Yesterday’s inaugural festivities brought great joy to President Obama’s supporters — including, it must be said, the vast majority of the press corps, who treated the day as though they were attendees at a family bar mitzvah. And, of course, the occasion brought a certain degree of angst and foreboding to those who oppose him and his agenda, for they and their cause lost, and lost painfully.
These days we are hearing from some on the Right distressing parallels to emotions expressed on the Left after George W. Bush’s re-election victory in 2004. In each case, those upset see these national referenda as indicating the corruption and sinfulness of the American body politic — and weaknesses within the very American system.
For many anti-Bushites, the 2004 election was a validation of an unmistakable turn toward meanness, cruelty, torture, war, imperialism, hatred. They spoke of emigrating to Canada and dubbed those parts of the country that voted for Bush “Dumbf–kistan.” In their minds, Bush appealed to the worst in Americans — who, by re-electing him, showed they might be beyond moral, spiritual or political repair.
For many anti-Obamans, the 2012 election is a sign of the corruption of the American electorate, seduced by all manner of public bribery into voting for a president with a dreadful record. In the critics’ minds, that the American people accepted the bribes reveals a nation forever changed and on the road to ruin.
Of course, it’s also possible that these elections featured two candidates, one of whom got a few million more votes than the other guy — in a country that’s fairly evenly divided ideologically, and has been for decades.
No matter. It appears that, for many people, love of country has become conditional. So long as the country is on the course they choose, they’re full of joy in its traditions and ceremonies, and happy to pay respects to its officers and to ruminate on its remarkable progress over the centuries.
When things don’t go their way, the ceremonies are meaningless, the traditions are empty; the nation’s officers deserve no respect, and it is only making progress toward evil.
Which raises an interesting question: If love of country is conditional in this way, is it love of country — or really love of self substituting for love of country?
Love is not a transitory emotion, as infatuation is. We love our parents and kids with a bond both deep and elemental, as basic as the impulse to breathe. There’s no falling in or falling out of love in these cases, even when hate and rage and disappointment are mixed in. That love is permanent.
And it usually extends outward to the homes we live in, especially if there is a multigenerational tie to them. It attaches as well to schools we attend, the town or city from which we hail, the state we’re from — and ultimately to the nation.
Does it matter who governs it, or even how it’s governed? The Russian writers of the 19th century loathed their leaders and the national system, but had a mystical belief in the greatness of Mother Russia. The greatest patriotic poetry in the English language is in Shakespeare’s “Richard II” and “Henry V,” both of which are also about crimes of governance.
Thus it was that even the radical philosopher Bertrand Russell, no flag-waving jingoist, could say that his “love of country” was “very nearly the strongest emotion I possess.”
In America over the past 50 years, this affection has been supplanted by an odd sense among the politically active that the country is only worthy of their love when they consciously consider it lovable — when it stands for the things they believe in and acts in ways of which they approve.
There is something almost unnatural about this. It’s the elevation of the abstract over the real — over the love of what one wants rather than what one has. Not to mention the insult to the United States of America — which, more than any other nation, deserves the love of all its people because of the inestimable bounties of freedom and prosperity it has provided.