A momentary digression
There are developments in my next project that I hope to announce very very shortly, but while we wait for ink to dry and deposits to be handed over I digress...
There is a popular phrase in the New American Lexicon that was created by the bastion of sensibility that my Ultra Conservative Boss himself calls Hate Radio.
"The Hate America Crowd".
This is of course bastardized in any number of ways. The America Lasters, AntiAmericanism, or the second level cousin Cut and Runners.
These phrases are applied to everyone from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid on down to Jon Stewart, and by extension all the way down to me.
The Hate America Crowd is of course anyone who thinks that some of the things we do as a collective are crap. We therefore don't stand for anything that America does. This drives me crazy. The whole line of thinking is so ridiculously arrogant it's difficult to muster the energy to respond to something so banal. The very idea that what you think or believe is definitively what America is and believes is as close as this agnostic believes you can get to thumbing your nose at the gods.
But I'm going to respond anyway, because well, the pixels are already paid for.
America is not a country in the way that France and The United Kingdom are countries. Those are political entities that encompass a very few number of cultures that form the greater culture of that place. America is an idea. An experiment.
The people who founded this nation all came for different reasons, freedom from religious persecution, escape from criminal prosecution at home, escape from poverty at home, adventure, or just a fresh start. They came here for an opportunity at something.
Pardon my crassness, but they had the balls to show up.
So we are a nation that has descended from the rebellious, and the adventurous. The bull-headed and argumentative of the world colonized this nation. It wasn't some tidal wave of Puritans that populated America. To quote a great warrior-poet, I have never seen a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. Nor has the world ever seen a greater fighting spirit (for good or for ill).
For any group to state unequivocally that America stands for what they believe in is wrong categorically unless the only thing that group stands for is freedom. Freedom unstained by any other ideology. I have yet to meet that group.
The Hate America Crowd in this iteration of the usage is primarily against the War, and against cultural christian hegemony. They hate that this Presidential Administration is hell bent on ignoring any opposition to its policies, and hate the idea that a small group of men in power can destroy the capacity of this nation to perform good works internationally. They hate that opposition to this Administration and its policies have been labeled defeatism and treason. They hate that for speaking out publicly against the policies of this Administration they end up on Lists.
I am as moderate a moonbat liberal as you can be. I understand that many of my personally held beliefs would make for poor federal policy. I understand that cultural change takes a generation. And I understand that elections work pretty well no matter how hard Diebold tries to swing them.
But if Hate Radio got a hold of any of my writings they would toss me in with the Hate America crowd.
America boosters of the ribbons on my car, flags on my keychain variety are merely purveyors of the New American Isolationism. They don't want to learn a second language. They don't want to think about how their country's actions will impact others around the world, or even how a lower tax bill for themselves would impact their community.
They understand that we WON the Cold War and to the victor goes the spoils.
They don't want to hear about American imperialism in Iraq, because America is the perpetual White Hat and nothing they do can possibly be wrong. And here we are the denizen's of Momma's basement sitting on our purty little internet sites writing about how this thing that America does is wrong, and how our Holy Murkin Emperor has no clothes and they don't want to hear it. Heaven forbid we point out that we didn't WIN the Cold War so much as the USSR lost it (hard by the way).
I have never hated America. Not once. I have been disappointed. I have even been pissed at her, and her leaders. But I love the idea of America, and every negative emotion I have felt politically is borne out of that naive idealism. I want America to be the America we were promised that it was in third grade social studies. And I will hole up in my little corner of the internet and shout that until they unplug it.
If that's hating America I guess I don't understand the definition of hate.
Now Fred Phelps? Fred Phelps I hate.
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