From the river to the sea

Patriotism from sea to shining sea; from pole to shining pole

Click above to hear this article as an Irving Berlin song.

One of the things that has long since confused me about America is that the sweet land of liberty knows so many constraints. The Americans have hi-jacked the word need and use it to mean do it, or else: “I need you to stand with your legs apart and your hands in the air as I handcuff you.” I remember reading the do’s and don’ts on the Washington D.C. Metro. Not a pictogram in sight. Americans need it telling to them straight, no guessing allowed. All wrapped up with “It’s the law.” Not even an exclamation mark to soften the iron-ness.

Once, I questioned something posted by a Ukrainian. Ukraine, you’ll know, is fighting for its freedom. Freedom, it seems, according to a model like America’s, who is supporting it by the inter-ballistic missile-load. But I was shot down myself, with accusations of non-support. I’ve had worse: being accused of being a troll for Russia, simply for questioning how wise it is for the Security and Cooperation people in Europe to walk out when Russian delegates talk. They’re supposed to be seeking security and cooperation, after all, aren’t they?

Hence my trepidation at saying that John Quincy Adams was wrong to say that democracy will always slowly commit suicide. Or at saying that anti-patriotism is healthy, because it shows that freedom still exists in America, and that’s what they want, isn’t it? There’s no anti-patriotism in North Korea, and we decry that, don’t we?

Adams was wrong, in that democracies don’t commit suicide. They simply never exist in the first place. Democracy relies on two tenets, and no one seems to know this any more, because everyone is busy defining it their own way. So, minority Democrats will say that democracy depends on Republicans supporting them to get laws enacted that are for the common good (which they themselves have defined). The two tenets are simple: everyone is free to do as they please under the constraints imposed by law; and all are equal before the law. And there isn’t a jurisdiction on Earth where that applies, from pole to shining pole.

Because what inevitably happens is that those who have the greater say start tipping the scales of equality, until politicians realise that tipping scales to benefit voters ain’t half as much fun as tipping them to benefit themselves. From pleasing voters to secure election, you move to pleasing industries to secure a post-political commercial career.Who cares a fig about the greatest happiness of the greatest number if you can swing things to the greatest happiness of yourself?

Democracy doesn’t commit suicide therefore; it is in fact merely stillborn. It never lives. We rail against the oligarchs in Greece, Ukraine, Russia, China and elsewhere and are blind to the oligarchs in the US, and other places where we don’t suspect them. Just four companies process meat from Pacific to Atlantic. High-powered oligopolies exist everywhere, and we’re starting to see what tentacles reach into the heart of the judiciary from these oligarchies, at even supreme levels.

Patriotism, therefore is a subliminal cheer of support for the industries of your country, who bask in glittering banners of red, white and blue, as they take their workforces and their customers and society at large (insofar as fiscal matters are concerned) to the cleaners, and anti-patriots get lambasted as failing to play their part, like Republicans who pursue another agenda in the law-making fora of the dear old USA.

I was told by an American lesbian to “grow up” when I asserted that all lives matter. I’d fallen unwittingly into a right-wing, white-supremacist trope. But, if I’d been aware of that, just how am I supposed to say that all lives in fact do matter?

Now, I cannot embrace a phrase like from the river to the sea. Because it’s a message advocating the annihilation of the Israeli state. Is that so? Is that really so? Is that what those who speak of equality and peace among peoples from one limit of Palestine to the other are advocating: annihilation? If so, it is duly noted. And another from and to is duly noted: from sea to shining sea. From the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans, white with foam; God bless America, my home sweet home. Aye, home sweet home, once the indigenous peoples had all been subjugated.

We all, wherever we are, pledge allegiance to notions of patriotism that are now in large part a pure figment of our over-romanticised imaginations, partly thanks to Irving Berlin. God Bless America was written as a song pleading for peace. But peace is hard to plead for when it needs one party to lay down its claims. What about both of them laying their claims down?

The political slant of patriotism is bad enough, but when the ethnic slant is taken into account, just how patriotic is one to be for a nation that was in large part stolen? Do we plead the case of suppliers of dodgy car parts on street corners, as we are exhorted to stand to attention, hand on wallet, singing praises to the land of the braves?