine. It just doesn't bring me much of anything.
"Utter collapse truly feels imminent." It feels to me as if people in other parts of the world are watching in pity as our country crumbles under the rule of plutocrats who prioritize profits above all. We now have the same number of people hospitalized with Covid as we did one year ago during the pre-vaccine surge. But, hey, our economy has recovered. I have little hope that we can recover from the triple threat of the pandemic, climate disasters, and governmental breakdown. I fear it has gone too far for the people to change the course. Plus, my neighbors and family members seem to like the way it is heading. I wonder if the world will come to our aid or if we'll take the rest of the world down with us. You say it's not too late, and I want to believe that. But hope seems naive at this point.
I am the grandchild of European immigrants. I most closely identify with my Czech grandmother who at the age of 16 arrived at Ellis Island with only a small suitcase of belongings to her name, and the hope for a better life. She embraced America, learned to speak English, achieved citizenship, .and never missed an opportunity to tell all of her grandchildren how fortunate they were to be born in this country. My grandmother’s descendants include teachers, doctors, nurses, farmers, and entrepreneurs. Her American Dream was realized. This is what the flag meant to her. On the other side of the ocean, her five brothers who remained in Czechoslovakia, all perished in the World Wars.
"I have zero sense of patriotism or nationalist pride when it comes to being a citizen of the United States. I had no more control of what country I was born into than I did the color of my hair or eyes. I don’t care any more or less for American lives than I do for the lives of people anywhere else, which means I care a lot."
Thank you for putting into words something I've felt in my bones for a long time. I remember feeling weird as a kid about the whole Pledge of Allegiance thing (thank god my own kids don't have to deal with that performative bullshit) and putting my hand over my heart for the National Anthem before sporting events. It didn't stir anything in me then. Now it stirs nothing in me but a deep skepticism (at best).
"We have the government we have allowed to happen. We have chosen this." So very true, unfortunately. Absolutely correct that Democrats have poor messaging, squabble amongst themselves, work for personal gain as much as the Right. They run from the word Socialism instead of explaining it: fire stations? EMTs? libraries? schools? All socialist in nature, where we pool our resources to provide a service for the general population. They allow the Right to conflate socialism with Communism, echoes of Venezuela and Russia (an oligarchy) embedding in the ears of the ignorantly credulous.
This means the true Left has no voice... the whisper they may attempt is drowned out by Fox News's commentary on violence in Portland and Seattle, where BLM becomes Antifa becomes a violent mob coming for our guns and our money.
In hindsight, one of the reasons 2020 felt so difficult was because it killed off any latent patriotism I might’ve had. And it’s not like I was a pro-America nut beforehand, either.
But it’s like… before, I knew on an *intellectual* level that the country didn’t care about me. Not me and my family in the particular, and definitely not Black people, or women, on a structural level.
Then 2020 went mask off and revealed a rabid, damn near unstoppable hatred at America’s core. I guess more than anything I’m surprised. At how so many people can die - unfathomable numbers of lives ruined, honestly - and it will ultimately mean nothing. The machine chugs along in perpetual motion and I don’t think Americans value ourselves, or each other, enough to stop it.
My father thinks that once COVID starts killing children en masse, the pandemic will finally be dealt with. The nice white moms will raise hell about their kids being lost, and the government will be forced to pull its head out of its ass. And I understand his logic. I do. Everyone loves a Save the Childen campaign.
But - and I mean no disrespect to the current and future dead - I don’t think the spectre of imperiled white babies is enough to save us this time. And that’s saying something.
And on a philosophical level - is patriotism a virtue in all instances, or only if you’re a citizen of a supposedly “good” country? Because we seem to hate patriots from the Global South and throughout the Middle East. We prop up defectors from Cuba and China at every turn. Like everything else, American patriotism is supposed to be a culture-flattening net positive.
All that being said, I really like The Star-Spangled Banner as a song. I think it’s pretty. Ignore the context and it’s lovely.
"I guess more than anything I’m surprised. At how so many people can die - unfathomable numbers of lives ruined, honestly - and it will ultimately mean nothing. The machine chugs along in perpetual motion and I don’t think Americans value ourselves, or each other, enough to stop it." This, exactly. I was surprised too. I'm STILL surprised, every day.
This is a beautiful comment, reflects so much of what I feel and have trouble articulating. It does feel like too many are willing to sacrifice almost anything and anyone to “keep the economy going.”
I keep trying to type a response and then deleting it because I'm not really saying anything. So a brief story instead.
A couple years ago, before Covid, my son did a brief stint on the swim team. At the very first meet we went to (a scream-filled yelling-parent chaotic nightmare I hope to never experience again) they played the Star-Spangled Banner. Everyone stood and put their hands over their hearts. I stood but no hand on the heart, and a guy in the circle of people across from me glared at me furiously the whole time. I'm afraid the flag long ago came to represent to me the intentions of people who want to threaten, destroy, and oppress others. Maybe this guy was a veteran and was outraged at my disrespect, I don't know. What I do know is that he wanted to make me feel his anger, and his anger was directed at me purely because I didn't "respect the flag" in the way he felt I should.
The weirdest similar situation I've experienced was the year all the Kaepernick stuff was going on. We remained seated for the anthem at both the Arlee rodeo and Indian Days in Browning. No one said anything but it felt a bit hostile ... then it was over.
This is a topic that has been bouncing around inside my cranium for a couple of years. First of all, I can't imagine how anyone with your family heritage, or a Japanese, or black heritage can look at the American flag without a reflexive clench of the stomach muscles.
I used to be proud of our flag. And I confess, that at times, I can still tear up when I see it waving in the wind, presiding over some place or activity that seems quintessentially American. But I've noticed that in the past decade or so that my feelings about the flag have morphed. At nearly 70, I've traveled a lot of backcountry roads in the west. I've motored through many a small, rural enclave, and I used to feel quite at home in them. I certainly never felt unsafe driving through a small community like Emmett, Idaho.
But that was before the American flag was so frequently planted on one side of a mud-spattered, over-sized-tire pickup that has obviously been plowing through and tearing up mud that it should have avoided, while on the other side of said pickup waved something puzzling like a Don't-Tread-On-Me flag. That was before ranch entrances were stubbled with gargantuan, wind-whipped, rain and mud spattered American flags beside even larger Trump flags. When I was growing up in rural Wyoming, ranchers had their hands full with haying, calving, branding, and fixing fence. There was no time or energy to fuss about American flags. Of course it was also a time when flag etiquette was important. No flag spent the night in the dark. No flag shivered under a thunderstorm. Flying a flag took commitment. Now the American flag can be defaced with the face of a political candidate, or with alternate color stripes indicating allegiance to god knows what. And now, I spend no time, no more money than absolutely necessary, in the small rural towns that come between me and the backcountry. I no longer feel safe driving the backroads of Idaho--not because of the deplorable condition of the roads themselves, but because of the people, mostly men, whom I might encounter.
I refuse to arm myself because that would indicate I'd become one of them. But if I fail to return from one of my infamous trips and my body is later recovered, a victim of some foul, white privileged male, I want my demise to serve as a reminder of just how low and debased America has become. More often than not, the sight of the American flag makes my stomach clench in anxiety and despair.
Linda, you have summed up perfectly how these pickup drivers and their ilk have dragged the flag down into the muck. How they've associated it with people like Trump. I too remember when one didn't see flags except for those days when they were reverently brought out for some holiday. Now they're just another bullshit way people choose to brand themselves. It's gross.
I've long felt that patriotism and reverence for the flag was absurd but since actually reckoning with the foundational genocide of colonization and slavery, it seems so much more grotesque than that to me now. As far as the Democratic Party, I think the song "Smiling Faces Sometimes" by The Undisputed Truth sums them up pretty well.
"Smiling faces sometimes
Pretend to be your friend
Smiling faces show no traces
Of the evil that lurks within (can you dig it?)
Smiling faces, smiling faces, sometimes
They don't tell the truth
Smiling faces, smiling faces tell lies and I got proof"
1968 changed everything for me as a "citizen" and "patriot." I turned 18, registered for the draft and my dad, a career USAF officer, came home from a year in Viet Nam. King and Kennedy were assassinated. The Tet Offensive nearly finished the Americans in Nam. At the Democratic Convention, Chicago's Mayor Daly turned his "pigs" on the peaceful demonstrators and they beat the shit out of those kids. Allen Ginsberg's chanting did not help. I saw for myself what I was worth, even as a young white w/all the "privilege" that comes from that (although that word wasn't used for decades yet): I was a trigger finger or a punk to be beat down. Since then I have refused to say the "Pledge" or sing the "national anthem," and if I can get away with it, I won't even stand for that bloody cloth. My father and I rarely spoke again until my mother died in 2020, when we finally found our way back to each other. But every morning he put his flag out and every evening he took it in. I learned to respect what it meant to him, but nothing more to this day.
"I learned to respect what it meant to him" is important and a wonderful way to put it. Thank you, Wayne, for this story and your insight.
I was 16 when JFK was murdered. JFK, MLK, RFK... Kent State. Four dead in my home state of O-hi-o. On May 4, 1970, I was in my barracks room in Officers Training School at Lackland Air Force base near San Antonio when the news came over my transistor radio... and that was it... that was the end... the end of my allegiance to all governments.
Powerful, Greg. Thank you.
I’m a dual citizen and was raised without religion. Even as a young kid, I felt incredibly awkward about holding my hand over my heart and pledging to one of countries I felt close to, especially most of my family lived in the other. (Let’s not even go into my befuddlement about the insertion of religion into that pledge.) I stopped holding my hand over my heart during the Pledge of Allegiance and National Anthem since I was about 10.
That’s about how I feel now – standing silently, hands to my sides… more than slightly concerned that there are so others who are so staunchly entrenched in loving an institution that doesn’t love them even remotely in the same way, or even can.
I hadn't even thought about the pledge of allegiance for decades until they did one at the start of this weird Kiwanis Club thing I did a presentation at last year. I was dumbfounded. I didn't say it, but listened closely in a way I hadn't in a long time. So bizarre.
"Patriotism" is a complicated thing. Being raised with the history we were taught and the propaganda we were fed, I was definitely conditioned to believe in American exceptionalism. At the same time, as a youth I was keenly aware of the civil rights struggle, and later of the gruesomeness of America's involvement in Viet Nam. That realization led me to reevaluate US history and to ultimately see the imperialist, colonialist, racist foundation of this nation. Yet, I'm still torn. I hate the trends I see, and feel discouraged that nothing much has really changed in 400 years. And at the same time I belong to this place. My grandparents escaped here with the belief that America held something great that no other country had. Much as I want to believe we can make a difference to make America what it has always represented itself to be, I am not feeling in my heart that that is true anymore. What does the flag mean to me? Lies.
I lived with that conditioning for a long time too. It is a hard thing to overcome.
I could not tell you that it means anything to me. It doesn't represent the land - the land represents itself. It doesn't represent the people - I couldn't even tell you what an American is. It doesn't represent an ideal - our national ethos seems to a fractured isolationism that seeks to sap us of our community's strength. It seems to mean things to others, and that is fine. It just doesn't bring me much of anything.
Excellent.
Maybe saying that it doesn't speak to me nor does it speak for me would be the most succinct way to phrase it.
The internet is where succinct goes to die, friend.
Agreed, however, I try to keep my comment writing like my soccer shorts - long enough to cover the subject but short enough to keep it interesting.
"Utter collapse truly feels imminent." It feels to me as if people in other parts of the world are watching in pity as our country crumbles under the rule of plutocrats who prioritize profits above all. We now have the same number of people hospitalized with Covid as we did one year ago during the pre-vaccine surge. But, hey, our economy has recovered. I have little hope that we can recover from the triple threat of the pandemic, climate disasters, and governmental breakdown. I fear it has gone too far for the people to change the course. Plus, my neighbors and family members seem to like the way it is heading. I wonder if the world will come to our aid or if we'll take the rest of the world down with us. You say it's not too late, and I want to believe that. But hope seems naive at this point.
Naive, perhaps, especially if it is hope without action. But I don't know what the alternative is. Or I do, and like it even less.
Hi Chris,
I am the grandchild of European immigrants. I most closely identify with my Czech grandmother who at the age of 16 arrived at Ellis Island with only a small suitcase of belongings to her name, and the hope for a better life. She embraced America, learned to speak English, achieved citizenship, .and never missed an opportunity to tell all of her grandchildren how fortunate they were to be born in this country. My grandmother’s descendants include teachers, doctors, nurses, farmers, and entrepreneurs. Her American Dream was realized. This is what the flag meant to her. On the other side of the ocean, her five brothers who remained in Czechoslovakia, all perished in the World Wars.
Sincerely,
Melissa
"I have zero sense of patriotism or nationalist pride when it comes to being a citizen of the United States. I had no more control of what country I was born into than I did the color of my hair or eyes. I don’t care any more or less for American lives than I do for the lives of people anywhere else, which means I care a lot."
Thank you for putting into words something I've felt in my bones for a long time. I remember feeling weird as a kid about the whole Pledge of Allegiance thing (thank god my own kids don't have to deal with that performative bullshit) and putting my hand over my heart for the National Anthem before sporting events. It didn't stir anything in me then. Now it stirs nothing in me but a deep skepticism (at best).
I feel like all the hand-over-heart stuff and all that is really just bizarre.
"We have the government we have allowed to happen. We have chosen this." So very true, unfortunately. Absolutely correct that Democrats have poor messaging, squabble amongst themselves, work for personal gain as much as the Right. They run from the word Socialism instead of explaining it: fire stations? EMTs? libraries? schools? All socialist in nature, where we pool our resources to provide a service for the general population. They allow the Right to conflate socialism with Communism, echoes of Venezuela and Russia (an oligarchy) embedding in the ears of the ignorantly credulous.
This means the true Left has no voice... the whisper they may attempt is drowned out by Fox News's commentary on violence in Portland and Seattle, where BLM becomes Antifa becomes a violent mob coming for our guns and our money.
Dispiriting, to say the very least.
In hindsight, one of the reasons 2020 felt so difficult was because it killed off any latent patriotism I might’ve had. And it’s not like I was a pro-America nut beforehand, either.
But it’s like… before, I knew on an *intellectual* level that the country didn’t care about me. Not me and my family in the particular, and definitely not Black people, or women, on a structural level.
Then 2020 went mask off and revealed a rabid, damn near unstoppable hatred at America’s core. I guess more than anything I’m surprised. At how so many people can die - unfathomable numbers of lives ruined, honestly - and it will ultimately mean nothing. The machine chugs along in perpetual motion and I don’t think Americans value ourselves, or each other, enough to stop it.
My father thinks that once COVID starts killing children en masse, the pandemic will finally be dealt with. The nice white moms will raise hell about their kids being lost, and the government will be forced to pull its head out of its ass. And I understand his logic. I do. Everyone loves a Save the Childen campaign.
But - and I mean no disrespect to the current and future dead - I don’t think the spectre of imperiled white babies is enough to save us this time. And that’s saying something.
And on a philosophical level - is patriotism a virtue in all instances, or only if you’re a citizen of a supposedly “good” country? Because we seem to hate patriots from the Global South and throughout the Middle East. We prop up defectors from Cuba and China at every turn. Like everything else, American patriotism is supposed to be a culture-flattening net positive.
All that being said, I really like The Star-Spangled Banner as a song. I think it’s pretty. Ignore the context and it’s lovely.
"I guess more than anything I’m surprised. At how so many people can die - unfathomable numbers of lives ruined, honestly - and it will ultimately mean nothing. The machine chugs along in perpetual motion and I don’t think Americans value ourselves, or each other, enough to stop it." This, exactly. I was surprised too. I'm STILL surprised, every day.
This is a beautiful comment, reflects so much of what I feel and have trouble articulating. It does feel like too many are willing to sacrifice almost anything and anyone to “keep the economy going.”
I keep trying to type a response and then deleting it because I'm not really saying anything. So a brief story instead.
A couple years ago, before Covid, my son did a brief stint on the swim team. At the very first meet we went to (a scream-filled yelling-parent chaotic nightmare I hope to never experience again) they played the Star-Spangled Banner. Everyone stood and put their hands over their hearts. I stood but no hand on the heart, and a guy in the circle of people across from me glared at me furiously the whole time. I'm afraid the flag long ago came to represent to me the intentions of people who want to threaten, destroy, and oppress others. Maybe this guy was a veteran and was outraged at my disrespect, I don't know. What I do know is that he wanted to make me feel his anger, and his anger was directed at me purely because I didn't "respect the flag" in the way he felt I should.
The weirdest similar situation I've experienced was the year all the Kaepernick stuff was going on. We remained seated for the anthem at both the Arlee rodeo and Indian Days in Browning. No one said anything but it felt a bit hostile ... then it was over.
The hostility feeling is real.
Did you see Ezra Klein's column today? Similar themes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/09/opinion/trump-bannon-trumpism-democracy.html
That's a great piece. Thanks for sharing it.
This is a topic that has been bouncing around inside my cranium for a couple of years. First of all, I can't imagine how anyone with your family heritage, or a Japanese, or black heritage can look at the American flag without a reflexive clench of the stomach muscles.
I used to be proud of our flag. And I confess, that at times, I can still tear up when I see it waving in the wind, presiding over some place or activity that seems quintessentially American. But I've noticed that in the past decade or so that my feelings about the flag have morphed. At nearly 70, I've traveled a lot of backcountry roads in the west. I've motored through many a small, rural enclave, and I used to feel quite at home in them. I certainly never felt unsafe driving through a small community like Emmett, Idaho.
But that was before the American flag was so frequently planted on one side of a mud-spattered, over-sized-tire pickup that has obviously been plowing through and tearing up mud that it should have avoided, while on the other side of said pickup waved something puzzling like a Don't-Tread-On-Me flag. That was before ranch entrances were stubbled with gargantuan, wind-whipped, rain and mud spattered American flags beside even larger Trump flags. When I was growing up in rural Wyoming, ranchers had their hands full with haying, calving, branding, and fixing fence. There was no time or energy to fuss about American flags. Of course it was also a time when flag etiquette was important. No flag spent the night in the dark. No flag shivered under a thunderstorm. Flying a flag took commitment. Now the American flag can be defaced with the face of a political candidate, or with alternate color stripes indicating allegiance to god knows what. And now, I spend no time, no more money than absolutely necessary, in the small rural towns that come between me and the backcountry. I no longer feel safe driving the backroads of Idaho--not because of the deplorable condition of the roads themselves, but because of the people, mostly men, whom I might encounter.
I refuse to arm myself because that would indicate I'd become one of them. But if I fail to return from one of my infamous trips and my body is later recovered, a victim of some foul, white privileged male, I want my demise to serve as a reminder of just how low and debased America has become. More often than not, the sight of the American flag makes my stomach clench in anxiety and despair.
Linda, you have summed up perfectly how these pickup drivers and their ilk have dragged the flag down into the muck. How they've associated it with people like Trump. I too remember when one didn't see flags except for those days when they were reverently brought out for some holiday. Now they're just another bullshit way people choose to brand themselves. It's gross.
I've long felt that patriotism and reverence for the flag was absurd but since actually reckoning with the foundational genocide of colonization and slavery, it seems so much more grotesque than that to me now. As far as the Democratic Party, I think the song "Smiling Faces Sometimes" by The Undisputed Truth sums them up pretty well.
"Smiling faces sometimes
Pretend to be your friend
Smiling faces show no traces
Of the evil that lurks within (can you dig it?)
Smiling faces, smiling faces, sometimes
They don't tell the truth
Smiling faces, smiling faces tell lies and I got proof"
"Don't let the handshake and the smile fool ya..."
Thanks, Greg.
"No one ever rolled a 7 on a 20-sider and was immediately excited about it, trust me."
*high-fives you in Gamer for this sentence*
Best analogy of the US's political parties I've read in a long time.