Signs of Patriotism

I was recently asked whether Liberals’ vocal opposition to President Donald Trump is unpatriotic. Actually, the question was, “Why are Liberals so unpatriotic?” The questioner made the argument that not “getting behind” President Trump was especially dangerous in this time of war. The questioner argued that Liberals’ criticism is putting the country and its military in greater danger, even going so far as to suggest that Liberals’ criticism is encouraging terrorists to attack the U.S.

This was my response:

Christopher Hemphill said, “Although poles apart ideologically, they are both unashamed of their patriotism.” Most fundamentally, patriotism is a feeling of strong attachment to one’s country— not to a particular politician, a particular political party, or particular culture within that country. We are all, in some sense, idealists. We have a vision for what our country could/should be. We have notions of what needs to change and what we need to hold on to. The “United States of America” means different things to different Americans.

With an understanding of what “patriotism” actually means, we can proceed to consider how those of a particular political ideology might or might not be patriots. But, first, let’s consider the “concerns.”

• Criticizing a president during a war: There has been no U.S. war in which our freedom of speech, including our right to oppose the positions taken by our government or our president, has not been our highest right. That right is established in the very first amendment to the U.S. Constitution: There can be no law “... abridging the freedom of speech....” Did Republicans criticize President Obama for eight years about his approach to the existing Afghanistan and Iraq Wars? Yes, they did. Were they being unpatriotic? No; they were exercising their First Amendment rights. It is an important sign of the health of a nation when it allows, listens to, and considers diverse opinions and ideas, especially in times of severe adversity such as war.
  
• Putting the U.S. and its military in danger: What puts the U.S. in danger is not citizen criticisms of its president, legislators, or judiciary. Did Conservatives’ criticism of U.S. strategies in 2008–2016 put the U.S. in additional danger? Did those criticisms put our military in further danger? No. It is the Commander-in-Chief who puts our military forces “in harm's way.” It is our generals, in executing a war, whose strategies and tactics have the greatest impact on the safety of our troops.
  
• Encouraging terrorists to attack: Currently, the U.S. is dealing with a few kinds of terrorists: Islamic extremists, White Nationalists, and Russian operatives are probably the big three.

• Islamic extremists: On September 11, 2001, Islamic extremists coordinated attacks on three locations in the United States: two planes headed toward the World Trade Center in New York City, one plane headed toward the Pentagon, and one plane commandeered to hit the Capitol Building or White House. This terrorism did not happen because some Americans were critical of President G. W. Bush. Since then, acts of Islamic terrorism on U.S. soil have been by radicalized individuals. One can theorize about what caused them to become radicalized, but we know it is not because, say, Conservatives were criticizing President Obama.

• White Nationalists: Hate crimes against Muslims, Jews, Blacks, Latinos, and LGBTQ people have increased within the U.S. as White Nationalist groups announced that they have a political figure to look up to, one who would support their latent aspiration to make the U.S. a White-dominant, Christian nation (by some interpretation of what Christianity means— an interpretation that a lot of Christians find abhorrent). Was it criticism of their favorite candidate, Donald Trump, that made extremists begin to damage synagogues, mosques, churches that serve Black communities, social places for members of the LGBTQ community? Of course not! If there is no loud criticism of these hate crimes and the anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-Black, (etc.) rhetoric coming from politicians (in particular) and voters, these White Nationalists will feel even more empowered. It is our patriotic duty-- whether we’re Conservatives or Liberals-- to condemn such domestic terrorism.

• Russian Operatives: There are many kinds of terrorism. But one kind we often don’t think about is cyber-terrorism. When a foreign government or its operatives attempt to destabilize another country’s way of governing, the results have the potential to be far more damaging to a nation than an AK-47 going off in a school yard or a fire set in place of worship. During the 2016 presidential and congressional campaigns, Russians took advantage of the existing hostilities between Liberals and Conservatives to undermine those federal elections. They took advantage of a predisposition of so many Americans to believe anything bad about one of the candidates, including a whole lot of stuff that simply was not true. Easy work for the Russians. They just made stuff up and trafficked in innuendos. Many Americans were so eager to believe the nonsense that they didn’t even stop to find the actual facts in order to determine whether any of the social media posts were true. The Russians took advantage, in particular, of Conservatives’ criticism of President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton to further sow seeds of distrust about the U.S. elections. But, should we blame the Conservatives for this? Of course not! Dissent is at the foundation of what it means to be an American. There will always be tyrants who try to use our freedom of speech and freedom of thought against us. However, we should not blame Conservatives who were critical of President Obama or Secretary of State Clinton for Russia’s motivation to conduct political cyber-terrorism.
  
• Standing united behind the president: In 2008, President Obama won the popular vote by a margin of 52.9% to Senator McCain’s 45.7%. He won the Electoral College vote by 365 to 173. In other words, neither the popular vote nor the Electoral College vote was close. Was it unpatriotic for those who did not believe in President Obama’s vision for the U.S. to criticize that vision? Of course not! It was their patriotic duty to speak their minds.
  
  Now we have President Trump in office. Secretary Clinton obtained 48.2% of the popular vote to President Trump’s 46.1%. The Electoral College gave President Trump a 304 to 227 (for Secretary Clinton) win. Here we have a popular election in which one candidate won by almost 3,000,000 popular votes while another candidate dominated the Electoral College vote. Is it unpatriotic for those who do not support President Trump’s vision for the U.S. to criticize his vision or his behavior in office? Of course not! It is their patriotic duty to speak their minds.
  

While I’ve mostly used examples of the ways in which Conservatives’ criticisms and complaints are examples of patriotism, you can turn that around to understand that Liberals’ criticisms and complaints are also examples of patriotism, that this exercise of our First Amendment rights does not cause terrorist attacks or harm to U.S. troops. It is what our U.S. troops fight for every time a president places them in harms’ way: a fight for our Constitution (and all its Amendments) and our way of life.

Freedom of Speech: us versus them

It was not that long ago that the U.S. electorate was not so polarized. There were very clear and significant differences between the two major political parties, but there was also an assumption that the job of an elected official was to understand other perspectives and to come up with solutions that edged the government closer to that elected official’s long-term goal while incorporating elements of “common ground” goals and negotiating compromises so that all parties would be able to support the resulting legislation.

This particular election cycle has become such a shouting match among certain candidates and voters that even if one wanted to understand diverse perspectives, those perspectives would be difficult to hear amidst the din of demonizing rhetoric.

Today, it appears to be to a politician’s advantage to demonize an opponent and even to instill fear in voters. Inspiring fear pays at the ballot box. Placing blame on anyone other than the voter pays too: Victims! Rise up against those who want to harm you! The psychological notion of “the other” has been at play in societies since before the time of human beings: What’s different and unfamiliar is to be feared. To maintain that fear in contemporary society we must focus on what is different, magnify the potential danger, and ignore all there is that is the same or quite similar. We now see those fears manifested within the populace as anger, echoing a few candidates’ visible, audible display of that emotion.

Because noticing differences is hardwired in our brains, it is the job of the society to remind us of what we have in common and why it’s in our best interest to cooperate (at least to some extent). When those with power in a society choose to fan fear-flames instead, “followers” instincts about fearing “the other” are magnified rather than tempered. Fight or flight? Follow the leader and fight against our fellow citizens. Winner take all.

In the U.S. mythology, people are entitled to their points of view, to what they consider to be priorities, to how they make decisions (through religion, science, deductive logic, emotional appeal, conspiracy theories, simple adoption of the opinions of others, a coin toss). But we also— consciously or not— believe that we are entitled to judge others’ views, priorities, and decision-making processes from within our own value system and approaches to problem-defining and -solving. This amounts to believing that (other) people are “entitled” to have “ignorant, un-American” opinions based on “lies.” While this kind of judgment takes a certain amount of hubris in many situations, it’s nearly impossible to avoid judging another’s opinions against our own hardened beliefs.

How far can we realistically be expected to bend in respecting someone else’s point of view? Even if we philosophically believe that others are entitled to believe what they believe, I think there are limits that most of us still have beyond which we simply can’t respect that person’s beliefs. And if we are convinced that all hope will be lost if another’s beliefs prevail, a certain desperation takes hold that leads to not even believing someone else is entitled to express those beliefs.

Ideally, we would neither shrug our shoulders and say, “You’re entitled to believe whatever you want” (then walk away) nor become enraged and say, “Believe what I believe because you obviously don’t know what you’re talking about.” We’d insist on sitting together, without rage, and “seek first to understand then to be understood.” But you know what? People actually have gotten angry with me for suggesting that rage isn’t our best option as a society right now and claim that listening to someone with another point of view will just magnify their rage-- as if they have no control over their own emotional responses.

Because we all know that yelling at someone and making highly derogatory characterizations of him/her is not a convincing way to get that person to embrace different beliefs, it is clear to me that, right now, there is no desire to actually convince anyone to change their beliefs. I guess we're entitled to work that hard to prevent consensus, but from my perspective it's difficult to accept that we can't do better, perhaps quelling that din and dampening those flames with the goal of bringing that U.S. myth closer to reality.