"Born In The U.S.A."

I'm on a Scott Kurtz kick today (the past twenty-four hours, anyway, and I guess that was technically "today" when I posted that last one, wasn't it?). He made an interesting comment in his news space today, and I thought I'd share my thoughts on the issue within it.

See, he was talking about this game called "City of Heroes." It's one of those massively multiplayer online roleplaying games, kinda like Everquest, only not so tedious and with superheroes instead of swords'n'sorcery. Anyway, seems Mr. Kurtz decided to create a character on the game similar to the Marvel superhero Captain America (if you don't know who Captain America is...well, I pity you). Anyway, he comes up with this patriotic-based superhero, and takes him out into the game.

And people start verbally abusing him for having a patriotic-based character.

Kurtz was flabberghasted. Folks were talking about how much they hate not only Bush, but America, as though the two were synonymous. This rather upset and aggitated Kurtz, and brought up an interesting thing I hadn't really thought about much myself.

I am an American. For better or worse, this was the country I was born in, and I kinda like it here. I may not always agree with everything other Americans do, or how they behave, or our government's policies and decisions and things like that, but I'm not about to close shop and move to South Africa or anything. I'm not going to say there isn't room for improvement--there obviously is in any place you go, and anyone who thinks this country is fine the way it is needs to seriously re-examine reality--but it's still a damn sight better than most of the places you could end up in throughout the world.

I'll admit that I don't like Bush at all. I've yet to find anything about him that I do like, except for maybe the way he handled most of the immediate aftermath of 9/11. I'm not entirely sure Gore could've done any better, to be honest. However, that was almost three years ago, and really early in Bush's administration. I don't think he's done a lot right since then, and I'm scared of the things he might do, though not directly to me (I am, after all, pretty much the sort of person they had in mind when they came up with the term "the majority": a white male Protestant, of Anglo-Saxon descent, middle-class from a traditional family).

But really, when you get down to it, this country's got a lot of things going for it, and a lot of possibilities to become a better place than it is. I'm an optimist, and think this is one of the best countries in the world, if perhaps a bit arrogant and bullying sometimes.

Just for the record, I'm a fairly moderate person in pretty much everything, especially politics. I'm not exceedingly liberal or exceedingly conservative, though I have bits and pieces in my philosophy that come from either side. But I don't think patriotism needs to be co-opted like it has been by the right. Bruce Springsteen wrote the song "Born in the USA" about disenfranchised and embittered Vietnam vets, and then Ronald Reagan tried to co-opt it as his campaign song--even though it was completely contrary to the message of the song for the conservative Reagan to use the song. The Boss's response was then--as it was when he released his album The Rising, which dealt with the aftereffects of 9/11 and the "war on terrorism"--that patriotism was something which the right had attempted to claim as its own, but that people of a more liberal or moderate perspective could still love their country while seeing that there was room for improvement in our attitudes. And y'know, the Boss is right.

~chaos cricket

Song of the Moment: Bruce Springsteen, "Worlds Apart"