I’ve never quite understood patriotism. It’s not that I dislike America or that I’m unhappy to be American, but I’ve never felt the need to express it through a $5 Old Navy flag t-shirt (after the age of 8 or so). I find the USA USA chants that break out during every sporting event (even those where both teams are from the states) almost as cringeworthy as that awful, sappy “Proud to be an American” song.
What’s especially weird to me is that the people who are most invested in this kind of materialistic patriotism are often the ones who don’t understand how others may not benefit from the “land of the free” as much as they do. The people who say they “don’t see race” and then take seriously the idea of the President’s birth certificate being a forgery. The people who would try to stop a female Senator from preventing a bill restricting womens’ rights because of “the sanctity of life” but would, in the same week, justify the 500th death penalty execution in the state since 1982. The people who put up signs in their businesses reading “This is America; speak English” but don’t know enough about their country to know it does not have an official language. The people who would keep secret a program spying on peoples’ internet activities (but only the foreign-seeming ones) but who would tell those who complain that if you’re not doing anything wrong you have nothing to hide.
thebestpossibletime 