In case you were wondering what American patriotism really means, you need only to read a now-deleted tweet by NRA TV host Grant Stinchfield, who recommends North Korea not only bomb Guam but the capital of California.
An NRA spokesman and conservative talk show host tweeted this today pic.twitter.com/YkaYfBKj41
— Mike Hayes (@michaelhayes) August 11, 2017
Stinchfield wrote: “Let's send a note to North Korea that Sacramento changed its name to Guam!" And yet no one will question Stinchfield's patriotism. He is still more American than, say, The New York Times, which has been threatened by the NRA. Indeed, if you are the right kind of American, you can even ask a hostile power to hack an American politician's computer and still be an American patriot. The wrong kind of American might be charged with treason.
What is the meaning of American patriotism if it clearly isn't the love of one's country? Stinchfield does not love his country and fellow Americans universally. He loves something else, and that something is what mainstream America calls "patriotism." It's a love of white power in its most blunt form. This is why if you are not white, you can't be patriotic without hating yourself.
California is a minority majority state. There is a good chance the black American junior senator of that state, Kamala Harris, could become president in 2020. The state is run by Democrats, the mainstream party for whites and the rest—whereas the GOP is just for whites. The NRA has become a white nationalist party. The gun rights it has in mind are for whites chete. The NRA still has not made a formal statement about Philando Castile, a legal gun owner who was shot and killed by a cop during a traffic stop on July 6, 2016. (The organization muttered something about it on CNN after facing months and months of criticism). It's patriotic to suspend democracy for the maintaince of raw white power.
