I get lots of email. Most of it is Democratic fund raising efforts for various candidates throughout the nation. Then there’s the “the thing” – I’m turning sixty-five (Holy S**T) in September. I had no idea how many different ways you can “buy” Medicare coverage, from the Auto Club to my house insurance provider, but now they’ve all sent me “offers I can’t refuse”. Somehow, I once had the idea that Medicare would save me money on health insurance. Now I understand – in my case it will cost me an additional $1800 a year (though my existing insurance will cover more of my costs – so if I have a “bad” year, I’ll be ahead). It’s better than paying more for private insurance without it – I think.
But I managed to get in on some “Right-wing” mailing lists as well. Those emails don’t come to Martin, usually it’s Jane or Dale (yeah – I don’t know why), but it’s full throated craziness. There’s the emails from Jim Jordan and even “the turtle” McConnell. And there’s the new ones from something called “GOPUSA”. For a while thought it was some Chinese site – GOPU-SA, but then I re-read the title and got it. I’m not a regular reader, but I occasionally dip in to see what “the other side” is saying.
Thirteen Long Minutes
Which is really the long way around to say that I found this “right-wing-nut” guy named Bobby Eberle (didn’t he race in NASCAR in the late sixties?). He has a You-Tube broadcast, aptly named “The Thirteen Minute News Hour”. I listened to him for the first time today while tending to the barbecue ribs I was smoking. His Fifth of July broadcast was about “how the radical left is ‘Un-proud’ to be American”. The basis of his claim? Interviews with young women, many of them of color, asking how proud they were to be American. And ALL the ones he showed said they weren’t “proud to be American”. So there is the proof – I guess.
His point was that it is the fault of the “leftist teachers and media” that these Americans aren’t proud of America. He blamed “critical race theory”. And he said that the Fourth of July is supposed to be a day of national unity – and if you’re not “united” in the “Proud to be an American” stand – well then there’s something wrong with you.
From the Beginning
The phrase “Proud to be an American” evokes memories of the weeks after 9-11, perhaps the last time when Americans were united in the face of crisis. It’s the beginning of the refrain from the Lee Greenwood song, “God Bless the USA”. It was the right song at the right moment, but ultimately it was co-opted by the political right, and finally by the Trump Campaign. So if you are “Un-Proud” to be an American – then you back the terrorists of 9-11? That’s the illogic progression.
Bobby Eberle can’t get past his own belief in the infallibility of America. Any questioning of the orthodoxy and “mythology” of 1950’s 8th Grade American History class is tantamount to treason. The thing that folks like Bobby don’t get is that even the Founder Fathers, Authors of the Constitution, recognized not only their own flaws, but the flaws of the nation they were creating. They put it right up front in the preamble of the Constitution, right after We the People: …in order to form a more perfect Union…” It wasn’t perfect from the start, and it’s not perfect now.
More Perfect
And it’s not hard to see how many Americans today aren’t so “proud” of America. They see an America where George Floyd was murdered on video, and hundreds of thousands of Americans were sacrificed to COVID for politics. Their America includes a nation that ignores climate change, puts Black men in jail, and allows institutions to trap folks in debt. They see all of the imperfections in our “perfect” Union, and recognize there’s a lot to not be proud of.
In the language of addiction there is a term: enabling. It means to accept and even encourage behaviors that makes the addiction worse. False pride that denies flaws enables those flaws to continue or even get worse, like addiction. And that means more and more folks get “left out” of another Americanism – the American Dream.
Mr. Eberle confuses pride with loyalty. You can be loyal to a nation, willing to work to improve that nation, trying to make it “More Perfect”, without pride. Pride is in accomplishment, the results. And many Americans feel that our nation has not lived up to its promise, and that our current outcomes don’t include them.
That doesn’t mean they aren’t “loyal” to the United States. But it does mean they don’t claim a false pride in a nation that fails to include them in its promise.
“Un-proud” has an Orwellian “doublespeak” sound to it, like a lot of propaganda has.