I was all worked up in my mind earlier today - but I was driving.
I have a voice memo thing, so I suppose I should have thought about ranting into my cell phone for a few minutes, but it just didn't occur to me.
I was thinking about all the people who are against immigration and how they are all just big fucking (very)thinly-veiled racists. No wait, that wasn't what I was thinking about.
I was thinking about patriotism, and how fucking stupid it really is.
Now, don't go riding down to my house on your high horse with your torches, pitchforks and and many "friends" as you can muster quite yet. I'm not quite done infuriating you yet. I can do better.
So I think that there are some really good times for patriotism - or even referring to yourself as a "patriot".
1 - When you were one of the founding fathers. Paul Revere, if he felt so inclined, had total "I am the biggest fucking patriot EVER" rights. Step off, Sam Adams. (Okay, he can brag, too.)
2 - When you are rallying for or against a common cause, preferably a really evil one..like Nazis or New Coke (dated myself there, I am aware). Patriotism is necessary when you send people to war. While I don't often agree with war, sending grumpy, disenfranchised teenagers to blow shit up would be...well, like high school - largely ineffectual. They need the morale.
3 - Remembrance days. I acknowledge that many people gave their lives in service to this country, volunteer and otherwise. We should be remembering the wars that made our country a country, the wars that made the world a safer place, or just honoring the men who voluntarily go into harm's way under orders. They are braver than I, and deserve our support.
Times when claiming patriotism just makes you a huge fucking toolbag:
1 - Anytime you are trying to get elected to public office. That's when you gotta walk the walk, not talk the talk.
2 - Anytime you are referring to yourself in comparison to someone else - like your neighbors down the street who totally (accidentally) flew the flag in the rain and should be deported back to wherever the fuck they came from (Detroit). It's not a sliding scale - just like you can't say that you love your kids more than your neighbors just because you don't see them hug all the time. Maybe you're a more demonstrative person - then you will be more likely to express your love, your hate, your sexuality, and your patriotism - but it's no bigger than anyone else's and no one will ever whip it out so you can compare. It's one size fits all. No. No arguing.
3 - Anytime you feel the need to prove #2 incorrect by flying bigger or more numerous flags on your house, car, or person.
Here's my big one - and a totally killer segue-way (at least it was in my head, while I was driving earlier).
4 - Anytime you are thinking that you are special because you are a native-born American - and maybe using this special feeling to make emphatic arguments against immigration.
Now, normally people who make these arguments try to maintain that they are only referring to "illegal" immigrants, when in truth they are referring to "non-Caucasian" immigrants. No, being against immigration doesn't make you a racist, being a fucking racist makes you a racist.
To quote...something: "There, but for the grace of God, go I." - and also you, dickhead.
I can dumb this down for you:
You were lucky, yes LUCKY enough to have been born in this country. We might not be perfect, but there is very little chance here of being firebombed, run from your home to a refugee camp, or exterminated by an opposing tribe/religion/faction/whatever. For that, I am amazingly thankful, but absolutely not proud. Why would you be proud of a universal crap shoot? And why would you ever think that someone else's family wanting to come here is a horrible thing? (Or - even worse, acknowledge that they are coming from somewhere awful, but that you just don't want them in your backyard? Wow, you are a great person.)
Are you the grandfather of us all, mumbling about how we have more mouths to feed now?
Does Archie Bunker live on through you, complaining about how "they" are taking all of "our" jobs - which is not and never has been true, since "they" take jobs no one wants - for wages no American would lower themselves to?
Have you looked back to your own heritage to see when your people came to this country? There's a possibility that they weren't even running from a horrible existence, they just wanted a new life, a new opportunity, and they faced prejudice and hatred from the people who had been here for only 20-50 years before. On my father's side, my great-grandparents were off the boat from Sicily. That's really just not that long ago.
Let's just ignore the non-white elephant in the room - that the people you are upset about being here are really only the brown-skinned ones - and maybe we say that you're not upset about their skin color, but you're upset because they don't speak English.
Immigration can be funny that way.
Assuming that, like mine, your great-grandparents came from...some non-English speaking country, I am going to assume that they didn't speak English, either. But they enrolled their children in English-speaking schools, and those children helped them learn and from then on, each subsequent generation was either bilingual or English speaking. That's how that whole "melting" thing happens. As I recall, they talked about that melting pot thing in grade school, right after we glossed over the Native American situation (apologies).
So, either you are descended from a colonist (who were the first immigrants) or your people immigrated here later, or you are Native American (again, very sorry). Do you get to claim that you're a better patriot and a better American if you are descended from a colonist?
Well, of course you can, and it is sort of neat to think about, but I can tell you from readings I'm doing about colonial America right now that most of that time was not anything to be proud of, unless you were signing the Declaration. It makes you no better of an American, it just made you not want to be British. You wanted to escape intolerance, so you could be free to be intolerant against a different group of people. I digress.
Oh, here's that elephant again.
Sorry, the verdict is in and...you're just a racist. I'm sorry. I don't see anyone calling for the buildup of the Canadian border to keep all those French-speaking people out. There is nothing to back up your assertion that we should stop paying welfare for "illegal immigrants" - because you really mean "all immigrants" and "all welfare recipients" and that invariably leads to "brown people."
Presenting your black friend who went to Harvard Law School doesn't make it less true, it means that money means everything to you, and lots of money cures even the worst skin conditions.
How did I get from "patriotism is stupid" to "you're a racist"?
They are both predicated on the idea that one person is better than another, based solely on an accident of birth. A cosmic cutting of the cards. Blink your eyes, and you could have been a different color, born in a different country, speaking a different language - and yet you presume to tell someone born a different color, in a different country, speaking a different language - that they cannot share in your good fortune?
Once again, you're a great person.
Be thankful, by all means - that makes sense.
But proud? Not so much.
