THE PATRIOT GAME

In his first inaugural address in 1861, Abraham Lincoln said: “The mystic cords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the angels of our nature.”  Lincoln was talking about the Revolutionary War and our Founding Fathers, who understood that, in the phrase “United States of America,” the key word was “United.”

They were willing to risk their lives for a particular ideal.  Thomas Jefferson wrote of the exhilaration – he called it “public happiness” – of joining his comrades in a public declaration that the United States of America was not like Old World countries, where small tribes evolved by conquest into larger tribes and finally into nation-states, even as they continued to share (or impose) a common ethnic and religious identity.

Our Founding Fathers explicitly rejected the idea of America as a homogeneous “Volk.”  They built this nation on a philosophy rather than on membership in a tribe.  And the core of that philosophy was: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Inevitably, we’ve failed to live up to that philosophy, but it’s important to have it in writing as our national aspiration.

It’s possible that Donald Trump has heard of the Declaration of Independence, but he surely has no idea what it says.  And if someone on Fox News happened to quote the line about all men being created equal, Trump would claim that he could have written a better Declaration of Independence than Jefferson did.  For that matter, if someone told him about the Louisiana Purchase, he’d complain that Jefferson was a lousy negotiator, and threaten to renege on the deal unless France threw in an additional colony or two. 

Donald Trump isn’t the first demagogue to say, in effect, screw the better angels of our nature and screw the notion that all men are created equal.  But he’s the first one with the backing of a major foreign power and the acquiescence of a major political party.  Trump’s not a deep thinker, but he understands instinctively the concept of divide and conquer.  It worked for him in the Republican primaries, and with a lot of help from Vladimir Putin, it worked for him in the 2016 presidential election.  He’s betting everything that it will work for him against Robert Mueller.  The sad and scary thing is, he could be right.

Here’s another quote.  “Come all ye young rebels, and list while I sing. / For the love of one’s country is a terrible thing. / It banishes fear with the speed of a flame, / and it makes us all part of the patriot game.”

That’s the first verse of a song written by Dominic Behan, about the Irish Republican Army and its fight against British rule in the mid-1950s.  Behan despised the English, but he saw firsthand how easy it was to manipulate people caught up in patriotic fervor.

I’ve never thought of myself as patriotic.  “Last refuge of a scoundrel,” and all that.  I came of age in the Vietnam era, when Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon used patriotism to deflect criticism away from their strategic blunders.  I hit middle age at about the time George W. Bush used the same tactic in Iraq.  Just salute the flag and don’t ask questions. 

I just got back from a two-week silent (i.e., no talking) meditation retreat in a forest on an island in British Columbia, Canada.  It was, among other things, two weeks of total abstinence from the news of the world.  I didn’t do (much) talking, but I did do some reading, mostly about music. 

One thing I read was a long interview with music critic Greil Marcus, in which he said: “Patriotism in America, as I understand it, is a matter of suffering.  When the country fails to live up to its promises, or even actively betrays them.” 

Wait – patriotism doesn’t require chest thumping, testosterone-driven xenophobia?  It’s possible to be patriotic and also be outraged at the choices your country has made?  Well, now.  That changes everything.  Maybe it’s possible to play the patriot game rationally and constructively.

Every once in a while, I find myself wondering why I feel the urge to keep cranking out these essays two or three times every week.  The Marcus interview (which was published in 2012, long before Donald Trump was anything more than tabloid fodder) convinced me that the dismay and sense of impending doom I’ve felt since election night 2016 is actually patriotism.  How about that! 

Abraham Lincoln didn’t mention Trump by name, but in 1855, he wrote this prophetic statement: "Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid...I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty--to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."

The 2018 election is a crossroads for American democracy.  It’s time for progressives to reclaim patriotism and use it to reclaim our country.  If we don’t do it now, it’ll be an uphill climb in 2020.  And if we don’t do it in 2020, it’ll be too late.