Learning To Be An American
John Sununu’s comment that he wishes our president would “learn how to be an American” — and the subsequent “sorry” for it — have become an all too familiar refrain on the right. I’m reminded of Ed Kilgore’s 4th of July observations on America-Hating Patriots:
I’m as “American” in background, outlook, and life-experiences as anyone you’d meet. I belong to a distinctly American religious community, born on the Kentucky frontier long after Independence. I’m probably most at home among rednecks and African-Americans, whose cuisine and music I also tend to prefer. I’ve never lived anywhere else, or had any romantic idea that life was superior elsewhere. To my shame, and despite dabbling in many, I speak no languages other than English with any fluidity. I am passionate about college football, and God help me, still find soccer boring.
But I’m made a bit uncomfortable by displays of super-patriotism, because so many of our national symbols and traditions have been bent to divisive and destructive causes. Most recently, thanks to the influence of a movement that is self-saturated in the regalia and rhetoric of the American Revolution, we have seen the “Spirit of ‘76” incessantly deployed to suggest that roughly half of Americans are evil looters, and that indeed America has been ever-more-systematically betraying its heritage since the 1930s, or longer. …
Maybe progressives make a mistake in not calling out people…whose horror at having to share this country with the likes of me and you makes him by any standard un-patriotic, in the grips of a global ideology that is no more essentially “American” than fascism was essentially “Italian.”
I’m perfectly happy on this [4h of July] and any other day devoted to communal, civic celebrations to put aside differences and tip my hat (or a beer) to neighbors I know don’t agree with me on much of anything that makes up the daily bread of politics. But I’m no longer going to quietly accept lectures on patriotism from people who hate my country because they don’t rule it and my vote is equal to theirs.
For all the ostensible problems Obama has with voter enthusiasm, one has to wonder if some of the uglier enthusiasm on the Right won’t ultimately backfire.
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In the 60′s the Right told the “dirty hippies” to love it or leave it. When is Sununu leaving…
Not soon enough.
While hippies did indeed receive the Love It or Leave It scorn of the Right, the patriotism meme didn’t come into full flower until the Bush-Cheney interregnum as a vehicle for lubricating the skids on its post-9/11 malevolence. Don’t want us prying into every nook and cranny of your life? Then you’re un-American.
As a veteran, I personally was insulted and it is a howler that both the prez and his veep were chickenhawks.
Sununu is a schmuck.
Thanks for your post and sentiment, Joe.
Just my dos centavos:
John Sununu recently commented that he wishes President Obama would “learn to be an American.”
This comment from a man born in Cuba about a man born in the United States of America.
This comment from the son of a mother born in El Salvador and a father of Palestinian and Greek descent — nothing wrong with either — about the son of a mother born in Wichita, Kansas, and a father born in Kenya — nothing wrong with this.
“Signed,” by a man who after living 55 years in the United States is still learning to be an American, and is not ashamed of it, as Mr. Sununu’s remarks would have one believe one should be.
Who is Sununu to be teaching anyone how to be an American?
The right continues to blatantly advance the interests of the powerful few over the many by cloaking its activities in the flag. It denigrates people who HAVE served their country like Kerry and Max Clelland simply because of party affiliation.
It is a well-known fact that one of the early signs of fascism is uber-nationalism.
Those guys from Harvard, always exaggerating.
“Like Rush Limbaugh, without the sex appeal”
Lol, I’m still laughing at that one.
Gee, maybe Michelle Bachmann and her gang need to investigate John Sununu in case his Palestinian father knew someone who knew someone who was associated with Hamas as long as they are taking down Huma Abedin for subversive associations.