Patriot's Game

The emotionality of patriotism keeps us from thinking about what the USA is actually doing in the world: dominating other countries through economic, political, and military aggression.

Courtesy: peakprosperity.com

(OLDENBURG, Germany) - Once again in election season the drums of patriotism are being beaten. Politicians on the stump and their Madison Avenue flacks are exhorting us to rally around the tattered flag. Their drumming sounds feeble and hollow, though, like cheerleaders trying to rouse the fans while our military team goes down to defeat, bringing the economy with it.

The drummers persist because their patriotic noise drowns out the voices of those asking disturbing questions: Why are we playing this losing game to begin with? Why are we bankrupting the country with endless war? How can we love a nation that slaughters millions of our fellow human beings? These questions endanger the game, and the game must go on.

Visit: trineday to order a copy.

Patriotism keeps us in the game. It's an instrument of control that's cultivated in us as children through emotional rituals designed to make us identify our nation with our family and with some higher power. These rituals create a bond of feeling linking God the Father, the Founding Fathers, and our own fathers into a patriarchal hierarchy that rewards us if we're obedient and punishes us if we're rebellious. It's a tool for keeping us in our place.

Patriotism exploits the love we have for our parents by projecting it onto the nation. We love our country, so we react to criticism of it as an attack on our family. This criticism hurts our feelings on a deep personal level, so we reject it. It's too threatening to us. The emotionality of patriotism keeps us from thinking about what the USA is actually doing in the world: dominating other countries through economic, political, and military aggression.

Patriotism gives us the illusion that we're part of the system rather than victims of it. It helps us feel good about ourselves, a defense against the low self-esteem that this hypercompetitive society instills in us. Instead of personal pride, we are offered national pride, and we cling to that because it's all we've got. That's one reason poor whites are often so aggressively patriotic. They're desperate to feel like winners. The poor minorities know better.

If we can see that patriotism has been indoctrinated into us, we'll be a step closer to reclaiming our minds and freeing ourselves from these internalized control mechanisms that make us subservient to the corporate state and its owners. We will no longer be their loyal and obedient populace generating profits for them. When we finally evict them from their positions of power in our minds and in the world, we'll then be able to build a country we really could be proud of.

William T. Hathaway's new book, Radical Peace: People Refusing War, presents the experiences of peace activists who have moved beyond petitions and demonstrations into direct action: helping soldiers to desert, destroying computer systems, trashing recruiting offices, burning military equipment, and sabotaging defense contractors. Chapters are posted on a page of the publisher's website at http://media.trineday.com/radicalpeace. A Special Forces combat veteran, Hathaway is currently an adjunct professor of American studies at the University of Oldenburg in Germany. His first book, A World of Hurt, won a Rinehart Foundation Award for its portrayal of the psychological roots of war: the emotional blockage and need for patriarchal approval that draw men to the military. He is also the author of Summer Snow, the story of an American warrior in Central Asia who falls in love with a Sufi Muslim and learns from her an alternative to the military mentality. Chapters are available at www.peacewriter.org.

William T. Hathaway is author of the novels A World of Hurt, CD-Ring,, Summer Snow and a nonfiction book, Radical Peace: People Refusing War. He also wrote the screenplay for Socrates, an educational film starring Ed Asner that was broadcast on PBS.

Hathaway began his writing career as a newspaper reporter in San Francisco, then joined the Special Forces to research a book about war. Based on his experiences on a combat team in Vietnam, A World of Hurt won a Rinehart Foundation Award for its portrayal of the psychological roots of war.

After the war Hathaway became a peace activist. In his latest book, Radical Peace, he wrote, "Since then my books and articles have centered on this theme, as do many of my nonwriting activities. It's become my beat, as they say in the newspaper business." A selection of his writing is available at http://www.peacewriter.org. You can drop William an email at this address: william.hathaway@ewetel.net

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Anonymous July 12, 2012 8:51 am (Pacific time)

Are you kidding me? There is no patriotism in America anymore. Our Military is falling apart. Instead of learning how to kill the enemy, they get tought how to live with the fags in the Military and not to hurt their feelings. They get tought to win the hearts and minds of the terrorists and the throwback people while they shoot our troops in the back. Poor Border Patrol was told to run and hide if they get approached by the drug dealers with the machine guns. That is not America, we don't run and hide, never did. But I guess we do now. It's not enough that the Muslim in Chief is bowing down to every terrorist and leader of a Nation. He kills our troops, Police Officers, Border Patrol Agents , Civilian and loves the terrorists. It makes me proud to have a terrorist loving President, who is a murderer, lier, commit fraud, steals, destroys this Country, sucks up to terrorists, destroys the Middle East and tells me that the Middle Class has nothing to do with how much money I make. Let's see, I am a hard working person, consider myself Middle Class. There is that looser on crack and a check from my tax dollars or the illegal with 5 babies and 5 different fathers, and they are considered Middle Class. Well Obama I like to see your grades and see if you are really that dumb or just ignorant. Buy yourself a dictionary and look up Middle Class. The point is our Country is bankrupt, our Military is not able to fight a real war and Obama is to busy kissing everybody ass and pisses on the Constitution. The fall of America is coming, it's going to fall just like Rome.

Editor: You haven't the first clue what America is about, you are drowning in bigotry, sad stuff.

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