Happy 4th of July, fellow Americans.
Happy birthday, America (well, sort of – the Declaration wasn’t officially through with signing until August, y’know).
It feels odd to celebrate today. Our nation has forever had a messy, brutal history, but to be in the thick of regression doesn’t quite align itself with celebration. In the past few weeks, Americans who are not white, cisgender, heterosexual, male, and Christian have lost autonomy: bodily autonomy, religious autonomy, financial autonomy, environmental autonomy, among others. Our Supreme Court—massively manipulated by the unconstitutionality of several years ago—has effectively taken away countless rights and protections for their citizens. Our citizenry separation is coming to a head; the ugliness that America has long held is finally barreling to the forefront.
So, it feels odd to celebrate. Why in the hell would you celebrate a country that refuses to value you? Why would you do such a thing?
If those musings and that question sets you off, you’re probably in the right place. If those musings and that question invigorates you, you’re probably in the right place.
Before we get into this, let me introduce myself. Hello. I’m Rhiannon. I was born and raised in a blood red state of the Midwest, and am the proud daughter of an Air Force veteran. My family has a long history of both military service and immigration. I am extremely liberal, but not a Democrat. I am an unapologetic feminist, working to further my intersectionality every day. I am outspoken about my support of the LGBTQIA+ community, am a sex positive individual, and will be teaching my future children about pronouns and orientation from a young age. I’m a massive bibliophile, a history geek, and a lover of learning.
That’s where I’m coming from. I figure you should hear my standpoints and biases, and have a peek at my background, right from the start.
Firstly, let’s chat about what patriotism actually is, and why nationalism so often sneaks its way in. They come from the same root, but are not at all the same thing.
Pulling both definitions from the Cambridge English Dictionary, we have:
Patriotism (n.) - the feeling of loving your country more than any others and being proud of it
Nationalism (n.) - a great or too great love of your own country
The example sentence for nationalism follows as such: “The book documents the rise of the political right with its accompanying strands of nationalism and racism.” Note that racism is the accompanying word for nationalism. Other associated words include imperialism, secession, and annexation. This is important. None of those are good, I think we would agree.
Our nation—one that underfunds and underexplores its educational system—has an issue with confusing nationalism and patriotism. Patriotism is simply a love for one’s nation. Nationalism is the love for one’s nation above all else. The former preaches love within loyalty; the second teaches loyalty with no exception. The first is observance; the second is blindness. Patriotism is associated with good citizenship and “love thy neighbor;” nationalism is associated with fascism, exodus, and genocide of both cultural and literal form.
If you’re nationalistic, you are wrong. More than wrong, you are way out of bounds and out of humanity. If you’re patriotic, you know that the biggest form of love you can show your country is to try to better it. It’s to disagree with it.
After all, as they said during Vietnam, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” Dissent and critique is inherently patriotic. Standing for what you know to be true is inherently patriotic. Protecting one’s neighbor is inherently patriotic. Looking outside of oneself and one’s own beliefs is inherently patriotic.
Blind faith, unyielding loyalty, and the forcing of one singular religious belief is not. That is nationalism. See: the manipulation of the churches and the populace in literally any fascist regime. I can provide you references if you ask.
With that in mind, here are some very patriotic things you can do this Independence Day and Independence Month:
Learn About America’s True History
This is a massive section, yes, but one that’s important. Look into the truth of American history, not just what’s sold to you in HBO’s John Adams (which is an artistically fecking marvelous series, by the way). Don’t rely on your history book from high school; there’s a solid chance it’s been edited and watered down within an inch of its life. Instead, look to bookstores, especially independent ones, streaming services, podcasts, and online archives. Choose a category, any category, and start learning. Some quick thoughts follow below (there are approximately fifty million subcategories in all of these, but for ease of a starting point):
General History: A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn; An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz; A True History of the United States by Daniel A. Sjursen; Gladwell’s Revisionist History
Race in America: Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi; The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander; White Fragility by Robin DeAngelo; We Gon’ Be Alright by Jeff Chang; All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung; NPR’s Code Switch; NYT’s The 1619 Project; Netflix’s When They See Us, Who We Are, and 13th
Feminism in America: Feminism: The Essential Writings from Miriam Schneir; The Ambition Decisions by Schank and Wallace; Girls and Sex, Boys and Sex, and Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein; Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks; We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall; What’s Her Name; The History Chicks; Not Your Father’s History; Breem’s The Femtastic Podcast; Newsom’s Miss Representation and The Mask You Live In; Netflix’s Feminists: What Were They Thinking?
Reproductive Rights in America: Without Apology by Jenny Brown; After Roe by Mary Ziegler; Griswold by Angela J. Davis; When Abortion Was a Crime by Leslie Reagan; The Story of Jane by Leslie Kaplan; Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts; Dick’s The Hunting Ground; Netflix’s Reversing Roe and Athlete A; HBO’s Unpregnant; Breem’s The Femtastic Podcast; Shifrah’s Rethinking Reproductive Health; Case’s For the Love of Roe; NPR’s Reproductive Rights in America
Queer History in America: A Queer History of the United States by Michael Bronski; Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde; The Stonewall Reader from the NY Public Library; How to Survive a Plague by David France; Bi the Way by Lois Shearing; The Laramie Project by the Tectonic Theatre Project; Transgender Warriors by Leslie Feinberg; Netflix’s The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson; Paris is Burning; HBO’s Equal and The Life and Times of Harvey Milk; Marcus and Burningham’s Making Gay History; PodBean’s Queer as Fact; Cohen and Boyd’s Two Bi Guys
Environmental Justice in America: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson; NYT’s Losing Earth; The Intersectional Environmentalist by Leah Thomas; As Long as Grass Grows by Dina Gilio-Whitaker; The Rise of the American Conservation Movement and Toxic Communities by Dorceta E. Taylor; Earth Alliance’s Before the Flood; Madman’s 2040; David Attenborough’s A Life on Our Planet; PRX’s Living on Earth; For the Wild; Chayne’s Green Dreamer
Religion in America: A History of Religion in America by Bryan Le Beau; The Puritan Origins of the American Self by Sacvan Berkovitch; American Fascists: The Christian Right and War in America by Chris Hedges (acknowledgement here that he’s problematic, but the early book is still good); Anointed with Oil by Darren Dochuk; Bad Faith by Randall Balmer; Netflix’s The Family and Pray Away; Onishi and Miller’s Straight White American Jesus; the NMAR’s Religion in the American Experience
There are countless others. Here’s just a start. ;)
Meet Your Founders
And by this, I mean really meet your founders. The Founding Fathers have been put on a pedestal for far too long; I grew up romanticizing what they did, worshipping the documents they had touched. Many American citizens have that experience, I’ve seen. And they were good documents: Jefferson and his colleagues certainly knew how to write, and laid down some wonderful bare bones for this nation. However. This is a case of the artist versus the art, and being able to simultaneously conjoin and separate the two.
Our Founding Fathers weren’t Christian. The majority were Deist. Some held Quaker ideologies. They were racist and sexist. They intentionally left the majority of the American populace out of the Constitution. Unless one was white, cisgender, heterosexual, and owned land, one couldn’t vote. Humans are fallible creatures, anyway, but these facts? They make our Founders immediately capable of hundreds of mistakes.
All this to say: meet your Founders. Get to know them. Understand and acknowledge their biases and prejudices and cruelties. Then look at the Constitution. Look at it with that gained perspective. It may change a few things.
Read the Documents
The Declaration! The Constitution! The Bill of Rights! Supreme Court decisions and dissents! The Amendments! I had the first three hanging on the wall of my childhood bedroom for years (oh, yeah, I’m that geek), so I know them well. Make sure you do, too. Don’t blindly quote anything. Always know the context it’s coming from, and the environment it was devised in. Actually, really, read these documentations and try to understand them. See their beautiful malleability. It may help you change or solidify your mind.
Acknowledge the Lack of Vacuum
Nothing is ever created without bias or outside forces. Nothing. It does not matter how hard you try to be unbiased and fair, your own upbringing, background, and ideology will find its way into your thoughts. To be truly patriotic, you must understand this twofold:
The Founders didn’t exist in a vacuum. Their own horrific biases found their way into a changeable document, one that they made malleable to change with the times.
You don’t exist in a vacuum. Always, always check yourself. It makes you a far better citizen and human.
Speak
To others. To yourself. To your representatives. To your community. To your nation.
Listen
To others. To yourself. To your community. To your nation.
Respect
Yourself too much to not call yourself out. Others enough to protect and fight for their autonomy. Your community too much to become lackadaisical. Your nation enough to criticize and try to fix it.
Figure Out How to Communicate with Your Reps
Find the emails and phone numbers of your state and federal representatives. Draft a script for emailing or calling each one (there are plenty online, if you want formatting help!). Know that they work for you, and you must get your voice heard.
In short, on this Independence Day, I want the best of riots. I want you to check yourself and your nation. I want you to listen to your history—your true history—and your community. I want you to eat some good barbecue and talk a good talk. I want you to acknowledge the privileges you have and the ones we’ve lost. I want you to know that it feels damn weird to celebrate a nation that doesn’t do the same for you, and to know that you need to do something about that. Whether that’s talking to representatives, raising money for nonprofits, or protesting in the streets, you need to do something about that.
It's the finest form of patriotism. Especially for a country that was running from religious and cultural persecution.
Happy 4th, y’all.
Let’s call her out.
