One thing that has stood out for me amidst all this tragedy is how much patriotism I’m seeing. I can’t believe the patriotic things being said by my cynical, anti-consumerism, anti-coporation, apolitical, America-sucks friends. It’s pretty refreshing, actually.
Thanks. I agree. I’m finding myself really one with my countrymen for the first time in my life.
I’m rather hurt to find you so surprised that we cynics love our country, too. <sniff> And which have ever said anything like “America sucks?” We may disagree with some stuff, but you do too, sometimes.
I’m one of the cynics…There are tons of things America does on a regular basis that piss me off, plenty of things wrong with our country, and plenty of things wrong with our citizens. I don’t believe that I have ever even thought about putting an American flag on my car before. Yesterday I taped one to my antenna, and damn did it feel good. I’ve never experienced the feeling of patriotism, and unfortunately it has taken a very incredible and despicable act by a group of disgusting cowards to make me realize how much I love this place. This disaster did not occur “close to home”. This disaster occured IN MY HOME. I’ve never loved my country so much, and the unity and patriotism I have witnessed in the past few days amazes me, delights me, and comforts me. I’ll give up on this country when my heart stops beating…
Oh, I’m not saying I’m above all that - I’m certainly very cynical, and I definitely surprised myself by how patriotically I’ve reacted to the whole thing…
One good thing that may come out of this horrible thing may be that it forces us to put things back into perspective. It’s been quite a long time since something’s happened in America that brought everybody together like this. The Baby Boom and Generation X folks have had it relatively easy compared to others before them, the Depression and WWII era folks especially. It’s times like this that forces everybody to step back and take a look at the truly important things in life. The politicians have given up all the attacks on each other to unite with the president to find a solution. This is the first time since World War II that America’s freedom has been put in jeopardy, and now we may start to understand how they feel. Those veterans are always the first ones to stand up to salute the flag because they’ve been made to understand how lucky they are to live in this country. Now we might see that even though this country is not perfect, and there are many problems, it is still the greatest country on Earth and we can’t let any group of thugs take that away from us.
All I can say is, welcome to patriotism, folks! I hope it lasts.
“My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right” - Carl Schurz (1829-1906)
Most people just quote the first part.
I drove by an accident this morning - a car had just rolled over in the median, and there was a larger-than-normal number of people pulling over and running to the car to help. A guy in another car rolled his window down and was holding up a tiny american flag as he drove by. I won’t forget that image anytime soon.
I’ve also noticed that more people are letting me change lanes in traffic jams…