What is Patriotism?

July 4 means that healthy and unhealthy discussions of patriotism again take center stage. Will you wave the flag?

I always welcome thoughtful conversations about what behavior is patriotic, about how we should act if we love our country. It’s too bad that this rarely happens. Face-to-face talks about patriotism usually begin as arguments and accusations, and then get worse. Among people of like minds, how to be patriotic is also seldom sincerely and frankly addressed. Maybe we all are afraid to discover that we don’t agree, or that our ideas can be easily criticized.

For example, the premise that all good Americans should love our country is a starting point that is never questioned. The postwar conservative refrain that liberals did not love America and wanted to betray it to the world communist movement has never abated, only taken different forms in different political eras. When I was growing up, it was crudely expressed as a taunt to antiwar protesters: “Love it or leave it.” Of course, no self-regarding conservative would now dare suggest that cozying up to post-Soviet Russia is unpatriotic, considering Trump’s attempts to excuse Putin’s electoral meddling. That has taken some of the sting out of the taunt that Democrats are socialists, but not so much that Republicans don’t use it every day.

Just a few years ago, Republicans howled that if a black man like Rev. Jeremiah Wright said, “God damn America, for treating our citizens as less than human”, and if our black President had ever listened to him, then the whole election of Obama was tainted by lack of patriotism.

Must a German Jew love her country? Could she not be a loyal citizen, but still experience other feelings besides love for Germany, even 70 years after the end of Nazi rule? Must a Russian whose grandparents were murdered in Stalin’s purges by the secret police now love a country run by the former KGB leader?

Must African-Americans who experienced discrimination on their own bodies now simply love America, when segregation and discrimination still exist, and when our President is an unrepentant racist? That’s just the beginning of a thoughtful confrontation with the meaning of patriotism.

A second problem with patriotism discussions is how they often are about symbols rather than behavior. In fact, conservatives and liberals agree about many political behaviors that should characterize a patriotic American: voting, paying taxes, and serving on juries. But conservatives tend to value reverence for symbols of America much more than liberals. In a survey last year, 71% of Republicans, but only 34% of Democrats said that knowing the Pledge of Allegiance was important for good citizenship. Displaying the flag was important for 50% of Republicans, but only 25% of Democrats.

Someone posted on Facebook the false claim that none of the 10 Democratic presidential candidates at the first debate wore flag pins, which was not true, and then concluded that “Democrats hate Americans and America”. That is a familiar refrain from the right wing.

Another difference between partisans is how criticisms of one’s country are regarded. While half of Democrats think a good citizen should protest when the government does something that is wrong, that is true for only a third of Republicans. Conservatives have argued my entire lifetime that criticisms of America and American history are equivalent to treason. That’s the position that conservatives defended when protests came mainly from liberals during the 1960s and 1970s. Now that much protest comes from the right about “over-regulation” or investigations of Trump, conservative protest has become legitimate. For them it’s fine, that candidate and President Trump can display patriotism by offering wide-ranging criticisms of America: our President was illegitimate; our airports were “third-world”; our FBI committed treason; our military leaders are ignorant. Trump became the epitome of conservative patriotism, not out of any principles about what patriotism means, but from pure partisanship.

Some Republican “principles” are defended only when convenient. 79% of Republicans said that good citizens “always follow the law”, compared to 61% of Democrats, but Trump’s multiple legal transgressions are ignored or defended.

Whatever the thinking behind the idea of patriotism, Republicans believe theirs is the right way. A survey one year ago showed that 72% of Republicans rated themselves “very patriotic”, while only 29% of Democrats chose this label for themselves. Since Trump’s election, the self-proclaimed patriotism of Democrats has dropped significantly.

It turns out that patriotism refers both to long-term feelings about country and more temporary feelings about current political leadership. Behavior and symbols are both important, but to different people. Political differences lead too often to claims that the other side is not just wrong, but also unpatriotic.

Because patriotism is about feelings, it is hard to analyze, even for oneself. The American women just won the soccer World Cup. I rooted for them all the way, just the way I root for American athletes I never heard of in the Olympic Games or at Wimbledon. I don’t think that makes me a better American, just a normal one.

Steve Hochstadt

Springbrook WI

July 9, 2019

The Racial Divide Gets Deeper

When I was growing up, white racism was a powerful and ubiquitous force in American life. It was impossible to ignore and nearly impossible to remain untouched, even if one consciously believed that skin color had nothing to do with human worth.

The outburst of civil protest about racism in the 1960s was a sign of American optimism: our democracy had severe flaws with deep historical roots, but they could be overcome through peaceful political action. The intransigence of openly racist politicians from the South and covertly racist politicians from everywhere else would yield to massive popular dissent. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, among many other legislative victories for racial equality, introduced a new era in American history.

It was comforting to believe that over time America would no longer be divided unequally into black and white, that the effects of racism would gradually disappear as legal racism itself became a thing of the past. Viewed from today, that idea appears hopelessly optimistic, the dream of political Pollyannas, who ignored the long history and crude reality of American racism. Every survey and social scientific study demonstrates the continuing power of racism to distort and impoverish the lives of black Americans. What is relatively new is the congruence of the partisan and racial splits.

Much has changed for the better, as evidenced, for example, by the ability of black politicians to win races in every state. The ceiling on black political success has been lifted a bit, but not broken. Until 2013, there was never more than one black Senator in office. Although about half of US Senators had first been elected to the House of Representatives, that only works for white politicians: only one black, Republican Tim Scott, has moved from the House to the Senate. There have been only two black governors in our history.

Donald Trump has certainly exacerbated racism in America, but the racist attitudes that he plays on never disappeared. While the openly racist public displays of ideological white supremacists have become more common, the much larger undercurrent of racist beliefs has finally found a comfortable home in the Republican Party base.

Only 15% of Republicans say that our country has not gone far enough in giving blacks equal rights. The number of Republicans who say that American politics has already gone too far in giving blacks equal rights is twice as large. Three-quarters of Republicans say that a major racial problem is that people see discrimination where it doesn’t exist and that too much attention is paid to racial issues. One out of 5 Republicans say being white hurts people’s ability to get ahead, and one out of 3 say that being black helps. Nearly half of Republicans say that “lack of motivation to work hard” is a major reason why blacks have a hard time getting ahead, and more than half blame “family instability” and “lack of good role models”. One third of Republicans say that racial and ethnic diversity is not good for our country. Among white Republicans who live in the least diverse American communities, 80% wish for their communities to stay the same and 6% want even less diversity. Half of Republicans say that it would bother them to hear a language other than English in a public place.

While racist Americans have congregated in the Republican Party, white Democrats appear to be moving away from racial resentment. Between 2014 and 2017, the proportion of white Democrats who said that the “country needs to continue making changes to give blacks equal rights”, has grown from 57% to 80%. A different study offers even stronger numbers. In both 2012 and 2016, about half of Republicans displayed “racially resentful” attitudes toward blacks, and only 3% expressed a positive view. Among Democrats, the proportions shifted: the proportion who were positive about blacks doubled and those who felt most resentful fell by nearly half.

Apparently, college-educated whites had long known that the Democratic Party was more likely to be sympathetic to blacks on racial issues, and thus sorted themselves politically according to their own racial attitudes. But less educated whites came to recognize this partisan difference more recently, especially during the Obama presidency, and those with racial resentments who had been Democrats moved to the Republican Party.

While white Americans who feel negatively about blacks and believe that too much has been done to redress centuries of discrimination are collecting in the Republican Party, Democrats, both politicians and voters, are openly discussing reparations. 80% of Democrats believe that the legacy of slavery still affects the position of black Americans. The House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties held an unprecedented hearing on slavery reparations last week. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas has proposed a bill “To address the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery ... between 1619 and 1865  and to establish a commission to study and consider a national apology and proposal for reparations”. Such a bill had been stalled in the House for 30 years. Now Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she supports it. The four Democratic Senators who are candidates, Sanders, Booker, Warren and Harris, all co-signed a Senate bill to study reparations. Julian Castro, Kirsten Gillibrand and Beto O’Rourke also support such a study. Amy Klobuchar and Joe Biden have been circumspect, but not dismissive. I couldn’t find any Republican political figure who supports even a study of the issue.

Reparations are already being considered: Georgetown University students voted 2 to 1 to impose a $27.20 fee on themselves to compensate the descendants of the 272 slaves sold in the 1830s by Georgetown’s founders.

One of the big arguments that Republicans, like Mitch McConnell, have used against even thinking about reparations is that slavery is 150 years in the past. But government discrimination against African Americans deliberately deprived them of financial resources in my lifetime.

Returning black veterans could not take advantage of the GI Bill because of racist tactics in North and South. Blacks were excluded from getting home loans in the newly expanding suburbs.

Reparations would certainly be difficult to decide upon and to administer. The clean partisan split over whether to consider the issue demonstrates how Republicans and Democrats are moving away from each other. We’ll see whether that strengthens or weakens continuing American racism.

Steve Hochstadt

Jacksonville IL

June 25, 2019

Water

I don’t think about water very much. I turn faucets on and off every day many times, and use water for a variety of tasks that seem necessary to a good life – showers, cleaning hands, washing dishes, making coffee. When water is in the news, it’s about too much water, the floods of the century that seem to be happening every few years in the Midwest.

Lately, though, I have been doing experiments with water. What if I turn off the water in the shower several times when I don’t need the spray? Can I save water that I would normally dump down the drain by pouring some into a container? Can I use less water when I wash dishes?

In all the houses of friends and family I visit, in all the restaurants and workplaces I visit, an unending supply of clean, drinkable water is an unspoken assumption. But that is one of the great privileges of living in one of the world’s wealthiest countries.

It also is our great danger. America uses too much water. The Colorado River, which provides drinking water for 36 million Americans and irrigation for 15% of the nation’s crops, is so overused that the water level in Lake Mead behind the Hoover Dam, the country’s largest reservoir, is dropping to emergency levels. Seven states that depend on Colorado River water have just agreed to voluntarily cut their water usage. The days of virtually free unlimited water in the Southwest are over.

Meanwhile, we have way too much water in the Midwest. Both changes are connected to climate change, and so might get worse for the next few decades. In neither region, in no region, are Americans prepared for the basic changes in our water systems that global warming has brought and will keep bringing.

Flushing the toilet represents the largest use of water in an average American household, about 30% of total daily usage. Older toilets use 3.6 gallons per flush, while the newer so-called ultra-low-flow toilets use 1.6 gallons and even newer “high efficiency toilets” use 1.3 gallons, multiplied by an average of more than 5 flushes per day per person. Showers last an average of 8 minutes at 2 gallons per minute.

It is possible to significantly reduce water usage by installing relatively cheap bits of equipment which create no inconvenience: aerators for faucets and low-flow shower heads. More expensive are modern toilets and high efficiency washers and dishwashers.

The Alliance for Water Efficiency makes further suggestions for reducing water usage. They recommend what they call the “navy shower”, in which you turn off the water while shampooing and washing, then turn it on again. I’ve never been in the Navy, but this is how I shower, probably saving about the half the water I would otherwise use. That’s easy. Another suggestion they make is to collect the cold water that comes out of the shower before it is hot enough to step into. Think about that: get a bucket, turn the shower on so that some of the spray goes into the bucket, take the bucket out when the shower is warm, use that water later for – what? Watering plants? Washing dishes?

That’s an example of how inconvenient it is to have limited water supply.

Two-thirds of people in sub-Saharan Africa have no water at all at home. In most of these countries, over 90% of the rural population has no water at home. For many people, the nearest water supply is more than 30 minutes away. One gallon of water weighs over 8 pounds. Imagine needing to carry all the water for your household for half an hour.

Great improvements have been made recently in providing access to water in poorer nations. The proportion of the world’s people with access to “improved drinking water” has risen from 76% in 1990 to 91% in 2015. One of the biggest improvements was in China, where the number jumped from 67% to 95% among over 1 billion people.

Nearly 2 million Americans do not have access to clean running water. Naturally it is poor minority communities who suffer most: Native Americans, rural blacks in the South, Latino communities along the border with Mexico. But every state has areas where people do not have indoor plumbing.

I have a small metal milk can on my kitchen counter that holds about a gallon. I often pour water I have already used into it. When it’s full, I use the water in my garden. That water would have gone down the drain. If pouring it into my garden replaces other water I would have used for that purpose, I might have saved money. Some months we don’t use more than 2000 gallons, so our charge is flat, whether I save a gallon here or there or not. When we use more than 2000, I’m reducing our payment about 7 cents for every 100 gallons I don’t use. Water is extraordinarily cheap for us.

My water saving experiment was not useless. It is no solution to our coming water problems, but it began to show me what water privilege means. Maybe it will help prepare me for a future when our water privilege runs out.

Steve Hochstadt

Jacksonville IL

June 18, 2019