Here are a few sentences from today’s Charles Blow column in The New York Times:
At one point in the speech, Trump delivered the bewildering line: “When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.” Patriotism does not drive out prejudice; to the contrary, it can actually enshrine it. No one was more patriotic than our founding fathers, and yet most of the prominent founding fathers were slave owners.
It perfectly encapsulates the false duality Trump and his supporters are attempting to foster. Patriotism and prejudice, as Blow points out, are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I would argue that patriotism is a form of prejudice: Patriotism posits the greatness of the nation in which one lives and implies that other nations are less vital or great. This does not mean that patriotism is a negative term, only that it carries a form of exceptionalism with it.
We often conflate the words prejudice and racism. They are related. But prejudice has a much broader definition; racism is based on hatred, while prejudice is prejudgment and can have both positive and negative connotations. I tend to be prejudiced in my response to the music of Bruce Springsteen, meaning I am likely to respond positively to new songs before fully considering whether they hold up.
Patriotism is prejudice. It starts from the assumption that your homeland, your nation, that our homeland, our nation, is exceptional, that it is great, that it has earned our pride and devotion. None of this precludes other kinds of prejudice. As Blow says, the founders were both patriotic and slaveholders. To take it a step farther — and to court controversy — Adolph Hitler could be described as a German patriot, someone who elevated love of country and a belief in its exceptional nature to its most extreme, hate-filled and violent ends. Hitler’s patriotism was the purest form of prejudice — and 6 million Jews and 5 million others were killed as proof.
What is just as troubling (I pointed this out the other day) is that Donald Trump’s false proposition — “When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice” — is being proffered within an “America First” framework. “America First,” remember, was the slogan of American Nazi sympathizers in the run up to World War II and is not the benign slogan that many Trump supporters seem to think it is.
Again, patriotism is not a bad thing — a love of country that is not blind to a country’s flaws, that seeks to push the country to be its best self is a positive thing, though we need to understand that there will be differing definitions of what is its best self. It’s when love of country precludes criticism of country, when it prizes unity as an end in itself, when it demands obedience to a flag or a leader that we are in dangerous territory.
Trump’s rhetoric has not taken us there — yet — which is why we have to remain vigilant.
Hank Kalet 