On the level here, I've been noticing a massive uptick in pop-lefties trying to claw back Patriotism from the American Right since like 2016. Is it actually working on people? Because for decades, they've blathered on about how all these issues with America are foundational issues that can only be solved in a wipe the slate clean revolution. Hell, popular media released as recently as 2021 has come out saying XYZ shouldn't be proud to be American.
I have friends from all across the political spectrum and I would say, anecdotally, I think the answer is no. Anytime leftists wax patriotic (or wax “the right is unpatriotic”) it never takes more than a minute for them to fall back into talking about how shitty they think the country is, how “America is a third world country in a Gucci belt” and other NPC scripts, etc. Talk about Jan 6 and they’re shocked at how the right could “betray” America, but then they’ll also say things like the Constitution should be ripped up and replaced with an equity document, shit like that. They can’t hold the patriotic line long enough for anyone to take them seriously. The evangelical right used to be laughable in a similar way, back in the Bush era when you’d hear people say how great America was but they could somehow give you reasons why 3/4ths of the country wasn’t “real America” which is dumb too. I’ve noticed that a lot of SJWs’ political and rhetorical excesses align closely with the excesses of the evangelical right circa 1994-2010, and I’d argue that having a weird relationship with patriotism, as I’ve hopefully been able to convey here, is a prime example.
Were the evangelicals completely wrong? I don't agree with them on everything, but I can sympathize because I absolutely hate the current state of America and 3/4ths of the population are too dumb to vote.
They were more right than a lot of people really want to admit and give them credit for. And overall, I think I would rather deal with the society where they had their way instead of this fucking back-alley dumpster fire of a train wreck that we live in now.
On the level here, I've been noticing a massive uptick in pop-lefties trying to claw back Patriotism from the American Right since like 2016. Is it actually working on people? Because for decades, they've blathered on about how all these issues with America are foundational issues that can only be solved in a wipe the slate clean revolution. Hell, popular media released as recently as 2021 has come out saying XYZ shouldn't be proud to be American.
I have friends from all across the political spectrum and I would say, anecdotally, I think the answer is no. Anytime leftists wax patriotic (or wax “the right is unpatriotic”) it never takes more than a minute for them to fall back into talking about how shitty they think the country is, how “America is a third world country in a Gucci belt” and other NPC scripts, etc. Talk about Jan 6 and they’re shocked at how the right could “betray” America, but then they’ll also say things like the Constitution should be ripped up and replaced with an equity document, shit like that. They can’t hold the patriotic line long enough for anyone to take them seriously. The evangelical right used to be laughable in a similar way, back in the Bush era when you’d hear people say how great America was but they could somehow give you reasons why 3/4ths of the country wasn’t “real America” which is dumb too. I’ve noticed that a lot of SJWs’ political and rhetorical excesses align closely with the excesses of the evangelical right circa 1994-2010, and I’d argue that having a weird relationship with patriotism, as I’ve hopefully been able to convey here, is a prime example.
Were the evangelicals completely wrong? I don't agree with them on everything, but I can sympathize because I absolutely hate the current state of America and 3/4ths of the population are too dumb to vote.
They were more right than a lot of people really want to admit and give them credit for. And overall, I think I would rather deal with the society where they had their way instead of this fucking back-alley dumpster fire of a train wreck that we live in now.