Superpatriotism (Michael Parenti)

Superpatriotism
Author	Michael Parenti
Publisher	City Lights Publishers
First published	2004-09
Type	Book

Superpatriotism is a book by political scientist Michael Parenti discussing Statesian nationalism and chauvinism, published in 2004.

Acknowledgements

Amanda Bellerby, Juliana Baker, Violetta Ettare, and Marisa Tregrossi rendered valuable assistance during the course of writing this book. Jenny Tayloe also gave much appreciated support. My thanks also to Nancy J. Peters and other staff members of City Lights Books for their efforts.

Dedicated to Robert E. Lane and Helen Lane

What Does it Mean to Love Our Country?

AS A GUEST ON RADIO TALK SHOWS, I HAVE criticised aspects of US foreign policy. On one such occasion, an irate listener called to ask me, "Don't you love your country?" Here was someone who saw fit to question my patriotism because I opposed certain policies put forth by US leaders. The caller was manifesting symptoms of what I call superpatriotism, the readiness to follow national leaders unquestioningly in their dealings with other countries, especially in confrontations involving military force.

Many people in various countries consider themselves patriotic in that they share common loyalties and national ideals. Generally, in uneventful times, they do not make all that much of such attachments. But during periods of special urgency or national crisis, their leaders take every opportunity to transform their perfunctory patriotism into superpatriotism.

In this country superpatriotism rests on the dubious assumption that the United States is endowed with superior virtue and has a unique history and special place in the world. For the American superpatriot, nationalistic pride, or "Americanism," is placed above every other public consideration. Whether or not superpatriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, as Dr. Johnson might say, it is a highly emotive force used by political leaders and ordinary citizens to muffle discourse. I think that was what the caller was doing (whether he intended to or not) when asking me if I loved my country. In any case, I would answer his question with another one: What exactly does it mean to love one's country?

Do we love every street and lane, every hill and dale in America? There are so many sights and sites within the USA to which one might grow attached. Yet most of us have had direct exposure to relatively few parts of this nation's vast territory since we lack the time and money to make that meandering trip across its great continental expanse. And what of all the natural beauty in other countries throughout the world? Would I be less a patriot if I am forced to conclude that there are parts of Ireland and New Zealand that are even more beautiful than the lovely sights of our Pacific Northwest region? Would I be wanting in patriotism if I felt Paris to be more captivating than San Francisco? Or the Piazza Navona in Rome more endearing than the Rockefeller Center in New York?

Perhaps love of country means loving the American people. But even the most gregarious among us know only a tiny portion of the US populace, that vast aggregate of diverse ethnic, religious, and class groups. In any case, any number of superpatriots feel no love at all for certain of their compatriots whose lifestyles, beliefs, ethnicity, or lowly economic status they find repugnant.

It might be that we can love whole peoples in the abstract, feeling a common attachment because we are all Americans. But what actually is so particularly lovable about Americans, even in the abstract? Although many Americans are fine and likable, some are not admirable at all. Among the compatriots who fail to win my affection are ruthless profiteers, corporate swindlers, corrupt and self-serving leaders, bigots, sexists, violent criminals, and rabidly militaristic superpatriots.

Maybe our superpatriots love this country for its history. One would doubt it, since so much of US history is evidently unknown to them: the struggle for free speech that has continued from early colonial times down to this day; the fierce fights for collective bargaining and decent work conditions; the long campaigns to extend the franchise to all citizens including propertyless workers and women; the struggles to abolish slavery, end racial segregation, and extend civil rights, to establish free public education, public health services, environmental and consumer protections, and occupational safety, and to impose a progressive income tax and end wars of aggression, and other such issues of peace and social justice.

Here certainly is a history that can make one feel proud of one's country and love the valiant people who battled for political and economic democracy. But many superpatriots are wretchedly ignorant of this history, especially since so little of it is taught in the schools. How unfortunate, for it would add more substance to their love of country.

Also largely untaught is the darker side of our history. What is there to love about the extermination of Native American Indian nations, a bloodletting that extended over four centuries along with the grabbing of millions of acres of their lands? There is nothing lovable about the systemic kidnapping and enslaving of millions of Africans; the many lynchings and murders of the segregationist era; the latter-day assassinations of Black Panther Party members and other political dissidents; the stealing of half of Mexico (today's Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and a portion of Colorado); the grabbing of Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Cuba; the blood-drenched conquest of the Philippines; and the military interventions and wars of aggression against scores of other countries.

Should we love our country for its culture? We Americans can boast of no Shakespeare, Goethe, Cervantes, or Dante, but we still can be proud of our playwrights and poets, our art and opera, our music and dance, our museums and symphony orchestras, our libraries and universities. Yet as far as I can tell, the superpatriots evince relatively little interest in these things. If anything, arts and education are being subjected to merciless budget cuts by those superpatriotic policymakers who prefer to pour our treasure into a gargantuan military budget. They would starve Athens for an ever stronger Sparta.

While we might embrace the good things in our culture, some other aspects are hard to celebrate: the mind abuse of most television and cinematic offerings; the omnipresent, soul-numbing commercialism; the urban and suburban blight and crime-ridden, drug-infested neighbourhoods; the proliferation of homeless beggars and shanty encampments; the toxic dumps, strip-mined wastelands, denuded forests, highway vehicular carnage, and widespread contamination of our rivers, bays, and groundwater; the astronomical homicide rates, hate crimes, and child abuse; the widespread emotional depression and spousal abuse; the enormous and still growing gap between the obscenely rich and desperately poor; the overweening rapacity of the giant corporations; the money-driven corruption of much of our public life, and other such dispiriting things.

Some superpatriots claim that they love America because of the freedom it gives us. Yet most of them seem to love freedom only in the abstract, for they cannot stand the dissidence and protests that are the actual practice of a free people. They have trouble tolerating criticisms directed against certain US policies and institutions. If anything, superpatriots show themselves ever ready to support greater political conformity and more repressive measures against heterodoxy.

We might question the quality of the freedom we are said to enjoy, for in truth we are not as free as we often suppose. To be out of step in one's political opinions is often to put one's career in jeopardy—even in a profession like teaching, which professes a dedication to academic freedom. The journalists who work for big media conglomerates and who claim to be untrammelled in their reportage overlook the fact that they are free to say what they like because their bosses like what they say. They rarely, if ever, stray beyond the respectable parametres of the dominant paradigm, and when they do so, it is at their own risk.

The major media in the United States are owned by giant corporations and influenced by rich corporate advertisers who seldom question the doing of the free-market profit system at home and abroad. The assumptions behind US foreign policy go largely unexamined in news analysis and commentary. Those who have critical views regarding corporate power and US global interventionism rarely get an opportunity to reach a mass audience.

Many of our superpatriots love this country because it is considered a land of opportunity, a place where people can succeed if they have the right stuff. But individual success usually comes by prevailing over others. And when it comes to the really big prizes in a competitive, money-driven society, almost all of us are losers or simply noncontestants. Room at the top is limited to a select few, mostly those who have been supremely advantaged in family income and social standing from early in life. Even if the US economy does reward the go-getters who sally forth with exceptional capacity and energy, is the quality of life to be measured by the ability of tireless careerists to excel over others? Even if it were easy to become a multimillionaire in America, what is so great about that? Why should one's ability to make large sums of money be reason to love one's country? What is so admirable about a patriotism based on the cash nexus? In any case, some Americans have trouble feeling patriotic about the rat race. They do not wish to spend their lives trying to get rich, trying to advantage themselves at the expense of others. They seek to do work that enhances the quality of life for the entire society. If then they are rewarded for their contributions, so much the better, but that is not their prime concern, nor do they feel that the rewards should be so astronomical and nontaxable.

Of course, economic opportunity is not exclusively about getting rich. In America, it is said, millions enjoy the opportunity to "get ahead," to live in comfort and prosperity, short of reaching a stratospheric income. But millions who have worked hard all their lives do not achieve a comfortable life. Upward mobility in the United States is no greater than in other industrial nations. Almost all Americans remain at the same economic level to which they were born. If anything, with the free-market rollback of recent decades, there has been much slippage. It is no longer to be taken for granted that Americans will live better than did their parents. In fact, most are not living as well. Life has become increasingly more stressful and difficult as growing numbers find themselves working harder and harder to stay afloat, with fewer benefits, insufficient income, more stress, and less job security.

Contrary to a popular myth, the USA has the smallest—not the largest—middle-income stratum of the industrial world. Average incomes are rising modestly but only because of more intensive workloads. (In the much-vaunted economic recovery of 2003-2004, investments, sales, and profits climbed, but wages remained flat.) US workers face one of the longest work years in the world. They average only about ten days a year paid vacation, compared to Western European workers who usually get thirty days. Even some Latin American countries mandate one month paid vacation.

America has not been a land of opportunity or economic betterment for the Native American Indians (except for a few casino owners) who have had their lands stolen and their populations sadly reduced by death and disease; nor for the industrial workers who still face life-threatening occupational hazards, or who see their jobs being exported to Third World sweatshops; nor for the farm labourers who currently put in long hours at stoop labour for subsistence wages; nor the millions of others who work at joyless dead-end occupations for poverty-level pay, or who manage to attain a higher education only to face a lack of employment opportunities while mired in hopeless debt from student loans.

In sum, it seems that the America our superpatriots claim to love is neither a geographical or demographic totality, nor a cultural heritage as such, nor really a land of such unlimited freedom and economic opportunity and prosperity. The superpatriot's America is a simplified ideological abstraction, an emotive symbol represented by other abstract symbols like the flag. It is the object of a faithlike devotion, unencumbered by honest history. For the superpatriot, those who do not share in this uncritical Americanism ought to go live in some other country.

America—Love It or Leave It

DURING THE LATE 1960S, GROWING NUMBERS of Americans took it to the streets to protest the war in Indochina with its savagely intensive US bombings of civilian populations in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. In response, supporters of the war were quick to attack the demonstrators, both verbally and sometimes even physically. Steeped in the belief that any war fought by the United States must ipso facto be a noble undertaking irrespective of the human costs, the superpatriots could only conclude that the antiwar protesters were little better than traitors who gave aid and comfort to the enemy. In this instance, our "enemies" were often impoverished Indo-chinese peasants fighting to liberate their countries from foreign control.

It was not long before the superpatriotic slogan "America—Love It or Leave It" began appearing on signs and bumper stickers, making its way into the pronouncements of hawkish politicians.

Opponents of the Vietnam War performed many worthy deeds. By galvanising great numbers of protesters they overthrew the sacrosanct notion that one could not oppose war while the country was actually at war. They contested the widely accepted idea that the United States played a primarily virtuous role in the world. They exposed the selfish material interests behind US overseas interventionism. And many of them began to question the whole elitist political system that produced such policies.

The antiwar movement also publicised the terrible aspects of the Indochina conflict: the villages destroyed and innocent people massacred; the children burnt with napalm; the groves, orchards, farms, jungles, wildlife, and peasants themselves poisoned with Agent Orange and other defoliants—information that was largely suppressed by news media and government officials through most of the war. Peace protesters encouraged tax resistance and civil disobedience. They blocked draft boards and induction centres, challenged military recruiters on college campuses, trashed recruitment booths, marched and even rioted in the streets, and generally acted as an insurgent restraint on the war leaders.

The movement reached into the US military itself, creating a climate of dissent that affected the performance of soldiers in Vietnam. During the latter years of the war, infantry squads and platoons sometimes refused to advance deeply into the jungle to make contact with the enemy, some 700 US servicemen deserted, and a few outright mutinies occurred, including at least one of company size. Officers were occasionally the targets of fragmentation grenades from their own men. At home, the peace movement assisted conscientious objectors and other draft resisters, and helped create a climate of opinion against the war.

The dissenters also demonstrated to the world and to the United States itself that there was another America, one that did not mindlessly fall into obedient lockstep once the flags were unfurled and the martial music sounded. So while some people cried, "America—love it or leave it," the protesters now responded, "America—change it or lose it."

'America—love it or leave it" is a variation of an older saying that enjoyed currency for more than a century: "My country—right or wrong," a bald proclamation to support the United States government in its conflicts with other governments regardless of the moral issues involved. It is hard to say which posture is more insufferable: the "right-or-wrong" mentality that supports any US action including ones that are arguably wrong, or the "love-it-or-leave-it" mindset that refuses to see anything wrong.

Having witnessed what is done in the name of Americanism, some protesters during the Vietnam era attacked the patriotic symbols of our country. Some burnt American flags, thereby convincing more conventional Americans that they were either maniacs or traitors. The war resisters mistakenly put the blame on an entity called America, sometimes writing it as "Amerika," intended to give the word a more Germanic Nazi-like tone, or "Amerikkka" with three k's, the initials of the Ku Klux Klan, treating the word itself as a kind of curse. Thus, the protesters mistakenly made America the issue, blaming the nation itself for what was being perpetrated in its name by US leaders.

In so doing, they played directly into the hands of leaders who opportunistically sought to treat their own war policy as a manifestation a true Americanism. America was transformed into an entity that had a living moral existence of its own—supremely virtuous for the flag-wavers, and primarily evil for the flag burners.

"America" was made an issue in another way at about that same time. Many Latin Americans and some Canadians, along with some US peace advocates themselves, were—and still are—opposed to applying the terms "America" and "Americans" to the United States and its citizens. They argue that "America" refers to the entire Western Hemisphere and is not to be appropriated by one particular country in the Americas. In fact, people in other Western Hemispheric countries call themselves Brazilians, Chileans, Hondurans, Mexicans, Canadians, and so on. They do not identify themselves nationally as Americans. They just do not want US citizens to do so.

One might wonder why the appellation "America" should be coveted by anyone anyone at all. It derives from explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who happened to be a despicable slaver and plunderer, every bit as ruthless as Columbus. (In this book I apply the terms "America" and "American" to the United States and its citizens because that is the unavoidable nationalistic idiom I am addressing.)

To this day, US political leaders continue to wrap themselves in the flag, branding all opposition to their policies as attacks against the nation itself. In the 1992 electoral campaign, the older Bush responded to Bill Clinton's criticisms of the economic recession as follows: "My opponent says America is a nation in decline.... Well, don't let anyone tell you that America is second-rate, especially someone running for president." Thus, he misrepresented criticisms of his administration's faltering economic policies as an attack on America itself.

This reminds us that America would have been made the issue by the superpatriots even if no flags had been burnt, and even if nobody had thought to spell it "Amerikkka." "America—love it or leave it" is too inviting a slogan for those who have no desire to subject existing policies to rational scrutiny. By crying "love it or leave it," they can claim a monopoly on patriotism, and denigrate the dissenters for not loving their country.

This continues to be the case. Opponents of US foreign policy are still accused of blaming or hating America. Once again, the protesters are made the issue instead of the policies they are protesting.

In response, we must repeatedly point out that those who criticise the particular policies, leaders, or social conditions of their country do not thereby manifest a deficient loyalty. If the test of patriotism comes only by reflexively falling into lockstep behind the leader whenever the flag is waved, then what we have is a formula for dictatorship, not democracy.

We critics of US policy are not directing our protests against that entity known as America but against particular US leaders who, we feel, do not represent the interests of the American people or any other people, but who advance the goals of a privileged coterie. We are not being anti-American when we criticise the president's policies, no more than we are being "anti-Middletown" and lacking in community spirit if we oppose the policies pursued by the mayor of Middletown, or whatever community. Quite the contrary, our opposition arises out of concern for what is being done to—and in the name of—our country or community.

By the same token we are not being anti-Semitic if we criticise the Israeli government for the incursions and settlements in the occupied territories and for mistreatment of Palestinians. Some of the most outspoken critics of Israeli policy are themselves Israelis in Israel or Jewish-Americans in the United States who—contrary to the facile psychologists charge made against them—are not "self-hating Jews." In fact, most happen to be rightly proud of their Jewish heritage. Likewise, we are not showing hatred for Mexico, Italy, Poland, China, or any nation, nationality, or ethnic group if we denounce the particular policies of the Mexican, Italian, Polish, or Chinese governments.

The expression "love it or leave it" means love America as it is. Its national institutions and foreign policy are to be treated as above criticism. Those who see some serious problems in US society are deemed unappreciative of the American Way of Life. But the American way is to criticise and debate openly, not to accept unthinkingly the doings of government officials of this or any other country.

The superpatriots tell us that in many countries people do not have the right to criticise their governments. Presumably, we should show gratitude for our freedom to dissent by refraining from dissenting; and if we speak freely and critically, we are proving ourselves ungrateful and therefore unworthy of the right to speak. It seems we "abuse" our rights by simply using them. To repeat, the only thing to match the superpatriots' celebration of our freedom in the abstract is their intolerance toward anyone who actually puts that freedom into practice.

Some superpatriots think that we must not criticise the wonderful country that has given us so much. In fact, we were not given anything, certainly not by those who have ruled over our society. The American people, including all the immigrant groups and minorities, have had to fight long and hard for whatever rights they now enjoy. As the son of a poor Italian-American working-class family, I was able to go to school in the first half of the last century only because generations of people before me struggled against the privileged plutocracy for the right of free public education.

So with every other good thing we have been "given." Why should we feel indebted to the ruling moneyed interests for "giving" us the good life, when in fact they furiously resisted every democratic and egalitarian gain that the American people have won over two centuries of struggle, every advance in labour relations, popular electoral participation, public education, environmental and consumer protections, retirement benefits, human services, and other worthwhile measures. Like the good reactionaries they are, the plutocrats continue to oppose most of these things. And in recent decades they have enjoyed increasing success in bringing us back to the old days of Big Money and small democracy.

Getting back to the "love it or leave it" issue, many Americans would be surprised to learn that every year there are substantial numbers of people who permanently leave the United States. Public focus has always been on the waves of immigration to our shores, with little attention given to the outgoing tide. Emigration is a phenomenon that is rarely publicly recognised or even officially recorded—almost as if it were an embarrassment or, worse, a downright un-American phenomenon unworthy of attention.

Despite the deficiencies in data, enough reliable information is available to determine that during much of the twentieth century the United States gained some 30 million newcomers from abroad and lost about 10 million to emigration. Currently more than 150,000 people depart every year. About two-thirds of them are former immigrants who chose to go home or to another country. The remainder are US citizens. Some 300,000 US citizens permanently left the United States in the 1960s, a relatively prosperous decade. And this does not count the others who might have wished to depart but who lacked the wherewithal to do so.

About a third of the US citizens who emigrate each year settle in Canada or Mexico. The next most popular destinations are the United Kingdom and Germany, with Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and Hong Kong receiving large flows in proportion to their size. Considerable numbers also take up permanent residence in Japan and Australia. Americans emigrate usually for the same reasons that cause people of other nations to leave their homelands: better job opportunities abroad, unhappiness with the quality of life at home, a wish to escape troubled circumstances, attraction to the culture and lifestyle of some other country, a desire to unite with family, and marriage to a foreign national.

In sum, every year tens of thousands of US citizens reveal that they are not swept up in any mystique about the unsurpassable greatness of life in America. Since they don't love it, they leave it. Or they may love it but, for whatever reason, they find some other place more promising. Such data contradict the chauvinistic notion that everyone wants to move to America but no one wants to leave.