The entire game of making right wingers “patriots” and liberals “America haters” is about gerrymandering what you’re allowed to be proud of in American history and what counts as hatred. Pride in The New Deal doesn’t count and hatred of immigrants and America’s largest cities doesn’t count either.
It’s the most solipsistic talking point imaginable, bought into and legitimated by many centrists, when the fact of the matter is that the entire cult of MAGA intensely hates America as it really is, while normie libs have 20th century American heroes and love the actual pluralism we’ve got.
Agree, except that most centrists and even center-left and center-right folks are liberals. They wouldn’t want to curtail Social Security, Medicare, labor standards, etc.
I agree with you. It’s hard to watch the fragmentation and lack of coordination of the disparate groups that ostensibly should be able to stand up to Trumpism, Project 2025, and the populist right. I have no idea what the solution is.
Have you written anything about certain issues the left-of-liberal progressives and leftists have taken loud positions on? I see that fracturing our side and giving conservatives fodder to mock us and make their case. Support for Palestine overall, things like Queers For Palestine, etc.
i don't talk about it as much in this piece but it could not be more obvious that dressing yourself up in the rhetoric of America as irredeemably evil might play well to the online crowd but wrapping the very same idea in a red white and blue flag is how you win real change
We make fun of right-wingers saying "why do you hate America??" as their way to stifle dissent, but the hell of it is, it worked. Mainstream America will go along with anything if the alternative is "being anti-American".
We already do that, by matters of months. Raising the cap on what income is taxable for the program is what I hear suggested most. (Currently sits at just $168,600)
I believe, without any way to prove, that the proliferation of American flag magnets on cars following 9/11 was a big factor in right culture’s appropriation of the flag as a political identity marker
That entire "Being An American Requires Blowing Up The Middle East" part of the 9/11 response has been deeply corrosive in so many ways. The flag appropriation was definitely a piece of the overall project.
If you don’t support the war, you don’t support the troops, ergo, we are the ones who love the troops, it doesn’t matter what we do with the VA or GI benefits
