A New Year’s Nod to Patriotism
Poor “Patriotism.” Like “Liberal” or “Feminist,” what was once a badge of honor is now a disparaging label. You might say its definition went from A to Z: from “American” to “Zealot.” And while it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when “patriot” become a bad word, the “why” seems clear.
Appropriated by the far right, “patriotism” became a club with which to beat even the slightest dissenter into submission. Journalists were assaulted, white supremacists defended, and a pandemic allowed to rage on—all in the name of patriotism. Its tone less pride than pugilist in the parallel universe that is the Trump era.
I’ve thought a lot about patriotism this year. Often struggling with the question, “What does it mean to be an American,” when you no longer recognize America? When so-called patriots pledge allegiance to a demagogue, not a democracy? It seemed we’d become a nation of bullies not dreamers. Our credo: Why aspire to be better when we can just assert to be.
No wonder the slogan “Make America Great Again” so rankled me. It’s symbolic of a fatalistic view that our best days are behind us (if not a bold-faced ode to a time of unchallenged white, maleness). With mounting evidence seeming to signal that Democracy was dead, it has taken a lot to believe otherwise. Not losing faith in a kinder, more benevolent America has demanded an almost religious conviction.
African American journalist, Nikole Hannah-Jones (the creator of “The 1619 Project”*) helped me understand that kind of true, blind patriotism. Taught only of black people’s enslavement—and “through cultural osmosis, that the flag wasn’t really [hers]”—her younger self couldn’t understand why her father proudly flew a flag in their front yard. Only after taking a Black Studies class in high school, did she understood why her father would replace it at even the slightest hint of wear. “He knew that our people’s contributions to building the richest and most powerful nation in the world were indelible,” she says, “and that the United States simply would not exist without us.”
As for my own patriotism, it has continued to be revived by music—which includes watching Whitney Houston sing “The Battle Hymn of The Republic” at 1991’s "Welcome Home Heroes" concert, held for 3,500 servicemen and women returning from the Gulf War.
Leave it to Whitney to take the beloved yet creaky warhorse and take us to church—key change and all. While the separation of church and state is written into our constitution, the similarities between true patriotism and religious faith are clearly not lost on me.
To those friends who I imagine are now rolling their eyes at my correlation between government and gospel, I simply say, “Watch the clip.” Recorded three decades ago, it is the singer AND the country at its best—with the true meaning of patriotism reflected in that sea of brave, youthful faces—and in Whitney’s own. Patriotism is promise. It is possibility. It is the optimistic fire that fueled our founding fathers. A voice that can’t be silenced. A forward-looking belief that “we can be better.”
I marvel at how some of the most disenfranchised among us still remain the most devout—their allegiance to our nation seemingly strengthened by hardship. That any vestige of American idealism survived Trump’s presidency at all is proof of some kind of faith. If not in something greater than ourselves… than in the sum of ourselves.
I could go on with the religious metaphors and risk readers balking at the suggestion that Biden’s election is something close to salvation. But I know I’m not alone in feeling we’ve been blessed.
Like so many others, I will greet the New Year bolstered by the faith that our nation can and will right itself. And pray for the true and devout patriot in all of us.
*The New York Times’ 1619 PROJECT is a major initiative memorializing the 400th anniversary of the first slave ship’s arrival on our shores—meant to deepen our understanding of America’s history (and present) by proposing a new point of origin for our national story. Listen to the Podcast here.