Support it! Whatever the Hell 'It' Is

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By Dan Hagen

Laurence Britt’s 14 Elements of a Fascist State: No. 1. Powerful, continuing expressions of nationalism.

Only 49 percent of Americans are aware that their own country dropped the nuclear bomb. They are certain, however, that their nation is “the greatest country on Earth,” although they know little about it and next to nothing about any other nation.

“We are a land full of patriots, and our patriotism is nothing more than a red, white and blue flag,” Ru Freeman observed. “We don't know any history, we couldn’t care about how we got Here from There or where we might be headed, but we are proud of It. Whatever It is.”

In 2003, the Strategic Task Force on Education Abroad investigated Americans' knowledge of world affairs. The task force concluded: "America's ignorance of the outside world is so great as to constitute a threat to national security."

Flag pins. Freedom fries. Flapdoodle.  The right keeps the country stirred up about symbols that are meaningless in real-world terms — flags, gay marriage, public religious displays, “support the troops” magnets, etc. All are matters of semantics, useful for keeping the American public distracted from the erosions of its liberty and the picking of its pockets.

“I have a sneaky suspicion that the people who put ‘Support The Troops’ bumper stickers on their cars are the same people who can't find Iraq and Afghanistan on a map,” Keith Balmer wrote.

Fascism employs a twisted, impoverished vocabulary to disguise its aims, using words like “freedom” to mean their opposite.

In America, those who exercise their constitutional freedom to criticize the government are told that they “hate freedom.” Flag-waving fatuousness is always the first refuge of a scoundrel.

Here’s George W. Bush, talking to a divorced mother of three: “You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that.”

Isn’t it just?