The New Yorker Thinks Patriotism Is “Problematic”

In a meandering essay name dropping every dress-to-impress academic figure from Voltaire to Alexis de Tocqueville to Howard Zinn, The New Yorker has set out on a quest to explain how the progressive left can essentially despise the country they live in the name of social justice, while also adopting the perks of “patriotism” so they can own the Chuds.

The publication throws around some curious stats and asserts that patriotism is on the decline because, as they argue, patriotism today requires people to be blind to the injustices of the past.  They note:

“…We seem to be in a down moment. A Gallup poll found that, in the past dozen years, the percentage of people in the U.S. who say that they’re “extremely proud to be American” has plunged by sixteen points. A recent Harris poll noted that roughly four in ten Americans have considered relocating outside the country, with younger Americans even more inclined…”

“Last May, Newsweek published an article with the melancholy headline “Why Dual Citizenship Is the New American Dream.” Some commentators ascribe this to financial prudence, but the trend dates back at least to 2016 and the election of Donald Trump…”

Trump, the ever present and useful bogeyman, is obviously to blame.  The New Yorker, of course, glosses over the fact that the majority of the people who feel “less patriotic” in that Gallup poll are Democrats who are highly indoctrinated by establishment media to obsess over “historical injustices.”  The outlet applauds the decline, in a way.  It’s rooted in the same old DEI and 1619 Project talking points that the woke media has been peddling for over a decade. 

“Patriotism just isn’t cool anymore. Wokeness, having rightly called attention to racial and gender injustices long endemic to American life, helped chill the left’s admiration for the nation…”    

“Ours is a complicated history, made more tortuous by race. Some five hundred Indigenous nations lived here before the first enslaved Africans arrived, in 1619 – a year before the first Pilgrims. That, too, is American history, along with Reconstruction, Jim Crow, segregation, the Great Migration, Black anger, Black humor, and Black culture. This isn’t wokeness; it’s fact. 

Trump’s America has the virtue of simplicity: no initial divisions; no loyalists and patriots, or Native peoples and settlers, or Federalists and Anti-Federalists. He’s not bothered by labor unrest, unfair imprisonment, white-nationalist undercurrents…”

Yes, it is wokeness, and The New Yorker cites some “facts” but as usual they don’t tell the whole truth.  It’s an approximation of history (using cherry-picked facts) based on the political left’s own convenient narratives.  For example, they make no mention of the fact that some of the very first slave owners in US history were black.  Nor do they mention that there were at least 3775 black slave owners in the American South in 1830 and up to 6000 black slave owners by the time the Civil War kicked off. 

They don’t mention that the vast majority of the African slaves present in the American colonies were captured and sold by other Africans.  No, leftists can’t handle that kind of truth, or they deny it, which is why they can never be patriots.

And why not talk about the uglier side of the indigenous tribes, many of which brutalized and enslaved each other long before the first white man ever set foot on the continent?  Why not mention the rape, genocide and cannibalism common among these groups?  Why not mention that when white settlers arrived, many American Indian tribes sought the protection of Europeans from other indians?

Well, The New Yorker doesn’t talk about that because these facts undermine the entire foundation of far-left propaganda:  That the white man is the cause of all the world’s problems. 

In reality, every group of people and every race around the globe has committed brutal acts of conquest and slavery.  No one is innocent.  Everyone is guilty.  White people were just the first group to put and end to it all.      

But what is patriotism?  That is the question The New Yorker seems to ponder, though what they are really asking is:  “Who gets to define patriotism?”  This is the only thing leftists care about, because the power to define is the power to control.  And they want to control everything.  

For example, the publication harps on once again about the “horrors” of January 6th, and labels it a criminal attack masquerading as an act of patriotism.  Again, no mention of the numerous federal agents planted in the crowd to lead protesters into the building, and no mention of the Capitol Police using tear gas and rubber bullets to anger the crowd into violence. 

“What to my mind isn’t patriotism, though it was sometimes couched as such, was the behavior of the assembled throng that, on January 6, 2021, stormed the U.S. Capitol to prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 election. Awful as it was, it felt less like an insurrection than like an ugly mob bent on destruction and self-display…”

It’s interesting that The New Yorker has such a distaste for the J6 “mob” while lavishing BLM with praise and defending the riots as a a proud display of righteous rebellion.  Those mobs were far more destructive and killed numerous people.  All the J6 crowd did was break some windows, walk into the Capitol Building and leave an hour later.      

The New Yorker’s examination is not nuanced or complex at all.  It pretends to be, but it is incredibly simplistic:  If you are a hardcore conservative, a traditionalist, a nationalist, an advocate for controlled immigration, an opponent of DEI, or a MAGA voter, you are “not a patriot.”  Why?  Because the left says so.  Because they want to dictate the terms of patriotism and if they can’t, then patriotism has to go.        

Traditionally in America it has always been the real patriots that get to define what patriotism is.  It’s about the people who want to preserve America’s founding principles, not rewrite them or erase them in the name of “modernity.”  The people who understand that some values are eternal and remain relevant regardless of technological progress or the tides of political correctness. 

It’s about loving one’s country, not merely tolerating it until you can tear it down in the name of building something you think is better.     

Compared to America’s overall accomplishments, the perceived historical “missteps” are meaningless.  They do not matter.  Slavery is irrelevant.  The wars against the native tribes and the “stolen land” are irrelevant.  Jim Crow is irrelevant. Leftists can stew in these past events all they like, but that’s not going to win them any points in determining America’s future path.    

And this is a reality that woke adherents will never accept, because they are not patriots, they are deconstructionists.  Their goal is the dismantle the western world, and America by extension.  Which means, they conveniently turn a microscope on the portions of US history that are considered oppressive by today’s standards and harness those examples as a weapon to attack and dismantle the country as it exists now.  The US is a country increasingly looking to pull back from the brink of progressive revisionism, and they don’t like that.

So, activist entities like The New Yorker turn to gaslighting.  For them, history is nothing more than a Molotov Cocktail.  They burn down the past in order to dictate the present.  They clamor to co-opt the American ideal, but they don’t actually care about it.  They want to wear it as a skin suit while they dismantle it.  True patriotism is beyond their comprehension.