Unfortunately, that banner isn’t misleading.
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Nor with an equivalent past and present record of destruction (and theft).
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We had a protest a fews years back at NIKE world HQ for their continuing production of shirts and gear with both the R*dskins and Cleveland Chief caricatures. They released a statement to the effect that “well, we have contractual obligations blah blah blah”. It’s all-pervasive.
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I’ve heard from people that it’s not a peripheral point at all, but proof positive of city-wide racism. Except the Celtics were among the first teams to break the color barrier in the NBA, including the first black head coach. Things are not always as cut-and-dry as they seem.
“The Soiling of Old Glory” is another example, it more accurately represents a defeat for the bigots: busing and desegregation continued, the victim in the photo (Ted Landsmark) still lives in Boston and is respected, whereas the flag-wielding guy moved to the suburbs and lives in relative anonymity (at least until journalists come around to remind him of the photo.) I can’t imagine any city councilor fomenting that kind of hatred now (of course stranger things have happened.)
I think the problem with declaring “racism is as American as baseball” is that it demands we think of America as the sum total of its sins, and ignores the ideals of the Constitution. It feeds those who love saying “liberals hate America” when I think liberals love America, love the ideal of America, we understand what the Constitution means on a human, moral level. What we hate is that the country hasn’t been able to live up to that ideal.
Of course I say this and I’m one of the biggest pessimists around. But I don’t want to be.
I suspect that the people who hung that banner would be somewhat offended to be described as “liberals”. Liberalism is a center-right ideology.
There’s also a bit of a problem in that the USA’s tendency towards constitutional idolatry is itself deeply connected to the destructive myth of American Exceptionalism.
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The fact that they are “on the left” means they would be described as liberals in common parlance, whether that’s perfectly accurate or not. I don’t see how that’s important here.
“American Exceptionalism” is really just a particular way of describing “patriotism”, something problematic the world over. America is not exceptional in that sense, pun intended. I would like to think the words of the US Constitution stand on their own, and could be used by any country if that’s what they wanted. If someone started a new nation on Mars, and used those words as their constitution, I wouldn’t say they were making a terrible mistake. I’ve heard it said that the words of Christ are really just Buddhism with a Hebrew accent, whether you call it Christianity or Buddhism doesn’t matter, what matters is living by those words.
Liberalism is, and always has been, a center-right ideology. The American use of “liberal” as a synonym for “left” isn’t just a linguistic quirk; it is a consequence of the historical suppression and erasure of the real American left. If you are a capitalist, you are not left wing.
Which is fine; the center-right is a defensible position to hold. Not all right-wingers are fascists; liberals and social democrats are about as civilised as it is possible for capitalists to get.
Liberalism is a position that, in normal times, most leftists would be happy to contest via debate and democracy. Unlike fascism, which must be fought without tolerance.
It is the key issue behind this banner incident.
The fascist revolution led by Trump is stirring a socialist awakening in the USA; American Exceptionalism is crumbling, and the massively distorted US Overton Window is shifting. You won’t find a lot of self-identified liberals amongst politically active millenials these days.
That is very much not the case.
There is a reason why the phrase was coined.
And that paragraph could be framed and hung on the wall as a demonstration of Constitutional idolatry in action.
The US Constitution was advanced for its time. Although imperfect, it had some good and novel features. But that was hundreds of years ago. It hasn’t been significantly modernised since Reconstruction.
Constitutions are not scripture; they’re just laws. They do not represent eternal, infallible truth [1]. At best, they represent the limited, fallible wisdom of their day. The day of the US Constitution’s birth was a long time ago.
The US Constitution was written on the assumption that it could restrict tyranny by laws.
But the tyrants have had centuries to work out how to bypass those laws. The US Constitution has been hacked. It requires a security patch.
.
[1] Neither does scripture, but that’s a separate issue.
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This has become a big stumbling block for me, this insistance that America be judged not just by its behavior, but also by its intentions. Well, the good ones, anyway. Which only seems to whitewash (sorry) over the unexamined problems we continue to avoid and put off and deny.
If America is a country that includes everyone in it, and all the good and all the bad history-ecerybody’s story, whether or not they are citizens, then yes, absolutely, I love my country.
But if America is a nation of laws and habits and institutions that continually and unabashedly devalue the work and the lives and the stories of those with the misfortune to be born brown, or not-male… I must confess, I do not love this nation.
The fact that it whinges continuously about how it knows better and will try harder in the future, that has about as much sway as the wife-beating husband who promises to change once and for all, if she’ll only just come home to him again…
Yeah, fuck that!
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You may say so, but I feel a bit awkward criticising (as I have done but…). I think it starts with the revolution - the American revolution is of no interest to the rest of the world because: slaves, genocide, land stealing. The exception is a bunch of imperialist Anglos like the English Tories and our own noted recent anti-Semite and long term general racist and misogynist Kevin Myers for whom the notion of colonists taking over as long as they continue the tradition of white oppression is fine. But most of the rest of the world finds the US revolution puzzling and the hero worship of your “Founders” (was Star Trek DS9’s Vorta obsequious veneration of the shape shifting Founders a satire on that? I always felt it was…). due to the afforementioned slavery, rape, and genocide.
Where there is a “founder of the country” they are usually contentious whether he be Ataturk or the rag tag bunch of republicans, nationalists, labour activists, wormen’s rights activists, religious nuts, and later opportunists of all hues that founded ours. Americans understand that Columbus was a scumbag, and don’t take his rhetoric about god seriously, but they seem to venerate their early politicians in a way that I have never seen in a country that wasn’t a dictatorship. And even then it’s only on the surface, in public, and anywhere the secret police might hear.
So in most countries a statement such as “racism is as Irish as GAA” would not be read as ambiguous about racism, but rather dragging people’s face into their own disgrace.
And racism _is _as Irish as GAA. (and up the Dubs! on Sunday by the way)
Which I think is a different thing from thinking their country is a synonym for good. I quite like it here, but I don’t think “Irish” means good.
As I edited above before reading the reply: most countries have been colonised and have rather ambiguous opinions of themselves. Examples of Cuba and Poland are to me examples of countries where people can be proud of some national spirit, character, or culture while being profoundly aware of the ambiguity of the state.
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I think there is a tendency for some people to take that further:
“I think America is good. This is something that happens in America or that Americans do. America is good, therefore this is good.”
“Anyone who suggests this might not be good is saying America is bad.”
“America is good, therefore they are wrong.”
Consciously or not, I see a lot of people who seem to have a hard time considering anything which calls some fundamental “national identity thing” into question. See the whole not standing for the national anthem stuff.
It’s not just Americans of course. You guys just tend to be a lot more visible and vocal and also seem to have a lot more invested in positive stereotypes of yourselves and your country.
Try suggesting that traditional Morris dancing is a bit racist to some people and see how long it takes to get into a raging barney. 
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Some BBoingers have been gazing too long at that mirror of a declarative statement.
To paraphrase Marx: Have you stopped beating your slaves?
-And Chomsky: Censorship is as baseball as American.
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I decided I’d respond to this before I read the rest of the thread and saw more people weighing in on different aspects of this concept. I’d just like to add another perspective.
I definitely think patriotism is a part of the problem. Pride of your country and patriotism are just another way of saying your group is better then a other group. This dividing up of the world into groups is what makes nearly all bad things in the world possible.
There are no wars if you can’t first convince your soldiers that the other soldiers are all inhuman monsters. There is no racism if you can’t first convince people that this group with a different skin color is markedly different from you and your group. There is no religious prosecution if you can’t be convinced that the other group is truly wrong for their beliefs. This can be scaled all the way down to the hatred felt between fans of different sport clubs, the agression between (motor) bikers, car drivers and pedestrians, the feuding between snowboards and skiers, the rift between skate boarders and inline skaters. Groups are the strongest enemy of the idea that all people are created equal.
So no, I don’t agree that patriotism is fine. It sucks and you should be careful to avoid it.
Now, America specifically. When I grew up (in the Netherlands) I bought into the media’s depiction of America as a force for good and looked to it as a source of authority. Over the years I learned about the dark sides of America, I no longer see it’s influence on the world as mostly good. I feel the internal situation isn’t much better, the American dream is dead, inequality is really high and there is plenty of racism. Why would you be proud or patriotic of this? Is there something I’m missing?
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I’m just trying to propose some kind of solution here, and while I think patriotism has problems in the long run, I think appealing to patriotism for the common good is a better tactic than complaining about how America is racist and leaving it at that. You can feel secure knowing you’re ideologically pure and correct, but it won’t get you anywhere, particularly in the USA. The political tug-of-war is going to go on forever unless both sides can agree on something.
And we’re not going to get anywhere only appealing to millenials. The sad fact is that America’s “socialist awakening” is still going to be “socialism lite.” I’m not happy about it, but I’m at least realistic. As they say “elections are won in the middle.”
What solution to you propose, and how realistic is that solution, knowing the workings of American politics?
Interesting. The child of a career American military officer, I was taught from an early age never to accept how things appeared on the surface, only to respect authority I could question.
It was never alive.
Yes, you’re using the word patriotism in the modern perverted sense as a synonym for jingoism and nationalism. You aren’t alone in this, and in fact most Americans also don’t understand what patriotism is. Normally that would be fine, a natural evolution of words shifting meaning over time. But actual patriotism is in fact really important. It doesn’t have to be called patriotism, but the underlying ethic is worth preserving.
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.” ~ For Whom the Bell Tolls by John Donne
In the original sense, patriotism is love of country, not nation. It is loyalty to one’s compatriots, not a government. It does not preclude being a good citizen of the world because it isn’t about the other, it’s about being a good part of your communities. A wise person recognizes that conflict and war, whether at home or within the scope of wider communities up to and including the entire world, are corrosive to the community at every level.
Democracy and freedom existed long before the United States of America and they will exist long after. The USA is great insofar as it upholds them, and so we must to preserve our liberty. Those that would give up on them do no favors for anyone, least of all themselves.
There is certainly no shortage of people who mistake nationalism for patriotism, or who propagate jingoism under the banner of patriotism. Jingoism is a dangerous thing, as are people who cannot distinguish between jingoism and patriotism or between the republic, its symbols and its government.
Uncritical approval is insidious. If you never criticize the flaws in something, you do it a grievous disservice. A parent who never admonishes ill prepares their children for life. A teacher who only gives praise is a poor mentor. A citizen who finds no fault in the body politic is no patriot, but an unprincipled sycophant.
So long as you endeavor to make your country a better place for you and your neighbors, you are a patriot. Affinity for one’s own republic does not equal belligerence towards others. Life is not a zero sum game despite what many politicians and religious leaders would like you to believe. Not only do you not have to choose between affinity for your homeland and humanity, the choice itself is a false dichotomy. In the long run – and usually in the short run – what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Groupthink is not patriotism; it is politics.
In a boarder sense a patriot must be a human patriot as well. The best way to make the world a better place is by striving to make your own republic a better citizen of the world. The ideals enshrined in the U.S. Constitution are not unique to America, they transcend any one nation. Those principles are not exclusively American; they are in fact human principles. That fact offers great hope. Democracy and freedom are valued by peoples everywhere. Liberty is a universal concern.
Loathsome are the politicians and pundits criticizing each other for not wearing flag pins on the campaign trail. Their efforts to worship a symbol instead of attending to what it stands for are despicable.
The American flag is a symbol representing a republic based on a constitution enshrining principles, nothing more and nothing less. Cling to those principles because they are the best hope our nation has for the future. Fly the flag only if you do so because of what it stands for, not because of blind pride. The flag is a symbol of the constitution. The idea of destroying the constitution to protect that symbol is nothing less than traitorous.
Ultimately, the more emotional an idea, the lest it can be trusted. Patriotic feeling is treacherous.
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I think what you’re missing isn’t some sort of soaring American virtue or greatness, but rather how thoroughly most Americans (white ones especially) have been convinced that such things exist.
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Indeed. Some of us here in America see it too.
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Holy shit, I had not thought of that, but you’re spot on here…
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The problem with appealing to patriotism is that you are facing a fascist government that is rapidly succeeding in closing off all avenues of constitutional resistance. There is no realistic possibility of a legitimately conducted federal election under Trump.
This is going to be settled in the streets, not at the ballot box. And the fascist side, as predicted long ago, will be marketed like this:
The Trumpeters will be claiming to defend the Constitution. The left will be openly calling for an overthrow of normal political procedure. Patriotic fetishisation of the Constitution is not on your side.
Sustained, massive, non-violent non-destructive disruptive civil disobedience. Targeted at the money of the 0.01%. Shut the country down.
It isn’t a protest, it’s a revolution.
This is not a fun or easy solution. But the only other option is global fascism.
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Morris? Do I need to go google this?
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Alright, that indeed seems to be a different definition of patriotism, that definition actually comes a lot closer to “all people are equal ideal” I set up as opposite to it, too bad that’s not the currently prevailing definition. “The left” should reclaim the word with this better definition.
Yeah if even someone growing up in a different country like me can be convinced of this I’m sure the effect is much stronger when you actually grow up there and you and everybody you know identifies with it. The media we consume is not as benign as it seems.
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