The main reason I can point to for the fact that so many Americans who call themselves "right-wing" or "conservative" refuse to realize the country they grew up in or fetishize from the history books no longer exists is due to a religious devotion to the idea of "America." I would go further in saying that most do not understand what or who "America" is.
The sad reality is that due to some combination of apathy, cowardice and incentive structures (e.g., money), most people will meekly climb into the box car and/or lineup against the wall up to the last possible moment.
100% and I think some of this civic nationalism, when I have poked and prodded these people to find where it rose from was the moon landing (of all the unnecessary nonsense ever imagined). Since the US won the race to space, Americans alive during this event or whose parents pounded it into their heads take great pride in that event and their personal identity is tied to it as if it was their football team winning. They believe they did that and telling them they didn't or it wasn't all that, becomes a personal attack. They may believe all the wars we "helped win" are a matter of pride, freeing slaves of ethnicity, or polity seems to be another even if it happened before their grandparents. To them, that's America and as long as they identify themselves as "Americans" they take the credit for bullshit and nonsense that either never happened, didn't matter or made things worse while refusing to consider them any other way than the pristine fairy tale they were taught in grade school.
But as I said to someone recently, a right leaning anarchist living in San Francisco championing this idea that he is virtuous because he has friends whom he accepts that have differing view points, "where will you share a plate of nachos when your friends, whom you accept, are only going to eat at a restaurant that serves food made of plant matter and bugs? Are you going to feel cultured sharing in their affinity for bugs, like the way we compromise and eat toxic soy based products with them while they never compromise to eat nutritious meat?" We can't share a plate of fucking nachos. They will not make the same compromises for you-ever. They will act offended at the suggestion of a steak house and won't even go there and not eat. This is just a microcosmic look at the entire way in which they view your way of life. You can't share a plate of nachos much less a neighborhood, a city, a state or a country."
I read him that quote by John Quincy Adams "If the day should ever come when the affections of the people of states be alienated from each other...or collision of interests fester into hatred...the bands of political association will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests...(better)to part in friendship...than to be held by constraint. Then will the time for reverting to the precedents which occured at... the adoption of the Constitution to form again by dissoliving that which could no longer bind....and to be reunited by the law of political gravitation to the center."
He says, yeah, "I'm at that end part, the coming back together." I was dumbstruck. I guess he hasn't figured out, the rest of the country has got to go their separate ways first. He thinks he can will them back together perhaps by sitting with them to enjoy larva cheese with cricket chips.
It kind of makes me feel sad. This whole America as melting pot and virtue of staying together, sounds like a husband whose wife cheated on him, left him, started a new family, never invites him anywhere, took a restraining order out on him, and he still thinks if they can just be friends, it'll make him seem like the bigger person for being friends with someone who treats him with disdain and malice but deeper than that and what every person around him knows, he still clings to the notion that maybe she'll see that thing that made her fall in love with him in the first place a long time ago and leave her new life and get back together with him. Move on, dude.
Inspired piece today, Pete.
The sad reality is that due to some combination of apathy, cowardice and incentive structures (e.g., money), most people will meekly climb into the box car and/or lineup against the wall up to the last possible moment.
100% and I think some of this civic nationalism, when I have poked and prodded these people to find where it rose from was the moon landing (of all the unnecessary nonsense ever imagined). Since the US won the race to space, Americans alive during this event or whose parents pounded it into their heads take great pride in that event and their personal identity is tied to it as if it was their football team winning. They believe they did that and telling them they didn't or it wasn't all that, becomes a personal attack. They may believe all the wars we "helped win" are a matter of pride, freeing slaves of ethnicity, or polity seems to be another even if it happened before their grandparents. To them, that's America and as long as they identify themselves as "Americans" they take the credit for bullshit and nonsense that either never happened, didn't matter or made things worse while refusing to consider them any other way than the pristine fairy tale they were taught in grade school.
But as I said to someone recently, a right leaning anarchist living in San Francisco championing this idea that he is virtuous because he has friends whom he accepts that have differing view points, "where will you share a plate of nachos when your friends, whom you accept, are only going to eat at a restaurant that serves food made of plant matter and bugs? Are you going to feel cultured sharing in their affinity for bugs, like the way we compromise and eat toxic soy based products with them while they never compromise to eat nutritious meat?" We can't share a plate of fucking nachos. They will not make the same compromises for you-ever. They will act offended at the suggestion of a steak house and won't even go there and not eat. This is just a microcosmic look at the entire way in which they view your way of life. You can't share a plate of nachos much less a neighborhood, a city, a state or a country."
I read him that quote by John Quincy Adams "If the day should ever come when the affections of the people of states be alienated from each other...or collision of interests fester into hatred...the bands of political association will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests...(better)to part in friendship...than to be held by constraint. Then will the time for reverting to the precedents which occured at... the adoption of the Constitution to form again by dissoliving that which could no longer bind....and to be reunited by the law of political gravitation to the center."
He says, yeah, "I'm at that end part, the coming back together." I was dumbstruck. I guess he hasn't figured out, the rest of the country has got to go their separate ways first. He thinks he can will them back together perhaps by sitting with them to enjoy larva cheese with cricket chips.
It kind of makes me feel sad. This whole America as melting pot and virtue of staying together, sounds like a husband whose wife cheated on him, left him, started a new family, never invites him anywhere, took a restraining order out on him, and he still thinks if they can just be friends, it'll make him seem like the bigger person for being friends with someone who treats him with disdain and malice but deeper than that and what every person around him knows, he still clings to the notion that maybe she'll see that thing that made her fall in love with him in the first place a long time ago and leave her new life and get back together with him. Move on, dude.