US-hating-Flag-burning-Hamas-loving-anti-American protesters versus US Olympians, Veterans, active Duty military, first responders, the average American Joe and Jane…
One of the things you notice as you get older is the changes in society; how the society may react to different issues over time and how the average person feels about a particular issue. This can be true of political, or economic, issues, well economics have become rather political these days so I repeat myself.
I think, however, one of the more tempestuous issues we have been though is the concept of patriotism/civic responsibility (duty, honor, country). What exactly is it, how do we express it, and what do we think about it?
If you look at the recent polling (and honestly I don’t put much stock in polls.), it shows that the younger generation basically is not proud to be an American. Ok, they are not proud to be United States citizens. (Canada and Mexico, and the other states that exist within the sphere of North and South America, don’t like us to use the eponym “American” to refer to the United States, since there are after all other states within the Americas.)
But then I wonder who are those that they polled? Did they exclusively reach out only to the graduates of these lovely elite universities who think it is cool to sit in encampments supporting genocidal islamist rapist and murderers? Or do these pollsters go into the heartland of the United States and garner ideas and information from those who work with their hands, the working class?
Also, do they even bother to ask why are they not proud to be part of the United States? (And yes, I am also of the notion, that if you are not proud to live here, go live somewhere else. There are billions of people on this planet who would happily take your place.) When they ask is the US on the right course, do they specify what course they would like the US to take? Are they even asked? Or is the poll merely there to stoke clicks and headlines?
Of course, there could be any myriad of reasons for someone not being happy with the US. Anything from feeling their problems are ignored, to feeling they have no real future, to not seeing a way out of a morass into which they have been placed, to even thinking they are entitled to other people’s accomplishments.
The underlying issue is that hope seems lost. Hope is truly essential to happiness. Give people hope and they will build and create. (To that respect, the top happiest countries are in Scandinavia and then Israel. Yes, Israel, even in the midst of a existential war of extermination, is still one of the happiest places on Earth. What that indicates? God only knows.)
Now the question of the politics of envy (entitlement) does rear its ugly head in this regard. It is something to acknowledge and honestly, discuss, then reject because its a concept attached to decline of any society. (No, you are not entitled to someone else’s ingenuity. If they figured out how to work the system and became millionaires [billionaires], well they should reap the rewards of their genius.) If people cannot be rewarded for their hard work and ingenuity then a society stagnates and dies. People do need more than a pat on the back no matter what Star Trek says will happen in the future. We always did and we always will.
Now granted, there is also the need to help those who cannot help themselves. This is the social safety net that has developed over the decades since I was a child. (Yes the revamping and growing of civic responsibility and duty. Society can and does change for the better. ) Yet, unfortunately, there are still so many who fall through the cracks. Nothing is perfect. But all this means is that we need to see where the holes are and patch them. And of course, there will always be the criminals who will take advantage of societal largesse, but it doesn’t mean that we don’t help when help is needed. (Government prosecutes the thieves when they can, and when they are capable, and when they actually care.) Maybe what we actually need to do is to work on teaching people to fish rather than handing them a fish….to paraphrase an old adage.
But what strikes me the most is the dichotomy that you see when it comes to the civic reality that we live with.
Our pols, pundits, those that consider themselves our betters, tell us that we are polarized and that we are at each other’s throats. The movie Civil War was supposedly a hit because of this. (No offense to the actors in the movie, who did their best, but I found it boring, cliched and rather unimpressive. No reason for the war, no idea why it started, rather a diatribe of drivel, inanity, and nonsense.)
But if you look at what people actually think is the most important issues they face we actually agree on alot. There is so much more on which we agree than disagree.
But you would not know that from the news. Would you? What we see are protestors burning the American flag, defacing American monuments, calling for terrorist organizations to come murder, rape, and pillage America.
How many of these same channels showed the 4th of July parades, the fireworks and the people celebrating this nation’s founding?
How many of these same channels show protests where they flew the American flag?
How many of these same channels celebrate the good things that happen in this nation?
You know who is proud to be Americans? Our Olympic athletes. These young men and women, of the same hate-America elite school generation, are proudly wearing American emblems, holding up the American flag, putting hand over heart when the national anthem is played.
And while we have issues with the volunteer army (something that will actually be rectified if we go into a recession as it always has), the graduates of our military academies are the best and brightest and proudest to be part of this nation. In fact, there are always too many applicants vying for a place in any given class of students.
Something also forgotten, the average American gives to charity and also volunteers at very high rates. More so than any other country. Doing good is a civic duty and one that is a long honored tradition. It has actually increased, not decreased over the generations.
However, one of the problems I see as an older yet wiser individual (well wise in my own mind at least) is that we let too many people of the talking head variety tell us what we are supposed to be feeling and how we are supposed to handle these feelings. We do not allow ourselves the agency to which we are entitled as adults.
There is also something to be said for the good old fashioned idea of civic duty, learning the 3 Rs, and understanding the Constitution. There is something to be said for understanding that we are the inheritors of our founding fathers’ legacy, who created a nation where we are entitled to make our own decisions, whether they be right or wrong, and that it is the government that is constrained not the populace. (And no they weren’t perfect, so what? Show me a leader who ever was and I will show you someone who is not human.)
There is something to be said for having the right to live free unconstrained, just to the point of someone else’s nose….
Heck, if we weren’t truly proud to be Americans, if there were no civic duty, honor, pride and concern about country, would this upcoming election be so animated on both sides? I don’t think so.
What I think we all forget in the melee and firestorm is that we do all care about our country (minus a few misbegotten spoiled brats). We simply don’t always agree on where to go from this moment forward. But that’s ok. That doesn’t make you not proud to be an American. The fact that we yell and scream at each other is our strength not our weakness. That we can agree to disagree is our strength. No we don’t have to have only 1 outlook on which path to take. This right is exactly what is written in the Constitution when in the Bill of Rights it grants us freedom of speech and assembly and the right to petition our government.
So what do I think of civic duty, honor and country? What do we need to remember about our nation going forward?
I remember the words in Tony Blair’s autobiography. (You know him, the former Prime minister of the UK). He made a point when talking about how to judge a nation. You judge a nation by the number of people wanting to get into a country juxtaposed against the number of people wanting to leave a country. And that, he said, is why the US is still the greatest country on Earth.
And whatever you may think of the border issue or immigration, the reality is that there are thousands upon thousands of people risking life and limb (being trafficked by some of the most heinous people on the planet) to get to the United States any way they can. Thousands more wait for visas and jump through ridiculous hoops to enter this nation. Millions are willing to live here as a 4th caste because no matter how bad that is, it is still better than where they came from.
The United States is still the last best hope of planet Earth for millions upon millions around the globe. People who cherish freedom look to the US for guidance. I still remember Tiananmen Square. The chinese students created a facsimile of the Statue of Liberty before they were slaughtered by their own army for daring to want freedom. These young people died, so many decades ago, for what the US-hating-flag-burning- Hamas -loving students in the US take for granted.
Meanwhile, here is hoping that the American people remember to be truly thankful for where they live and the rights and privileges that they have, as over the next few months, they will be calling each other some really infantile names in the performance of their uniquely civic duty in picking the most powerful person on the planet to protect and guide democracy and freedom worldwide.