Pwease no steppy!

When we see the scurvy, morally decrepit Reprobate-in-Chief literally hugging the American flag for the cameras like the perverted weirdo that he is and spouting inane platitudes about the US of A it's not difficult to understand what Samuel Johnson meant when he called patriotism "the last refuge of a scoundrel."  But is that all that patriotism is?  In the relative halcyon days of the early 1960's when life was somewhat sweet; when our commonality was celebrated and we were engaged actively (if not always unanimously) in the broadening of it to include Americans of all types, backgrounds and walks of life; and when the memory of our collective successful struggle to defeat Hitler and fascism in World War II-- the last defensible international endeavor undertaken by our military-- was still rather fresh in our minds, it was assumed that Patriotism was a virtue shared by (or available to) all Americans.  I confess, when I see Trump mugging like a dope, the impulse to want to slap the flag out of his filthy mouth is probably as close to that classical ideal of patriotism as I ever get.  But I was witness to the absconding of the concept of Patriotism by the jingoistic scoundrels of the right when Presidents Johnson and Nixon's escalation of the dubiously conducted Vietnam war turned popular opinion against it, and it became difficult to see it as anything other than a veil behind which the worst impulses, deprivations and policy impositions of the ruling class were routinely masked.  They must have thought we were idiots.  Given their successes and the way they translate to our tribulations, they may have been right.

Still it is not correct to say that "the last refuge of a scoundrel" is all that patriotism is.  When you see it manifested in spontaneous expressions of gratitude for the service of those suddenly revealed to have served in the military, or in the ubiquitous square flag decals and slogans that have become de rigueur decorations of the back of dump trucks and semis, or in the flag pins that had better adorn the lapels of our elected representatives, it's clearly also a kind of obsessive compulsive disorder, a manic escalation of the competition to display one's unbridled devotion to the country-- even though no one asked or particularly cares unless reminded to, and certainly not to an extent that merits the shameless exhibitionism.  The gratitude is backhanded-- it's really an assertion of ownership.  In the service of their overseas adventures, in response to the emergencies that arise from their clumsy lack of neighborliness in the world, you give your life and limbs.  As thanks to you for your willingness to proxy in person for their aggressions, they wear a pin.

Ostensibly, patriotism according to Merriam-Webster is "love for or devotion to one's country."  Given the arbitrariness of the circumstances of one's country and the many ways it could have gone differently, I can see how the patriotic impulse could be considered nothing more than an adaptive behavioral tic to the situation you find yourself in, but a virtue?  This is one of those things that survival sense dictates we should probably not probe too deeply (because challenges to it engender such inchoate and hot emotions in those who think with their fists), but it withers under any kind of honest rational scrutiny.   It's telling that the usage samples in the Webster definition reveal nothing but pathology about the meaning of the word:

Although poles apart ideologically, they are both unashamed of their patriotism.
— Christopher Hemphill

 You may not agree with him politically, but no one can question his patriotism.

They supported the war with a fierce patriotism.

As Voltaire noted, "It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind."  Patriotism, being based on the accident of one's birth, or at best fanaticism about one's chosen home, is the sort of thing that is both indefensible and something to be used usually in its least defined and most undefended state as an instrument to cast aspersion on the integrity of one's adversaries.  While it shares this feature with much of religion, at least religion is codified to an extent that it can be argued with.  Still my lack of religion and basic disdain for patriotism if disclosed publicly would disqualify me from public office and from the trust and basic respect of a good majority of the country.  If you wanted to impugn my character on the basis of my lack of patriotism, you could absolutely do it; I'd only be consoled that at least the feeling is mutual.

I'll grant that my experience of patriotism as on balance a pathology causes me to disfavor it, but is there anything to redeem the concept for me?  Am I the pathological one for having such animosity to it?    No one defends the patriotism of citizens of other countries; likewise it is only American patriotism that I as an American am qualified to consider.  It seems to have been a useful quality for the American revolutionaries who sought to divorce the territory from Great Britain, since it seized them with an image of something worth defending.  I'd be loath to argue that the enlightenment ideals of the original patriots were not something to be patriotic about and it would have done them no good to dwell on how far their own behavior and lifestyles deviated from it.  That our nation would then go on and wield patriotism as an excuse to persist in enslaving humans to perform our labor for free and to engage in genocide against the original inhabitants of the continent as we expanded our borders exemplifies the type of mischief that it can accomplish.

The problem with Patriotism is that it's usually either isolationism, nationalism, imperialism or war-mongering pretending to be a virtue.  The masquerade becomes a reflex.  The mindless devotion becomes the point, and through the lens of Patriotism, those who point out the widening gap between the ideal of America and the reality can appear as opponents rather than champions of an America worthy of devotion.  I've been encouraged by a proliferation of the champions recently, maybe best exemplified by the freshman class of Congress, but I'm not ready to let go of the sense that their challenge to the status quo could be met as usual by the masterfully practiced enemies of progress at any turn.

The idiosyncrasy of one nation's patriotism over another's raises an obvious point.  The US did not always exist and there is no reason to think it will exist in perpetuity.  Perhaps a revolution may some day come out of the observation that the dysfunction of a place is directly proportional to its size.  Perhaps the world will for instance one day reject the tyranny of beholdenness to a few primarily unjustly advantaged super-powers and the elites that prop them up, favoring instead a return to an organization along the line of mutually cooperative and peaceable micro-states,  the concept of empire having been relegated to the dustbin of history.  In this case, the memory of patriotism toward the former empire will be exposed as vanity.  Why wait?  Be skeptical now.

The logical endpoint of organization of the world into micro-states  (Burj Al Babas, Turkey)