The emotional chaos of those months has resolved into a clusterfuck of disappointment and disinformation (Osama is still at large, but God knows how many people are being held at Guantánamo); it is now not just "okay," but essential to re-engage in the process of disagreement with the way things are being run--because they are being run badly. Between oil drilling in Alaska, Homeland Security, economic recession, the pitiful neglect of the railroads, and the coming holy war, it often seems like the powers that be are daring us not to dissent.
Still, there is a legacy of lingering uneasiness surrounding hardcore skepticism about our nation--not so much in the thinking, but in the speaking. After discovering that patriotism could be a real, living feeling (rather than an ironic qualifier used to describe rednecks, Republicans, and ROTC morons), we now seem to feel a need to preface our criticism of America with phrases like "Don't get me wrong, I think the Constitution is an incredible document, but...," or "I mean, America is the greatest nation on Earth, but...."
But nothing. Using these qualifications may be a good way to admit the complexity of feeling that America stirs up in any intelligent person, but it's also redundant. America is defined by complexity, contradiction, and criticism; our country is a living, breathing experiment, a project designed not to reach an outcome, but to perpetuate and perfect itself through debate and discourse. Prefacing any criticism of our country with a loyalty oath is unnecessary because criticizing America is an exercise--the exercise--of our nation's fundamental promise, and the best way to show love of country.
Of course, plenty of people refused to admit that this country is worth loving before and after September 11, and I mean it when I say they are free to do so, vocally, actively, and bitterly, because they are Americans. No country can govern the hearts and minds of its citizens. But it's worth remembering that many countries throughout history--including all those that fall under religious rule of any kind (some of our "allies" in the war against terrorism among them)--are defined by their attempts to do just that.
Which is why when Ari Fleischer warns us to watch what we say and how we say it, when George W. Bush abolishes treaties governing our international accountability with regard to nuclear weapons and then threatens to strike first, when Congress hides behind patriotic "terror" to ram through legislation that grossly inhibits our liberties, or even when John Ashcroft stands before television cameras and unleashes his stultifying vibrato on the noxious cryptototalitarian anthem "Let the Eagle Soar," we are all the more American for expressing our contempt. We are likewise patriotic to disavow the nauseating displays of exploitative sentimentality and mind-numbing "tribute" that pepper the pages and screens of the mass media.
The real challenge of patriotism lies in separating the love of America from animosity toward its rulers. In the past I sometimes confused hating my government with hating my country, just as I used to confuse the words "patriotism" and "jingoism." But that was before we knew what it was to glimpse the mortality of not just a president or an era, but of the whole American experiment.
A glimpse was all it was, and a glimpse was all it took to re-enfranchise the cynical, anti-patriotic rabble. It reminded us of the righteousness of principles that brought America about, and separated those principles from the greed, venality, and shortsightedness with which the government, the corporations, the media, the church, the left, the right, and the middle have chosen to engage them. The one positive side effect of September 11 was its shocking reminder that America is not defined by the failure of its leaders or its citizens to live up to words in our founding documents. America is not nullified because of its lapses of liberty, prosperity, justice, and race. Rather, it is emboldened by the willingness of its citizens to challenge
these lapses.
