That’s why I’ve ‘taken back the flag’ and fly it on occasional days not just the big holidays.
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We are definitely white and Mrs dont made sure the flag went out on Juneteenth.
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Got to get out to the garden.
But first, this line in the article stood out and I wanted to drop my thoughts here.
“Progressives understand that people can disagree with their government and still love their country and its ideals.”
I agree that is a particular dissonance a lot of folks, and no R voter or Rube can accomodate.
What I take from the 75 million people who would still vote R after what they witnessed in the previous 5 years is that identifying in public as an R is EASY. They require nothing from you except that you play along or go along and don’t raise a fuss or call them out.
Being a D is hard, and you accept responsibility and conflict, agree to hard work and planning and accountability and you take a hit for every one of those things along the way. You have to take the blame and the name-calling and scapegoating if your ‘plan’ doesn’t work or has unintended consequences. You have to account for the money and collect it and get it spent properly. You have to pay out political capital to get the idea formed and get it across the goal line…and live with the fact that your political capital account will be much reduced and no amount of success or long-term accomplishment is going to redound to your benefit perhaps in your lifetime or ever.
And now more than ever, as a D, you have to live with all the turmoil and accusatory stances and defamation that comes from within our own party. Very little is glowing or positive.The Rs don’t have ONE PEEP of dissent or badmouthing of the ‘country’. Of course, all they do is badmouth 1/2 of the countries occupants, but never the country. On the D side, every different identity group is claiming the whole country’s founding and history (right up to today) was semi-evil, illegitimate, inhuman, contradictory, and the opposite of what every R thinks the country stands for. I am not saying this is what the different identity groups actually feel…but those words are spoken…and I can tell you that every R voter and many Independents take it that way.
When you add up all the criticism of the country and it’s founding, history, institutions, and the hard, hard work of being a D…is it any wonder that the low-effort and low-info American Citizen just finds it easier to fall into the R camp? I won’t go into all the ways that R voters have dug themselves into a hole, but we can’t even count now how many times the avg. R has doubled-down on lunacy. Even their first double-down was because they are allergic to admitting they were wrong and didn’t want to break with (or betray) their tribe/class/region/neighbors/religion/team. And many other reasons. After their 100th or 1000th double-down, they are almost beyond hope.
So my hope for Ds, and for America, is that we provide a friendlier and more optimistic entry-level for voters. As a purely political and pragmatic stance, I could care less about any group’s gripes or grudges. I need them to vote D. I need a bunch of fairly decent but silly people to stop finding it easier to vote R than to vote D. We aren’t going to change a bunch of low-effort, low-info, and low-political motivation people into high-effort types. Not anytime soon. But we can make our party what the Obama Era originally promised…an optimistic and welcoming and EASIER option. We are careening towards authoritarianism and global catastrophe anyways, being more dour, more down, and more doomsdayish doesn’t appear to be working. The WOKISM is very worrying and divisive. Regardless of it’s benefits or legitimacy, I and very concerned our party isn’t appealing or inviting and is too difficult for great chunks of our citizenry and changing our facade is going to be a lot easier than getting all those people smarter anytime soon. I believe being an R is EASY, and we need to make being a D EASIER than it is currently.
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This TPM article pretty much encapsulates what I think/feel about this holiday. I’m become so reactive too the flag waving, chest thumping that passes for patriotism to the point that I have a hard time keeping perspective. Instead I spend the day trying to ignore the noise and destruction of the fireworks I once loved and instead will celebrate what would have been my grandmother’s 119th birthday as she proudly would reminded us that she,n fact Born on the 4th of July. Peace
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I very pointedly put out a flag at noon on January 20, 2021, and fly it every day that it doesn’t rain.
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A fantastic essay. Thanks to these eloquent, informed authors.
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We fly the flag on veterans day and the 4th because people need to know that liberals are Americans too.
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Who better to give an objective opinion about us? 
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That has taken long enough. It was obvious as hell back in 2018 that those guys were committing fraud. I’m glad that they’re getting them, though.
For those of you who don’t know, Taylor was the Republican congressman from Virginia Beach area being challenged by Elaine Luria, now a member of the Select Committee on the Insurrection.
Anyway, Taylor and his staff tried to get a third-party spoiler candidate on the ballot. They couldn’t get any supporters to sign the petition to get the person on the ballot, so they forged the signatures. They then got caught, and lied about it. It was far enough ahead of the election that a judge threw the spoiler candidate off the ballot. Luria won, and obviously won again in 2020.
Every single cry by Republicans about election fraud is projection.
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Liberals are not only Americans, but America is also liberal.
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law.
(Wikipedia)
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So…how many of their new election laws will in any way address the fraud they perpetrate?
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“America right or wrong!
When right to be kept right.
When wrong to be set right.”
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Over on the “Cartoons from the Other Side” thread in The Hive from last night is a RWNJ cartoon that inadvertently shows this. Basically, the premise is that if kids are taught the actual history of the US, they won’t “learn to be patriotic;” they’ll only be patriotic if the history is whitewashed.
I don’t think that’s what the RWNJ cartoonist intended to say, but they aren’t particularly bright.
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Leonard Cohen died on November 7th, 2016, which was the day before T**** was elected president.
I like to imagine that Mr. Cohen had a premonition of what was about to happen and decided to say his goodbyes.
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I have little regard for the overwrought in your face, worn on their sleeve John Wayne, Trump hugging the flag type of patriotism while at the same time they have little regard for many of the nations citizens.
Instead of that version of patriotism I would think that Americans prefer the quiet, decent “Best years of our lives” patriotism and would be appalled at what amounts to a spectacle.
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“They wouldn’t let Jack Johnson on board.
They said this ship don’t haul no coal.
Fair thee well Titanic.
Fair thee well.”
The Ballad of Jack Johnson
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Excellent long form article from which I not only learned much, but gives me hope in that we’ve been here before and come out the other side.
We’re in another Gilded Age with our own robber barons, xenophobes, racists, and an excess of money in politics with the inherent corruption that follows. We have our own propagandists, snake charmers, and McCarthyites.
But we also have a reawakening of the American people and a burgeoning progressive movement with significant energy and moral clarity. So much so that it’s all the other side can think about. Also, the think tanks, the ivory towers, and other academic scholars continue to press ideas with a progressive bent. My feeling is we’ve bottomed out with the insurrection, Trump, and a 6-3 SCOTUS, and we’re on the way back. One way or another, we will overcome whatever voter suppression laws come our way. They’re doing it out of fear, not strength.
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I have to agree. I think the Republican push for voter suppression will backfire spectacularly.
It is energizing our base and demoralizing theirs.
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Happy Fourth of July!!
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
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