Simple appreciation for America, and a desire to build on its strengths, has become nearly impossible to find among today’s politicians and pundits. The loudest voices in politics today say there’s hope for America, but only if you empower them to save it from itself. On the right, Tucker Carlson announced a manifesto last week to free America from the clutches of the elite “Epstein class.” On the left, the leading Democrat in Wisconsin’s race for governor, state representative Francesca Hong, has declined to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at legislative hearings, and in 2020 urged the cancellation of Thanksgiving, which she said honors colonialism.
Since pundits and politicians alike tend to mirror the public, can we deduce that Americans have simply lost interest in patriotism? We don’t think so. On the contrary, we believe that there is an unmet demand in this country for a revival of patriotism that politicians of both parties appear incapable of meeting.
The reasons why our politics has been a cold shower for Americans’ patriotism are not hard to discern. One of them is the president. Donald Trump won the Republican nomination in 2016 by framing the U.S. as a nation in terminal decline, and he has frequently drawn a moral equivalence between the actions of foreign dictators and America’s own foreign policy. In the period since Trump overtook the Republican Party, right-wingers have become much more critical about America as it actually exists. And though Trump regularly expresses patriotism, his pageantry and truculent manner have been more polarizing than unifying. He seems to miss no opportunity to associate love of country with his own personal MAGA brand.
