What Is It, Exactly, That Being An American Means to You?
from the what-are-you-patriotic-for? dept
Is it a flag on your porch? A sense of pride during the national anthem? A particular vision of freedom or prosperity? Perhaps it’s a story you tell yourself about who we are and what we stand for.
Whatever it means to you, I want you to hold that meaning close as you read what follows.
On March 15, three planes touched down in El Salvador. They carried 261 men deported from the United States. Most were Venezuelans—people who fled one nightmare only to be thrust into another. They were designated as “gang members” by the current administration and deported with little or no due process. No trials. No evidence presented. Just labeled, processed, and removed.
What happened next should shatter any comfortable notions of what American values mean in practice.
These men—human beings with names, histories, dreams—were marched through a gauntlet of armed guards, beaten, stripped naked, shaved, and thrown into overcrowded cells. A photojournalist on the scene described watching men age a decade in two hours. He watched as one young man sobbed, “I’m not a gang member. I’m gay. I’m a barber.” This man was slapped for his tears, beaten for his vulnerability.
No phone calls. No visitors. No books. No talking. Just exile to a place “so cold and far from home they may as well have been sent into space, nameless and forgotten.”
And all of this—every slap, every sob, every stolen dignity—stamped with American approval. Coordinated with American officials. Executed with American efficiency.
We have turned away from Lincoln’s better angels. We have abandoned the moral arc that has, despite our many failures, generally bent toward justice. The world is afraid of us now—not with the complicated respect of a moral superpower, but with the simple fear reserved for bullies and tyrants.
Some of my conservative friends say that’s good. Good that people are afraid. That fear makes them feel strong.
I just don’t know what kind of morals people have, that they seek to be feared. That’s not manly. That’s not something to be proud of. It’s crude. It’s barbarism.
Being feared isn’t strength. True strength lies in being just when it would be easier to be cruel. In maintaining our principles when they’re inconvenient. In seeing the humanity in others even when it would be politically expedient to deny it.
What kind of nation have we become that we measure our greatness not by who we protect but by who we can brutalize? Not by what we build but by what we destroy?
The man who cried for his mother as his hair fell to the floor—he is not an abstraction. The barber who begged to be recognized as human—he is not a statistic. They are people. And what we allow to happen to them defines us more surely than any pledge or anthem or flag ever could.
This is the true test of what being an American means: not what we proclaim when standing tall at a ballgame or wrapping ourselves in patriotic symbols, but what we permit to be done to the vulnerable when we think no one is watching.
Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And we have really failed ourselves here. Failed to hold the tension between security and humanity. Failed to push back the flood of cruelty that always threatens to overwhelm civilization. Failed to walk the wire between legitimate concerns about immigration and our fundamental obligations to human dignity.
America, look at what is being done in your name. Look, and tell me if this is truly what you meant when you spoke of your pride in being American.
Because a nation that can do this—that can coordinate the ritualized dehumanization of people without trial, without evidence, without the most basic protections of due process—is not the America I was taught to believe in. It’s not the America worthy of your pride or my loyalty.
It’s an America that has forgotten itself.
Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.
Filed Under: due process, el salvador, patriotism, security, strength
Comments on “What Is It, Exactly, That Being An American Means to You?”
Well said, Mike. I live in Los Angeles, and if I have any MAGA friends, they’re certainly in the closet. I sit aghast at what’s happening, and I figure this is how a lot of Germans felt in 1939. Lessons learned? That’s for pussies.
I’m a queer. I grew up in America at a time when my very existence was a crime. My entire life has more or less felt like what straight white people with half a lick of sense are feeling under Trump.
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i sincerely hope more straight white people are feeling it now. And better sooner than later.
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Don’t set your expectations too high.
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Actually it’s the first line of hope I have. People don’t like what the administration is doing as is, and I expect that to rapidly get more and more intense.
And Cathy Gellis is correct in her views on the subject.
Outsourcing our genocide to other countries doesn’t alleviate our moral responsibility for it.
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See also: the genocide of Gazan Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli government by way of numerous weapons provided by the United States
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Three decades of choosing between “The Third Way” and outright fascism will do that. For just as long, the liberals have kept their sharp knives for anyone pointing it out.
One other thing to remember...
Those conservatives also probably belong to a faith that espouses the value of helping out the poor and downtrodden and that most of those religions don’t make any exceptions.
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…and rather than live out those values, they instead choose to effectively worship as a Christ-like figure someone whose entire life (and especially his political career) has been dedicated to hurting the poor and the downtrodden. Hypocrisy is a virtue to fascists, and conservative Christianity is fascism draped in the trappings of religion.
The standard answer by U.S. officials:
Numerous interviews, and the standard answer from U.S. officials is “where were Laken Riley’s constitutional rights?”
Now what has Laken Riley to do with the people here? They aren’t the ones who have killed her, nor were they shown to have committed any crime, nor was Laken Riley murdered in a gang-related crime.
The commonality is that Laken Riley was deprived of her constitutional rights by a deranged criminal, and apparently that impressed U.S. officials enough that they aspire to similarly behave like deranged criminals and deprive innocent people of their constitutional rights, including those certain inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness the Constitution talks about.
So why is the standard “deflection” of U.S. officials that they too want to behave like lawless deranged criminals and murderers?
My neighbor has had a huge 4’x3′ American flag decoration in his backyard. It telegraphs to anyone who has ever been in the military that the guy has never served – because it is soiled and touching the ground. When you pull flag duty in the military the very first thing they teach you to never let the Stars and Stripes touch the ground. I know the guy, so I know he hasn’t served, nor has any of his three grown children. I doubt he even encourage them to. Service is for other people. Not us. You guys are going to college. I’m a veteran. My dad was too, as well as several of my uncles. I tried to get my son to join up, still trying as he is only 21. My best friend did too, and several in his family. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that your love for the GOP is not patriotic, no matter how much you act like it is.
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Their native country doesn't want them back...
That should be a clue.
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So… are you just so stupid you don’t understand the idea of refugees and asylum seekers trying to leave a country because they will likely be killed if they go back?
Or are you just generally stupid?
This is exactly what America has always been. You’ve just been refusing to look into the stories of the marginalized and taken the government-approved public school history books say it is.
It’s only now the cameras are rolling while it’s happening so no one can pretend it’s just anti-American propaganda.
The real question is whether you want better, or just a return to “the good old days.” And many of you have already been clear you demand the latter.
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I don’t. You don’t. Established users here don’t. And talking about American ideals as if they aren’t worth fighting for anymore just because the guy who lied to enough people to be elected president and his henchmen don’t believe them is cowardice.
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The “government-approved public school history books” have a lot to say about those stories, and there’s nowhere near as much sugar-coating in them as you seem to think. At least not the ones in my district.
You also assume a lot when accusing all of us of not looking into them ourselves. Maybe don’t accuse an entire country like that.
I mean, a lot of people still do, but it’s not like we always did that.
Speak for yourself, because most of the people you are addressing here don’t demand such a thing.
When you consider that the origin story of America was built on theft, repression & thuggery, this is sad & disturbing, but not out of character.
“That’s why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.”
― George Carlin
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Only if you assume that humans are incapable of progress.
Admittedly Trump makes for a compelling case here.
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“Only if you assume that humans are incapable of progress.”
Technical & scientific progress, highly capable. Behavioural & emotional – barely.
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Go back to the 19th century and be black, female or gay. Compare the behavior of people towards you then to their behavior now. I think you will find a huge behavioral difference.
When you make the argument “America was always bad, what’s the big deal,” you are justifying Trump’s attitude that there’s no such thing as morality anyway, and it’s all about money and power and making sure your tribe wins.
Okay fine. I’m white, wealthy and a citizen of the most powerful nation on Earth so why shouldn’t I be happy with the tribal attitude? But I’m not. Most people will lose with the tribal approach. They all should be very unhappy.
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I wasn’t making an argument, I was stating a reality that every Empire-building culture has realised throughout human history. The USA is only the latest Nation to fool themselves by brushing over that behavioural canon with platitudes & token gestures. Have a good, hard look at how cultures have enforced dominance & ideology on other cultures throughout recorded time – that pattern hasn’t changed. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
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The fact that people fail at being moral isn’t a reason to accept it as “a fact of life”. What is the case historically is not a good argument for what we should accept.
Societies has improved before from that baseline, and acting like we should “accept” our society being crap is immoral and enabling of the awful people responsible. Calling aspirations of social improvement “delusions” is the exact same shit one sees from sellouts like Chris Hedges.
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I said nothing about failure of morality – America’s ideal is well considered & most hold it in high regard. Western civilization, unfortunately, does not link knowledge and morality but rather, it connects knowledge and power and makes them equivalent. As far as aspiration goes, it seems increasingly in danger of becoming the preserve of the wealthy.
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Are you saying that Westerners equate political power with knowledge? Because that’s not universal at all, even in the US, and certainly not outside it in other parts of the West. Some people in the US equate money with expertise, but Elon Musk is if anything serving as a highly visible counterexample to that.
What are you trying to say here? Are you saying that poor people can’t aspire to anything and lack agency? Are you conflating economic opportunity within the system with aspiration in general (which is extremely misleading)?
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Just have a good hard look at humanity’s historical track record. Don’t think reactively – You’ll get it.
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I asked
as well as
in regards to you saying “As far as aspiration goes, it seems increasingly in danger of becoming the preserve of the wealthy.”
These are questions about what you are saying. Answer them. Don’t deflect from clarifying with “look at humanity’s historical track record”. That’s not what is being asked about, and you know it.
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Being an American means following the Constitution and rule of law. This would prevent or at least mitigate the number of innocent people who are deported just because they have gang tattoos.
The people who support this sort of thing are lazy and cowardly. They fear those terrible gang members so much that they will trample the Constitution. They want the easy solution, and due process is not easy. They think stupidly that the leopard will never eat THEIR face so what’s the harm.
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We’d made considerable progress in the last 60 years or so. Lord knows we weren’t perfect, but we were moving in the right direction.
A lot of us made the mistake of thinking we’d always be moving in the right direction.
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NGL I really wish BestNetTech would start talking more about ways to get engaged and resist.
I know it should be obvious and that one should be able to find it online oneself, but a lot of people in this comment section clearly need a pointer despite that, because they think acting like spectators in all this is the only option they have.
Ruling by fear
Isn’t ruling by fear the lesson of Machiavelli’s “The Prince”?
I am particularly interested in the Greenland debacle. If Trump really wanted to ensure Russia and China are kept at bay in the North, wouldn’t it be cheaper to support the NATO alliance that includes Greenland as a Danish territory rather than have full ownership?
But Trump is apparently pro-Russia, and Vance has shown disdain for Europe, which has clearly made enemies with all the allies of the US.
The UK Brexit vote has shown the nonsense of the “buccaneering Britain” meme, as people now want closer ties with Europe to repair the damage. The US is trying the same approach by deciding allies are not of value and hoping to use economic and military muscle to enforce its aims. How has that worked out for the last 60+ years?
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Sheer hypocrisy
Where were you when the USA launched its illegal war of aggression on the people of Afghanistan? Why did you keep silent when your country murdered half a million innocent women and children out of sheer bloodlust? Why did you cheer on the murder of the hero Osama bin Laden by the terrorist group called SEAL team 6? You couldn’t care less about these human beings slaughtered by your government. Now all of a sudden you pretend to care. Fucking hypocrites.
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This propaganda approach is bullshit. You lack any sense of nuance. You pretend to know how people reacted to past situations and react to those assumptions. You group a great number of different people who have different perspectives into a single entity and then direct your admonishments at them. Plenty of Americans opposed the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. Plenty of Americans aren’t white. It’s possible Osama Bin Laden and American politicians are/were bad people at the same time. I’ve seen significantly more impressive astroturfed propaganda efforts. You need to up your game.
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Eat a bag of dicks you Chinese propaganda shill.
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Lots of people were protesting it, but that’s also misstating what actually happened. Suffice to say that, while we weren’t exactly heroic at the time, it’s nowhere near the one-sided slaughter you portray it as.
Why do you assume people kept silent? Just because you, personally, didn’t hear it doesn’t mean they were quiet about it.
Osama bin Laden killed numerous civilians and planned to kill more. He was no hero.
Also, whether or not you agree with their goals or their methods, SEAL team 6 was a military group, not a terrorist group. Not every group that kills people unjustly is a terrorist group. (And before you try to accuse me of only labeling non-white groups as terrorists, there are a number of terrorist groups that have been white or included a substantial number of white people, such as Greenpeace and some white supremacist groups.)
You couldn’t care less about the human beings slaughtered by the Taliban or al Qaeda. /hs Do you see the problem with your reasoning? How about you don’t assume what other people think and feel based on perceived silence about your preferred issue?
I have a question...
So I’m a European, and the last few weeks has left me kind of stunned… but I gotta ask:
If you want to deport someone, legalities and morals aside, why don’t you just deport them? Why is it necessary to strip and shave them first?
What the actual fuck happened to prompt the thought “Well, we can’t send them out of the country without stripping them naked and shaving them first!” This reads like a scene from Schindler’s List.
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The cruelty is the point.
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Technically, the abuses are all happening in El Salvador as part of the inprocessing of CECOT, a prison structure designed from the ground up as a torture punishment for gang members and suspected gang members. A severe crackdown by the Bukele Gov, with the administration freely suspending some of the Salvadoran constitutional protections to sweep up suspected gang members by the thousands.
And yes, Cruelty is the point.
There is no rehab, no education, no books, no media, no useful trade training, no prisoner as slave labor arrangements, merely sitting and standing and laying on unpadded steel beds under 24/7 lights, no talking or singing or whistling, for life.
Rage against banality
I’ve been arguing with my family for over a decade now and to this day even though they aren’t cultists they are something worse. Uncaring. “Why does this matter are they coming for you?” is said to me pointing out the admin says that access to water and soap isn’t necessary for a clean environment; “everyone is corrupt” is said to moving diplomats and security staff over 15+ miles away from a summit to stay at a trump hotel where everyone is significantly”accidentally” overcharged; “see this is why you should save” is said about the ending of social security; “they forced SpongeBob to be asexual right after the Creator died. I bet they’re gonna say he’s gay” is said to a creator of courage the cowardly dog dying. (Sponges are asexual btw Steve hillenbirg was a marine biologist he would love that). I have no idea how to communicate to people that just default to Republican talking points why it’s good to care about other people. They aren’t even actively hateful just so defaulting that I don’t think there’s any thing other than something DIRECTLY effecting them that will change their mind. Can’t even just effect me, has to effect them. How can you argue with people who because it’s not them are fine with people not having access to soap. How can anyone be proud of this country given what it’s done in its name. We should be as horrified as the Germans are/were that actually cared. If he gets this third term without an amendment there is no saving America but given how soulless some people are maybe it’s already dead
Although there is a tabletop game about fighting how horrifyingly boring evil is. Maybe I should pick it up
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I have no idea how to communicate to people that just default to Republican talking points why it’s good to care about other people.You tyrannize them.
No matter how exhausting it is, and no matter how much you have to adopt a somber, uncaring attitude towards them.
They understand only boots to necks. You invariably have to strip their participation in government and render them second class citizens because:
1) Evil people exist
2) There’s more of them than you think even though the world is still mostly a kind place
3) 77 million GOP cultists act less than human, and double down on doing so, so you invariably are forced to treat them as less-than-human or die in a country where they are allowed to vote, because of the 90 million that couldn’t be arsed to vote.
You can have a Progressive Democratic Socialist society in the short term, and gradually revert to normal democracy, or you can have a democracy, keep the status quo and revert to having this conversation yet again after the next Democratic administration.
You can have progressivism, or you can have democracy. It’s pretty clear that you can’t have both, not without prep time to just absolutely strip the GOP voting populace of their wealth and power entirely once their own political party has exhausted them with their incompetence and cruelty. You seize power back, force them into the dustbin of history, THEN you can consider letting your mono-party rule organically lose power to let good faith loyal opposition have a peaceful power transfer (because you’re not the GOP of the last century)
But the behavior of conservatives during the Reconstruction Era and the behavior of conservatives now is identical and shows even the traditional conservatives can’t be trusted to govern because they always lose power to their fascist right, forcing everyone else to be monsters to deal with the monsters.
And furthermore, Nietzsche’s warnings are absolute horseshit when considering Karl Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance.
The Left needs to be filled with unbridled rage at the GOP and willing to sacrifice democracy temporarily to right the wrongs (and do so while providing competent working-class focused governance), or it will not get anywhere toward permanently reversing conservative legal gains in the last 100 years worldwide.
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The U.S. should’ve either let Sherman finish the job himself or jailed/executed every leader of the Confederacy after the war.