The Need for Dissent
Pay Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain
A reader and friend sent me the following comment that I made back in 2013. So here I go, quoting myself:
To criticize America is not to dislike it. We must beware of the “America, love it or leave it” mentality. To love America is also to criticize it (when appropriate), and to organize to change it, to make it “a more perfect union.” The true patriot is willing to tolerate dissent, because dissent is always necessary as a check on the greedy and power-hungry.
Also, as a historian, I’d like to suggest that history is not one damned empire after another. History is not just a record of the strong doing what they will and the weak suffering as they must. History is many things; it’s the record of the human experience, which includes tyranny as well as the overthrow of tyrants; the suppression of liberty as well as the empowerment of individuals.
We suffer as a people when we see criticism as unpatriotic and when we see history as just one empire after another. We need not limit our horizons, especially since there are so many powerful forces at work trying to do precisely that.
“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” No — We must pay attention to that man, and force him to fess up, or we’ll continue to be screwed, inhabiting a fantasyland that is really a playground for the privileged.
*****
There are a lot of men behind curtains, telling us there’s no genocide in Gaza, telling us that to defend Palestinians against ethnic cleansing is to join Hamas, telling us that deploying the U.S. military against protesters is perfectly normal, telling us that we must hate enemies without (Iran, China) or enemies within (“illegals”)—preferably both. So many men behind curtains, so much manipulation, so much malice.
Remember when JFK told us to ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country? It’s high time we asked our country—specifically our politicians—what they’re doing for us. And if they’re like the Wizard of Oz and just blowing smoke, isn’t it high time we got rid of them?
Because right now our country is in serious trouble, and our so-called leaders are just stoking the flames while looking at how to profit from the fires.
Confucius told his disciple Tsze-kung that three things are needed for government: weapons, food and trust. If a ruler can't hold on to all three, he should give up the weapons first and the food next. Trust should be guarded to the end: "without trust we cannot stand". Confucius' insight resonates profoundly with what we see in America today and in many Western nations around the world. No thinking person in America trusts the Republican cult, or the corporate Democratic Party (or has faith in it breaking its ties with concentrated wealth). No thinking person trusts the corporate congress, the corporate presidency the corporate Supreme Court nor any of the other institutions like corporate media. Confucius today says America is so pathetically lacking in trust, its thoroughly divided and concurred by concentrated wealth- organized money... It's' "Fucked"
My opinion doesn't really matter in the whole scheme of things but I'll provide it anyway... I don't even like the very idea of patriotism or nationalism. It's always seemed like an incredibly blinding thing.
Assuming our species makes it that long (without blowing ourselves up by nuclear annihilation, or climate catastrophe or something like that?), it would not surprise me if in a hundred or two hundred years, the very idea of nationalism or patriotism will have (hopefully) completely crumbled, withered away (and that especially goes for organized religion as well... not to be confused with "belief", "un-belief", or "un-sure" about the existence of a god, which is a very natural type of questioning right from when we become aware of ourselves as beings on this planet). Of course, none of us will be around to experience what a great thing that would be.
Countries are just artificial constructs with mostly artificial boundaries... no need for any of us to feel patriotism or nationalism. Their systems/purpose SHOULD only be for the benefit of the masses, and once they're not benefitting us, they should be removed or revised BY the masses so that they are, but since this current U.S. system we have only benefits the wealthier, and does not provide a "real" way for its citizens to effect change (only pointless artificial ways), it will never be able to benefit the average person/citizen.
NO country deserves the benefit of undying patriotism/nationalism.
Just my feelings/opinion obviously.