Like everyone else, I am inundated with political solicitations these days. Perhaps a few want my general support, but the vast majority are only after my money. Today, perhaps 98.9 percent of all political effort and energy goes into separating you from your wealth. What is especially disturbing is that the pitches are endless (they arrive on my phone every few minutes) along with snail mail and telephone calls. Moreover, they almost universally exploit our basic emotions … fear, guilt, hate, shame, and various appeals to our core tribal instincts. Political operators know full well that appeals to the better angels of our natures are hopeless. Stoking our darker side works.

Both sides use the same emotional forms of extortion. And while these tactics, often utterly disingenuous, appall me, I periodically do contribute to a number of Dems … though on my own schedule and not in response to their over-the-top emotional appeals. Someone will have to explain to me one day why the FEC deadlines, which appear to arrive about every third day or so, are so magical. What really happens when you don’t meet one of these endless accounting deadlines? Are the head fundraisers taken out and shot? That would explain the apparent ‘the sky-is-falling‘ desperation.

I won’t vent about the advantages of the British parliamentary system. The PM calls for an election, and it is over in a matter of weeks. Our own election horror never, ever ends. It is a continuous nightmare. How civilized are the Brits, a short election season, and all is sorted. Better yet, the dominant party elects the chief executive, not risking an ill-informed electorate choosing the village idiot to run things (NOTE: this very concern led the Founding Fathers to create an electoral college). Rather than all that stuff, I want to chat today about an issue raised by one aspect of the endless political begging to which we must endure.

I get solicitation from both sides, which surprises me since I never send a dime to the Republicans, or should I say neo-Nazis. While those of a liberal persuasion try all the usual tactics, I’ve noticed that Conservatives are unique in one respect. They almost universally start their pitches with the salutation … dear patriot. Does that mean the Dems as a group don’t like America? That seems unlikely since they strike me as much more concerned with protecting our Constitution and other fundamental values like the rule of law, at least comparatively speaking. So, what is going on here? What is this ‘patriot’ thing anyway?

When I was a young man, I recall believing that the U.S. was the best country in the world, bar none. We were an economic and political powerhouse. To my young mind, we had saved the globe from Fascism and now were in a life and death struggle with the evils of totalitarian Communism. By any measure, we were the good guys, the ones who wore the white hats. I recall a moment during the Cuban Missile stand-off. I was in a Catholic seminary at the time. At the worst of this crisis, I contemplated leaving my studies for the priesthood to join the military, assuming I could return to my vocation (if I survived) what I feared might be WWIII.

But the 1960s were a decade when all things were reassessed, including the myths within which I was raised. Simply by paying attention, and reading voraciously, I learned about the systemic ways in which we in this country exploited vulnerable peoples. Back then, America was one of two Western nations overtly practicing legal apartheid (the other being South Africa). No wonder the German Nazis in the early 1930s researched American statutes as they initially launched their legal attacks on undesirable groups, eventually leading to the holocaust and a final solution.

Soon, I stumbled upon the disturbing reality that we were not so innocent on the international stage either. We sponsored coups, assassinated leaders, and propped up the worst dictators who at least nominally joined our side in the cold war 🥶 . The purity of our norms and intentions quickly unraveled with such revelations. Our ill-considered actions in Vietnam and our CIA led overthrow of the elected Allende government in Chili were the final straws in my mind and heart (anyone remember the movie Missing, starring Jack Lemon and Sissy Spacek).

Still, I managed to maintain some attachment to the concept of a national allegiance. We were no longer the esteemed city on the hill that stood as a beacon of virtue to all others. But we were okay for the most part. Besides, we had licked de jure discrimination at home (not an easy task). Besides, I had convinced myself that things would definitely get better when my generation rose to power.

But things didn’t get better. Rather, the right-wing strategy articulated by future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell in 1973 emerged as the basis of a conservative revolution. Powell argued that Conservatives had to gradually take over all important institutions from the media, to the courts, to educational venues, to voting protocols, etc. Starting with Reagan, then Gingrich, and, more recently, the Tea Party and the MAGA movement, the country has drifted (then lurched) to the hard-right. The foundational elements of democracy are now on very thin ice indeed. Extreme beliefs, including the denial of truth and science and civility, have emerged as the new American norms and the default position in our political dialogue. The doublethink laid out in Orwell’s dystopian warning, 1984, has become reality, at least in part. What happened to the innocent hopes of our youth?

By the beginning of this century, I reluctantly admitted to myself that the U.S. probably would never escape the status of a wanna-be banana republic. Wealth and income inequality had soared to levels not seen since just before the great crash in 1929. We remained virtually the only civilized country that did not guarantee medical care, and thus enabled 40,000 plus amenable deaths per year (before Obamacare). Our profit-oriented health care system was the most expensive in the world yet delivered average outcomes at best. We had insane gun policies leading to carnage in the streets and children traumatized by school shootings. Our child poverty rates, which would be seen as a horrific public crisis elsewhere, garnered indifference here. The cost of higher education, affordable or free in our competitor countries, continued to rise dramatically, thus becoming a privilege for the affluent rather than an avenue to self-improvement for the many. We dithered as global warming went from a looming threat to an unfolding disaster. And social mobility withered as the uber rich exerted increasing control over society. As I’ve oft said, if you want the so-called ‘American dream,‘ go to Scandinavia.

Already delusional and cynical, I watched in horror as George W. Bush won reelection in 2004. This happened after he was manipulated by his Neo-Con advisors into highly questionable military disasters. I recall confronting my late wife in 2005 that we seriously should consider emigration. A few years earlier, we almost bought a house in a golf course community on Vancouver Island outside Victoria BC. Oh, how I wish we had. It would be worth a fortune today and serve as an easy escape from our national nightmare. But my good spouse rejected my sound suggestion (as she oft did), saying something to the effect that this was her country and she wasn’t going to cut and run. So we stayed. And things (for a brief moment at least) improved with the election of Barak Obama. That glimmer of hope was short-lived.

Rattled for a moment by Obama’s popularity, the extremists on the right soon rallied under Donald Trump and upped their attack on our basic values with renewed vigor. As Mich McConnell said at the beginning of Obama’s administration, the sole Republican goal was making Barak a one-term president. Good government wasn’t even on their radar. Negotiating and compromise were totally eliminated from their political lexicon. Gaining sustained power, they fantasized, was within reach.

They drove out any remaining moderates from their party and excised all remaining sanity and sensibility. Really! What is wrong with a party (but mostly with their supporters) who argue that hurricanes can be engineered to advantage the Democrats, that Jewish space-lasers are a real thing, that Hillary Clinton ran pedophilia rings out of pizza parlors, and that the January 6 mob attacking our national Capitol to hang the sitting VP and disrupt the Constitutional transfer of power were tourists with an interest in civics. When you cannot dominate with the logic and sense of your policy positions, scare the shit out of people. Starting with an alleged invasion at our southern border, that’s precisely what the MAGA movement has done.

Everything that anyone with any prognostication skills might have anticipated has come to pass. We now have one major party that is devoted to ending once and for all the American experiment in democracy. They would end the rule of law, persecute all those whom they deem enemies, and attack a hated outgroup (immigrants, most people of color, and now liberals like me if you take Donald Trump at his word) in an effort to Make America Great Again. This is a reliving of an historical nightmare. Much like 1930s Germany, this is the language of totalitarianism and of a horrific dictatorship. We sacrificed over 400,000 lives to stop Fascism back then. We’re we wrong in doing that?

Perhaps we were since we now seem to be operating out of the same German Nazi playbook. Over time, the conservative (extreme Republican) push to undermine democracy has systemically purged voting rolls, made the exercise of voting more difficult, put radical officials in charge of local voting protocols, gerrymandered voting districts where they could, and did anything else they could to gain a semblance of dictatorial control. Now, they hope for a final victory. Pushing the white nationalist dream, Donald Trump promised a group of evangelical believers that, if elected one more time, they would not have to worry about future elections. The implicit promise … there wouldn’t be any.

I looked the other way during some six decades of increasing disappointment. I kept hoping for the best. But what we see today is unbearable. Perhaps the most disgusting and despicable character ever in public life has at least a 50-50 chance of being elevated once again to our highest office. And if, by some chance, he loses at the polls, he and his minions suggest that they will try to seize power by extra-legal means. They have worked hard to build up the myth that the upcoming election is being rigged. THEN, we truly will have become a banana republic. 🍌

So, let me return to my original question. Am I a patriot? The answer is an unequivocal NO. Even if things were marginally okay in this country, I would have difficulty with the worship of any society that appears so indifferent to those who struggle in life, a nation that fails to use its preeminent position to advance a global campaign on things that matter … like climate change. Moreover, any displays of national pride (like any overweening devotion to a cause) breeds a kind of disturbing tribalism. I can never quite shake the image of men going over the top to be slaughtered in no-man’s land during WWI, only because they wore a different uniform and saluted a different flag. The absolute folly of it all.

But my current disgust with demonstrations of so-called national pride is based on a more fundamental basis. To be a patriot, one has to have a sense of pride in the culture of a place and the quality of the population. Why should one feel pride here in America … the Darwinian struggle for supremacy with a winner-take-all social environment, the slaughter in our streets because guns are valued more than life, the senseless suffering and death because we value profits over healing, or the disinterest we show to how too many of our youth are faring. I could go on, but why?

The bottom line is this. Almost half of the electorate is willing to vote for a man who is, at best, a pathological narcissist and likely a destructive sociopath. When pressed, many of these MAGA types express a cult-like devotion to a man who has cheated, lied, and conned his way through life. He has refused to pay vendors, defrauded customers, cheated on his wives, broken numerous laws, and lied so often and so outrageously that many believe he cannot distinguish fact from fiction. And yet, his MAGA base worships him as a virtual deity. He would be the first elected felon to our highest office, which would enable him to escape justice for all his other pending crimes.

I’m sorry. I could tolerate perhaps 1 in 5 (perhaps even 1 in 4) voters choosing a man who would end the American experiment in democracy and the rule of law. You would find that level of insanity in many other civilized nations. But I cannot accept the fact that such a despicable man has a very good chance of being reelected. His pernicious character is not a secret. It is known. His mental decline is on full display. All the reasonable officials who witnessed his first term up close (serving in his administration) have sounded alarms bells regarding the danger he poses. And yet, his cult-like devotees follow him slavishly. Worse, they might well put him in charge one more time even as he suggests it will spell the end of Constitutional rule here at home and the stable Western alliance internationally. His fawning support for the worst dictators around the globe is no secret.

In the end, I cannot feel anything for a country and a culture that somehow embraces such widespread insanity and systemic hate. That is too much. I am probably too old to emigrate now. I will, however, never forgive myself for not moving on when it was apparent just how far this country would descend into a peculiar form of self-destruction and bitter division.

From what I know, much of the world looks at us in disbelief. how could this powerful country even consider putting such an obvious madman in charge. For years, that was a question I asked about 1930s Germany. Now I know the answer to that old query of mine.

I will be in Europe during the actual election. I hope no one asks me where I’m from. If they do, perhaps I will say Canada. I’d hate to admit I’m from such a backward and possibly dangerous country. 😳 Heaven help us, and the world.