Wife beater patriotism

Tattered American flagWhen I moved to Marin County almost two decades ago, one of the things that charmed me was its small town approach to the 4th of July.  Each community had (and still has) a 4th of July parade showcasing local organizations, there’s a big county fair with fireworks, and people festoon their houses with flags.

In this, the 7th year of the reign of Barack Obama, I have to admit that I’m no longer charmed.  I am, instead, jaded and disgusted.  Uber-Progressive Marinites (75% of whom voted for Obama in 2012) love their country in precisely the same way a wife beater loves his wife:  They profess their love for her, even as they criticize everything that makes her unique, and are happy to use brute force to turn her into anything but the person (or nation) they profess to love.

In the wife beater, this pattern shows up as “Yeah, I love my wife.  I only tell her she’s fat and letting herself go so that she can improve herself.  None of her dirt bag friends have the courage to tell her that.”  “I didn’t mean to hit her.  It’s just that I love her so much, when she told me I wasn’t there for her, I got really mad and, like, you know, I just got really mad and that’s how she ended up with the black eye and broken jaw.  It was her fault, you know, ’cause she knows how much I love her.”

Is that wife-beater thinking really any different from the person who flies the flag on the 4th and marches proudly in the parade (as my neighbors do), all the while saying America is racist and holds to evil, hate-filled Judeo-Christian values?  Or from the same people saying, “Our country’s so great we should no longer have any border at all so every immigrant, felon, and terrorist can come here”?  And how about “America is all about greed.  We consume too much.  We need to do away with fossil fuels” (never mind that this kind of thinking hits poor people hardest).

In Marin, it’s really rotten to that last one, because a lot of the 99% and anti-capitalist talk comes from the 1% and even the .0001% of wealth.  They’re not just haters, they’re stupid, suicidal haters — or, at the very least, they’re craven appeasers, hoping desperately that the Marxist alligators with which they’re aligning themselves will eat them last.

So pardon me for being cynical this 4th.  I simply don’t have the stomach to feel celebratory knowing that 75% of my flag-waving neighbors actually hate and want to destroy the country represented by the same flags they’re waving.

And, as is so often the case, I’ve got a song: