I saw the following status in my Facebook news feed today, regarding the resignation of Anthony Weiner:
“I hate this country. I. HATE. This. Country. Take your moralism and shove it up your ass.”
I too have been vexed over the past couple of days by Weiner’s resignation, and in general by the media circus that has (unsurprisingly) surrounded this whole affair–not to mention by the affair itself. The way this semi-scandal has unfolded has shed light on our country’s misplaced priorities, our politicians’ hypocrisies and our voyeurism.
And yes, this is insignificant compared to the problems posed by our wars, our economic direction, our energy policy, our immigration policy and the state of our national discourse. And that’s leaving aside some other problems that have existed since before the country’s founding: among them our treatment of blacks, Native Americans and other disadvantaged minorities.
This country has a lot of work to do. And sometimes I get very frustrated with this country. Sometimes I distress and worry over this country. But I do not hate this country.
There’s a crucial difference there that I think some people, especially on the left, miss. During the past few years I’ve heard several of my friends declare that they’re not proud of the US, that they don’t like the US, and now that they hate the US.
What’s the origin of statements like those? Is it dissatisfaction and frustration with the issues I mentioned above? If so, the core emotion there seems to be love, not hate. I’m dissatisfied and vexed by problems in America because I love America, because almost all of my family and friends live in America, because I share the values on which it was founded and because I want America to be a global leader in strengthening and spreading those values.
(I am not, for example, as vexed or frustrated with the much worse conditions in, say, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia–because I do not share the core values of those countries and because I have no personal connection to them.)
And if the core emotion driving these statements of disdain for the US really is hate–in other words, if I take that Facebook status at face value–that doesn’t seem to accomplish anything. To me, hate implies despair, the idea that the state of the US is so bad that it’s worthless to try to improve it. Alternately, hate implies disagreement with the country’s core values–which would scare me.
Maybe this is just another case of my over-analyzing word choice in a Facebook status. But when we who are dissatisfied with this country speak about this country, we must speak in terms that pave the way for improvement rather than despair, and for a return to the principles that we want to define America. Moreover, we must recognize that for all of its faults, the country is a most noble experiment in whether democracy and freedom can work. Let’s not forget that that experiment has not ended, and that we can contribute to its success.
