Men Without A Country

This bitter election has brought back to me a scattering of political anecdotes which illuminate our nation’s current moment.

One time, when I was about seven years old, my aunt and cousins visited for the July 4th weekend. She took all us kids out for ice cream, and as we piled into the car she turned the radio on. A few minutes later the station played “God Bless America,” and everyone sang along. I was baffled. When we got back home, I said, “Mommy, everyone sang ‘God Bless America’ in the car.” “What’s wrong with that?” my mom replied. I said, “How could they sing that? They’re Democrats!”

That reflected more on my own simplification of the partisan divide than anything my parents ever actually suggested about the opposite party. But the fact that I could have come to such an understanding of patriotism—back then, in the halcyon 1990s—indicates that we’ve been bitterly divided for the entire lifetime of a substantial portion of our population. This, at least as much as Jon Stewart, must account for the jaded and world-weary posture of much of America’s youth in regard to politics and civic affairs.

Another anecdote: sometimes I find myself humming the songs from the Armed Forces Medley, which, to my best recollection, I have only ever heard in entirety as the sign-off segment of many mid-aughts Mark Levin talk radio shows. That has stuck with me since my childhood.

I also remember the flag lapel wars from growing up watching the news. I ponder the meaning of the flag itself becoming a partisan signal. Is it simply evidence that the right has shamelessly appropriated the once-universal symbols of the nation and turned them into symbols of a particular political program? Or does it speak to a tendency on the left to view patriotism as hopelessly complicated and not necessarily celebratory? I suspect there is truth in both.

My last story: during my masters program in late 2015, as the infamous 2016 campaign was getting into high gear, I attended a GOP debate watch party at a professor’s house, with an audience of American students and a couple of Chinese international students. Ted Cruz, during his introduction, said “I am passionate about what I believe. I’ve been passionate my whole life about the Constitution.” As if on cue, the room erupted into mocking laughter. My Chinese classmate turned to me, confused, and asked why that was funny. I realized that I couldn’t explain it to her without delving into a history of America’s partisan divide. It was insufficient to tell her that loving the Constitution is self-evidently risible. It made me feel, in fact, that the opposite is the case, and that something in our civic life had gone off the rails if that needed to be explained.