Danacasso wrote this in response to the reaction to Barack Obama not wearing an American flag pin and to him being seen wearing clothing that was given to him as a gift during a visit to Kenya, his late father's homeland. (Links to those stories are at the bottom of this essay). While these incidents may have sparked this angry rant, Danacasso deals with deeper issues that go to the heart of what he feels it means to be an American--and what some people say it means.
It seems that in order to keep from having your loyalty as a true-blue patriot in the U.S.A. from coming under the scrutiny of the microscope-especially if you are running for some public office-and found flawed, then there are certain kinds of requirements you must meet or the next thing you know, you'll be facing a firing squad.
You have to dress a certain way; not necessarily a suit and tie, but in a way that is acceptable for where you live and work. This includes a sense of fashion that does not send old people into cardiac arrest from just one glance.
You must always display and salute the flag, know the entire Star Spangled Banner-and what inspired it, who said, "Father, I cannot tell a lie", and how to field strip and clean an M-16 and reassemble it in five minutes, blindfolded.
It's good if you're Caucasian, male, affluent, conservative, and not some kind of sexual pervert. (Good luck on that last one.)
And it's very helpful to be a God-fearing, Protestant, born-again Christian.
And you must know American history.
No, not that American history, but the kind that says America is a progressive, noble, peaceful, protective, non-exploitative nation that never engages in any dirty deeds.
And you must be willing to say that with a straight face, all the while ignoring the wars we started first with the American Indians, the Mexicans, the Spanish, the Nicaraguans, the Vietnamese, all which, as we all well know, were caused first by the aggressions of the other guys. And you must never admit that we actually invaded the Soviet Union in 1918 and fought there until 1920.
Never mind that those people were not only fighting for their countries, homes, families, friends, and livelihoods, but their very lives. (What were we there for?)
Never mind that the reason the wars started was with a simple sentence that got ignored.
"Yankee, go home."
Never mind that the biggest reason Yankee was told to go home was because he was living off the resources of the lands of those people and getting rich while they remained in poverty, dying of starvation and preventable disease.
No, if you do not want your loyalty questioned, then you have to look the other way.
And agree with whoever's in charge.
Or, at least, seems to be.
If you object, then, "Either you're with us, or you're with the terrorists." Or the communists. Or the Nazis. Etc.
We are sooooo short-sighted.
Humans, all of us, not just Americans.
We get angry only at what we see right in front of us, but not beyond it.
That's why we've been able to so easily make villains out of people who were once our friends and not realize it.
We did not always hate all the Muslims.
Osama Bin Laden was once a stauch ally of ours against the Soviets. Saddam Hussein was also once another staunch ally of ours against Iran (who had once been a major ally of ours before.)
What changed?
Osama changed because he was fed up with the domineering U.S. presence in the Middle East, which included permanently stationed military forces in his native country, Saudi Arabia, which is considered holy ground to Muslims and not really all that open to those of other faiths.
Saddam didn't change at all. We did.
I remember shortly after 9/11, this mind-boggling, far-fetched, preposterous (and, actually, rather silly, even humorous), sci-fi looking cover story in Popular Mechanics about this monstrous, modular, sea-going base to deploy military forces and support operations near parts of the world where we were no loger all that welcome, because, as one U.S. military officer observed, "We don't seem to have too many friends, anymore."
Well, I wonder why?
Could it be that those other countries have finally had enough of us telling them how they should behave?
So stop. Before another single 5.56 mm cartrige is locked and loaded into an M-16, before another single Tomahawk cruise missile is loaded into a submarine's launch tube, before another single bomb is attached to an F-15, before another single spy satellite locates another target, let's think long and hard about what got us here in the first place.
Them?
Or us?
So, for me, the real question to ask about patriotism should not be how do we go about winning every war we get ourselves into, but how to avoid them to begin with.
Because if we follow Ann Coulter's advice and "..invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity", is that going to make them like us more? Respect us more? Admire us more?
Hell, no.
It will only make them madder.
And give them more reason to hate us.
And more incentive to attack us.
So, then, consider this. When we go about giving people from other countries a reason to hate us enough to want to kill us, who are the real traitors then?
Whose loyalty and patriotism should we really be questioning?
The flag-waving, gun-toting, Bible-thumpers who use scare tactics to get the rest of us to give them the power to suspend our civil liberties?
The ones who like to say, "The veteran died for your freedom and Christ died for you?"
The ones who like to excessively inject words like "liberty", "freedom", "independence", and "democracy", into everything they say, write, or do, while only paying lip-service to them?
Or the ones who have the courage to stand up, look the other sort squarely in the eye, and shout at full volume, "ENOUGH!!!!!"
You can see the stories that inspired this rant at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080223/ap_on_el_pr/obama_attack_fodder and http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ihq7tWGeXGYbg-0N0RawLORdpCkwD8V1G1080
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