America First? 🚩

By Rob C.

Art by Pedro X. Molina

A Sunday Special

TL;DR: True patriotism—the love of our land and its hard-won progress—is being cannibalized by a toxic, corporate-sponsored nationalism that demands blind worship of the state. While we congratulate ourselves on being the “shining city on a hill,” our actual metrics in health, education, and quality of life are plummeting toward the bottom of the developed world. Nationalism isn’t just a difference of opinion; it’s a dark psychological shift that dehumanizes “the other” to justify the seizure of resources and the expansion of the corporate empire. It’s time we started loving our people more than our “Nation.”

It is a fine thing to love your country. There is no shame in standing in the shadow of a Redwood or watching the sun set over the Everglades and feeling a profound sense of gratitude for the natural wonders of this continent. We have every right to take pride in the progress we’ve carved out of history—the scientific breakthroughs that have saved lives, the move toward clean energy that might actually save the planet, and the civil rights victories that were paid for in blood and bravery. This is patriotism: a devotion to a particular place and a way of life that values the dignity of its citizens. It is a responsibility to keep making the “place” better for everyone who lives there.

But then there is Nationalism, the Trump version of affection that is less about love and more about a pathological need for superiority. Nationalism is the arrogant belief that because you were born on this side of a line on a map, you are inherently better, smarter, and more “exceptional” than every other human being on Earth. We wrap ourselves in the rhetoric of the “shining city on a hill,” using it as a blindfold to ignore the reality that our “city” has some of the highest maternal mortality rates in the developed world, a literacy crisis that should be a national emergency, and a healthcare system that ranks dead last in fiscal sustainability among peer nations. We spend twice as much as everyone else to live shorter, sicker lives, but as long as we have the biggest flag on the block, the nationalists tell us we’re “winning.”

This brand of nationalism breeds a darkness that we are currently seeing play out on the global stage and in our own streets. When you believe your nation is the only one that matters, it becomes remarkably easy to view other people as less than human. It’s the psychological grease that allows for the “Donroe Doctrine”—the idea that we can invade a country like Venezuela, kidnap its leaders, and seize its oil simply because we want it. It’s the same logic that empowers masked ICE thugs to shoot American protesters in Minneapolis. If the “Nation” is supreme, then the individuals within it—or those who stand in its way—are just obstacles to be cleared for the sake of “security” or corporate profit.

The study of our history is a study in these very contradictions. Our country was founded on stirring principles of liberty and justice, but the fine print was devastating. Left out of the original equation were the poor, Black people, and women—the very people whose labor and resilience built the “shining city” in the first place. We have spent two centuries trying to fix that math, yet nationalism seeks to drag us back to a time when “the Nation” was a gated community for the few.

I love this country. It is a beautiful place, full of amazing, diverse, and brilliant people who deserve better than to be used as fodder for a corporate war machine. But a nation is just a legal construct, a corporate brand name that can be bought and sold by the highest bidder. The people, however, are real. Maybe it’s time we stopped worshiping the flag and started caring about the people it’s supposed to represent. We need to focus more on the humans in our neighborhoods and less on the “Nation” as a vehicle for global dominance.

Please like, share, and subscribe. Because if “America First” means “People Last,” we’re headed for a very dark sunset.

— Robert Cain, author of Democracy for Sale: How Corporate Greed Is Corrupting Democracy and Endangering the Planet.