Does This Avid Leftist Hate America Like GOPers Claim?

Wrong-wing rhetoric & actions are shoving the accusation towards becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy

Hey baby, it’s the Fourth of July

Forgive me if I’m not feeling warm, fuzzy and celebratory this Independence Day. Too many of my not-so-fellow Americans are behaving in deplorable ways of late for me to be in a patriotic party-hearty mood.

Like many of my fellow baby boomers, I grew up waving the stars & stripes at Fourth of July parades, saying the Pledge of Allegiance with my hand over my heart at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School (and ducking and covering under my desk in case those dirty Russkies launched some nukes at us), and oohing and ahhing at holiday fireworks. I felt fortunate to be born in the USA.

With my Dad and siblings at a patriotic parade in 1961, back when I was a blond

But just like Bruce Springsteen’s song, often misunderstood as patriotic, there’s some significant and shameful downsides to what I still felt was, despite its failings and shameful lapses, a pretty great nation, especially its founding principles and ideals. As I grew up and was properly public school educated, where I also gained skills that helped me further edumicate myself, I learned about the tatters, stains and moth and bullet holes in our national flag. Yet still loved America and being an American.

Our nation’s not perfect, nor do I expect it to be. In each of our personal existences, perfection is a goal to aim towards that can never quite be achieved. Same goes for the nation. Democracy can be messy; few if any of us can get all we wish for from our government, speaking in rational, realistic terms.

Presidential aspirant Ron DeSatan wants to erase the truth about the original American sin of slavery – the bugaboo of CRT that wads the panties of wrong wingers. In dudes on the street terms, it’s a real dickhead move, plus a doofus one. Does he really think he can suppress the truth when the Internet offers all kinds of info – good, bad or indifferent, from factual to fictional – straight to our digital devices? Good luck with that supression, DuhSantis (a nickname that solves the question in the air about how to pronounce his surname).

Plus, when people discover they’ve been lied to, you’ve usually lost them. Despite of his Yale and Harvard schooling, DumbSantis doesn’t even have the snap to see that he can’t trump Herr Drumpf by throwing even more rancid and bloody red meat to the wrong-wing rabble. If two impeachments and two multi-count indictments (with more on the way) can’t even put a dent in tRumpy’s GOP primary poll numbers, Ronnie doesn’t have a prayer.

The vile DuhSantos & his evil missus take a romantic walk on a fake beach after trying to bury Miss Liberty.

I chose to view America’s history of slavery from the perspective of cold hard fact. It was a heartless, heinous practice whose repercussions still ripple through modern society. Anyone who tries to deny that is whistling “Dixie,” and not just metaphorically.

I’ve long pondered why there are so many African-Americans who share my Patterson surname. I figure it’s because some Southern Scots-Irish Patterson planters had slaves that adopted their enslaver’s surname, a not uncommon if strange practice. Or dallied with the females they owned to foster a new Patterson line, like the afore-kinda-mentioned Founding Father Jefferson – who I admire, and give thanks to for being a progenitor of my favorite fellow Substack writer, his sixth-great-grandson Lucian K. Truscott IV (I urge all my dear readers to subscribe to his feed; it’s brilliant, warm and wise).

I consider all Black Pattersons cousins, in a way. And fellow Americans to be respected as equals. Pretty basic and simple stuff within the morals and ethics of Judeo-Christian principles, as best I can I can divine them as guy who thinks and reasons and was reared as a churchgoing Whiskeypalian.

One thing that still makes me feel a bit of a proud American is that, as best I can ascertain, none of my Patterson forebears – my family has been here since before the nation was born in my father’s and mother’s paternal lines – was a slave owner. And I’m even prouder of how Blackness came into our largely white bread family via another route: my niece married an African-American. And they had two lovely daughters I used to refer to as our little Obamettes – white mother, Black father. Now of college age, they’re intelligent and accomplished young women who are a credit not just to our family but both of their mixed races as well.

In them I see the great melting pot that has been one of the best aspects of the United States throughout most of our history. But that’s sadly a mere drop in the bucket compared to the current resurging racism and white supremacy, xenophobic anti-immigrant sentiments, vile and violent political rhetoric, anti LGBTQ+ legislation and prejudices. fascistic politicians and their supporters, book banners, mass shooters murdering innocents almost daily, ratfuckers who are trying to rig and corrupt our democratic electoral system, radical right yet so wrongheaded Proud Boys, Promise Keepers and neo-Nazis… and many more disturbing and downright scary strains of anger and delusions I come across in multiples ever day as I do my morning read of multiple news sources. They are resentful, angry, and spoiling for a fight.

I don’t really hate America… yet. What I do loathe and am severely discomposed by is how too many of maybe my not-so-fellow Americans think and behave in ways cited in the previous graf. They’re citizens who almost exclusively fall under the rubrics of the GOP, MAGA maniacs and far-right conservatives, with a heaping portion of evangelical false Christians ladled into their toxic stew. Republican politicians and their madia mavens like to turn up the burners on this stew and stir it vigorously in their craven hunger for electoral office, power and, of course, lucre. So they can try to turn back the clock to an America that never existed.

So on this Independence Day, I won’t be attending any fireworks displays, holiday cookouts or parties. I’ll be hunkering down at home. And my thoughts could turn to other countries and how I might be able escape to them if things go terribly awry in the 2024 elections. And my friends who have already expatriated. Like my dear ex-lover Ellen, who saw the writing emerging on the wall back in the early 2000s and moved to Costa Rica. She found her joy surfing, meditating and helping others in AA to achieve the sobriety she did before she sadly died far too young from a brain tumor at age 63.

Or friends who now live in Ireland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and Australia – all countries where I could happily live. And come to love. But could I love them as much as I have loved America as I did in earlier years? Don’t know if I can answer that question….

I was truly blown away as I watched the amazeballs 1976 Bicentennial Fourth fireworks display in New York harbor from the Southern tip of Manhattan. It was nearly inpossible to not feel like a patriotic American on that day

After all, I am an American. I’ve traveled to or through 40 of our 50 states and marveled at the nation’s scenic beauty and its diverse citizenry. I cherish our original founding documents of the Declaration of Independence, Consitution and Bill of Rights and find their truths to indeed be self-evident. I will always love the idea and ideals of this great experiment in democracy.

But I am deeply worried that this nation as I have known and loved it and its democracy may not survive today’s troublesome, turbulent and trying times. So I imagine at some point on the Fourth I will invoke whatever divine that I believe to be real to help this nation get through its dangerously roiling state. And hope America can bridge the current great political divide and heal the wounds being inflicted, and somehow find common ground to address the pressing challenges America faces – which isn’t Drag Queen Story Hour. And become a better, fairer, kinder and more just republic where our lawmakers cam reach across the aisle to legislate common sense solutions.

For that to happen, one side of the divide needs to stop slandering the other as pedolphiles, communists, traitors and souls possessed by demons. I don’t see that brand of ugly performative politics receding anytime soon. Check back with me on next year’s Independece Day to see if I’ve started packing my bags.

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