Decibels Versus Democracy?

Some people like to claim that they, and they alone, have the authority to define the concept of “patriotism”, and to say who is, and more pointedly, who is not, a “real American”.  Between that, and all the other loose usage of words, all the other twisting of concepts, to the extent nothing means anything any more, I’ve lost my interest in commonly-used terms, in sound bites, in trite comparisons, in the snobbery of ignorance.

I have heard combat veterans called “unpatriotic” for expressing their belief that rights, all rights, should belong equally to all citizens.  I’ve heard other people who have, in their own way, served to defend the Constitution – the entire Constitution, not only a few specific snippets and amendments – told that they are “not real Americans” merely because they don’t claim adherence to the “right” religion, or because they don’t love the “right” person, or don’t live in the “right” sort of town, or have the “right” sort of job, and for any of a thousand other “un-right” things that, in years past, were simply considered to be different ways of being an American.

I have been also been told that I’m “not a real American”, because of my geographic origin, because of my education, because I was one of those people who tried to do my part to defend the entire Constitution - and even because I’m too busy trying to live my own life, and trying to be the best Human Being I’m capable of being, to spend any time caring about, never mind sitting in judgement over, the probability that my neighbors live differently from me.  They are generally quiet, they generally do not intrude upon my privacy or peace, they generally keep their properties in decent order and appearance, they don’t trash my property, and they are reasonably pleasant.  Beyond those things, what they do in private, or what they enjoy doing with their free time, simply is none of my business, and does not occupy my thoughts.  (Precisely how those things make me, as some people claim, "not a real" American, or "unpatriotic", is beyond my comprehension, so I've stopped trying to figure it out; it's more likely that I'll be able to figure out the nature of Gravity and why it affects time and bends space!)

According to some people, that "insufficient" judgementalism in and of itself makes me “unpatriotic”, because to some people, “patriotism” means fighting to make a certain social group “more equal”, as George Orwell famously expressed it, than all other groups.  According to some people, a person is both un-American, and “condemned to Hell”, based penultimately, not upon the amount of harm they’ve done to others, but rather, based solely upon whom they love.  According to some people…well, whatever nugget of denigration one looks at, what it boils down to is that, to some people, they and they alone are the pinnacle of Creation, the best of the best, more equal than anyone else, and to such people, anyone who is not exactly like them is not a “real“ American, not patriotic – in short, not fully human, but rather some form of lesser being, a creature with no claim to decent treatment, never mind rights.

It seems like such people have been multiplying like flies in a cow pasture. 

But is that, in fact, the truth?

One realization that has not yet struck many people is the fact that the internet has allowed tiny groups, or even the proverbial “lone wolf”, to set up multiple websites, multiple blogs, multiple email accounts, multiple accounts under various user-Ids in various “social media” networks – in other words, allowing a person to become, quite literally, an “army of one” so as to manufacture support for this or that agenda, and Democracy be damned.  I’ve seen individuals hounded off of internet groups by what seemed to be hoards of people inundating them with childish name-calling and “accusations” that, in decades past, were usually attributable to grade-schoolers.  Bullies have sought to destroy civil discourse by turning meetings into chaotic shouting-matches, destroy facts by using the internet to multiply fables, destroy democracy by denigrating the very learning and rational thinking that allow it to function. 

Noise is always distracting to thought, and what more people need to realize is that, the more they allow this discordant cacophony of divisiveness, egotism, fear-mongering, and other such bully-tactics to become part of their own mental processes, the more degraded both those thought-processes, and eventually people’s actually lives, will become.

How many of us had grandmothers who, when we were children, wisely counseled us to ignore name-callers because they only made fun of other kids because they themselves were cowards who could only make themselves look better by tearing other kids down?  I think it’s time we remember that wise counsel, and redirect our energies away from those who seek to destroy, and back towards building, solving, inventing, caring, and generally striving to fulfill the promise that is truly America.