You know this is not the attitude of many traditional leftists from whom I have learned. Brecht, my earliest and more important teacher on left, felt a deep connection with Germany, his "pale Mother." He didn'r spare it for its crimes and follies, but he loved it and ultimately couldn't live anywhere else. E.P. Thompson, whose Marxism shaped my own perspectives as much as anyone's, was an English localist; I do not think he could have done what he did if he had not felt an intimate connection with and love for England, which fierce affection as much as anything else fueled his prophetic wrath at the ruling class corrupters and betrayers of what he loved in England. I just mention those two, but I might continue.
It may be that many American leftists feel so alienated from our country that they accept the flag-wavers' version of it and just invert the value signs. Or maybe they are attracted to the left because they view America as a Great Satan. It's sad, and it's a self destructive attitude. Of course one can't generate feelings on demand even if one recognizes this, any more than I can make myself have religious feelings. But sometimes it seems that a decent respect for the opinions of himankind and a simple practical sense of political efficacy would make people keep their mouths shut where they can't understand.
Saul Alinsky once said you don't eat a ham sandwich in an Orthodoz Jewish neighborhood (even if you're not Orthodox). Likewise, you don't tell normal Americans--I don't mean me, I'm not normal, I'm an eccentric leftist--that they are empty vicious murderous thugs because they care about their country. Not, anyway, if you want to be heard.
jks
>
>At 04:17 PM 06/01/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>>PATRIOTISM, n. 1) The inability to distinguish between the government and
>>one's "country"; 2) A highly praiseworthy virtue characterized by the
>>desire to dominate and kill; 3) A feeling of exultation experienced when
>>contemplating heaps of charred "enemy" corpses; 4) The first, last, and
>>perennial refuge of scoundrels.
>>- -- from The American Heretic's Dictionary edited by Chaz Bufe
>
>PATRIOTISM (n) one of many forms of identification used to conceal the
>emptiness within and to deny one's bond and likeness to every other human
>being living on this planet. (Joanna)
>
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