Patriot Games

By A. Cahan
Board of Editors

The juxtaposition of coverage of Ukrainians fighting for the right to live against relentless Russian war criminals with stories about idiots in trucks diving in circles around the DC Beltway has gotten us to thinking about patriotism, real and performative.

The real thing, now on display from Lviv to Kharkhiv, needs no further encomiums from us.  Instead, let's take a look at performance of patriotism on the home front.

If you still have cable TV (and why?), you can savor the continuing spectacle of highly-paid cable news gasbags on a channel claiming to speak for “patriots” now shilling for American adversary and war criminal Vlad the Invader Putin, while at the same time falsely smearing the United States Government's deft and firm response, especially when carried out by other than white men (like the Vice President). 

Source: Media Matters for America

What kind of American “news” operation would pass off obvious Russian propaganda as real information and subvert U.S. Government efforts to respond to Russian aggression?

 Is it the same operation that spends its time cloaking its disloyal sentiments in ostentatious displays of its supposed patriotism and endless condemnation of those who do not share its white-supremacist perspective as lacking in patriotism?

Fun fact: it’s the exact same operation, owned and controlled by naturalized expatriate American Rupert Murdoch. And it operates under the superintendence of one Viet Dinh, its chief legal and policy officer, whom this country took in when his family fled Vietnam after the collapse of its US-backed government in 1975. Dinh has been a powerful figure in conservative Republican circles for two decades, rising to prominence by, in the aftermath of Bush’s 9/11 debacle, the well-loathed “PATRIOT” Act. There’s that word again. 

For decades the Republican Party and its media outlets, like Fox “News”, have used patriotism as a cudgel to bash anyone who disagrees with their agenda, which encompasses white supremacy, tax cuts for the rich, suffering for the poor, destruction of the environment, hatred of those with different gender identities or preferences and until recently squandering American lives and treasure in pointless foreign wars from Vietnam to Afghanistan.

Speaking of Vietnam, who remembers the attack on anti-war protesters on the grounds of patriotism?  (In those days the confusion may have been excusable in part because for a generation Americans had seen their armed forces as fighting for liberty, as was indeed the case in World War II).

But from 1946 through today, no one has yet to articulate a reason to fight and die in Vietnam. Those who pointed out this inescapable fact were smeared as “unpatriotic.”

Here's only one example from Rhodes Scholar Dean Rusk (with bipartisan support in the next column) from The New York Times, April 17, 1967:

To show unwavering support for the pointless slaughter in Vietnam, supposed loyal Americans slapped this sticker on their bumpers to make the point that those who wanted to save Americans (and Vietnamese) from the bloody business were unpatriotic and un-American:

The dirty business of white Republicans deciding who was and who wasn't a patriot based on their support for Republican policies, no matter how ridiculous or contrary to American interests (we'll get to the Iraq War in a minute), has become so deeply ingrained in American thought that we don't even notice it anymore.

But why?

Why is the right-wing disinformation channel on Sirius branded as
 

?  Breitbart? Patriotic?  That anti-Semitic fact-free sewer:

Source: Media Matters for America

What's patriotic about racism and bigotry? They may be as American as apple pie and grabbing 'em by the pussy, but that doesn't mean they're patriotic.  

And yet down the decades generations of white Republicans have draped their violence and hatred in the American flag. Here's one example of Nixon-incited mob violence (lest you think that Republicans were full of sweetness and light prior to 2017):

The New York Times, May 9, 1970.

Then as now the victims were blamed for provoking their attackers.

A mere 33 years later, those who opposed George W. Bush's senseless invasion of Iraq (perhaps as a bad precedent) were similarly branded as disloyal.  Ask the Dixie Chicks:

[Early in 2003] as the country was barreling toward war with Iraq,.. Natalie Maines, lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, stood in front of a packed house in London and said:

“Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence. And we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.”

 It didn’t matter that the evidence to invade Iraq was questionable or that Maines later apologized. The damage was done, and one of the most popular acts in the country became its most hated. Its music was banned from radio, CDs were trashed by bulldozers, and one band member’s home was vandalized. Maines introduced “Soldier” with a call for peace, but she would soon find that the group needed metal detectors installed at entrances to shows on its stateside tour because of death threats.

Patriots on parade

It was a classic case of freedom of speech meeting the irrational repercussions of that speech....If anything, Maines and company should be viewed as prophets, not pariahs, considering that the weapons of mass destruction the Bush administration led the country to believe Saddam Hussein was housing were never found. Or that since 2006, the majority of Americans have felt the invasion was a mistake to begin with.

And yet, despite all that we now know, the Chicks remain ostracized in the world they came from, as if they were the ones who presented false information to the United Nations Security Council; as if they waged a war Tony Blair’s right-hand man now says “cannot be justified”; as if the misguided attack were their fault.

Before the group was set to do an interview with Diane Sawyer in late April 2003 – with hopes of stopping the public relations bleeding – they questioned why they needed to grovel and beg for Bush’s forgiveness.... And somehow, folks remain mad at the Chicks.

Last week, in marking the 10-year anniversary of Maines’ comments, Country Music Television asked fans whether the Chicks should be forgiven, and more than a third of responders said “no.”

The violence, the ostracism, the bullying, the threats – amazing that the m.o. of white “patriots” never changes, culminating in a patriotic attack on the U.S. Capitol with the goal of overthrowing the lawful government of the United States.

Since the real patriots are Democrats, why not embrace the flag (figuratively, not literally, unlike the Tangerine-Faced Russian-owned Grifter)?  I'd slap these babies on my bumper, wouldn't you?

Here's what we should tell the white bigots, including the ones with Rupert Murdoch's arm shoved up their blowholes, who still claim to decide for all who's a patriot and who isn't:

If you don't support a tolerant, democratic America that respects others, welcomes diversity, protects the rule of law, supports the efforts of free people everywhere to resist Russian aggression, demands that its leaders obey the law and set an example of honesty and integrity, and tries to save America from environmental catastrophe and its citizens from a pandemic close to claiming 1,000,000 lives, then you're not a patriot.  If you can't love what America really is when it tries to live up to its own values, then you can leave it and move someplace more congenial to your hate-addled views, like Vladimir Putin's colon.  

If you need directions on how to get there, just take your big rig down to the Capital Beltway and keep driving.  As far as we're concerned, for-f***in'-ever.