Don’t be a Patriot, by Rockaboatus

When you stop being a government-approved “patriot,” you start being a government-disapproved skeptic. From Rockaboatus at unz.com:

A patriot, according to customary definition, is someone who vigorously supports their nation and is prepared to defend it at all costs. A patriot is also someone who believes in the essential goodness or rightness of their country, particularly when it is at war. Americans are generally known to be a deeply patriotic people and a soft nationalism largely permeates much of the country. We’re inclined to think that our elected leaders in Washington, though perhaps flawed, are basically good folks who genuinely have the best interests of the people they represent.

This might be less so today because a growing number of Americans have started to realize just how corrupt our current government is, including of course the president and almost the entirety of Congress which is deeply influenced and controlled by the Israel Lobby, military contractor corporations, and other special interest groups.

I confess that I was once such a patriot. This was the sort of mindset I carried for many years. America, right or wrong, I was proud to call it my home and to defend its honor before its many detractors. I believed, for instance, that the North was on the right side of history when it sought to overthrow the South’s rebellion during the Civil War — a war justified because it supposedly sought to free negro slaves. I was persuaded that whatever reasons lie behind America’s entry into WW1, it was justified. The same may be said when I considered the events of WW2. I implicitly trusted America’s court historians to tell me the truth. The wars that came after, such as the Korean conflict, Vietnam, The Gulf War, and the ensuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were all necessary and grounded in vital American interests (or so I thought).

When people questioned and challenged the official version of the events of 9-11, I dismissed them as kooks and conspiracists. I was certain that our government wouldn’t lie about something as obvious as the events of that early September morning in 2001. It wasn’t until years later that I realized how little I knew of America’s dark history, its persistent habit of creating conflicts and political coups throughout much of the world.

Continue reading