Do I love America?

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

A record low 58% of U.S. adults now say they are extremely (41%) or very (17%) proud to be an American.

I’ve been thinking a lot these days about my pride in America — more to the point, about whether I love America. I tell myself I do. And I tell other people that I do, too. In my chest, I want to say it, and I do say it: “Yes, I love America. I love my country.” America is my home, and there is virtue in being proud of the place where you live.

If I close my eyes and think of “America," I first imagine all the places that I’ve lived, that I love, that I’ve called home. I think of the neighborhood I live in now in Philadelphia, the working class side by side with the white collar newcomers side by side with the sports-obsessed lunatics who love this place with a destructive passion and an unconditional fervor. I think of New York City, where I spent nearly a decade, and the way everyone in the city seems to be in a perpetual battle together against the minor injustices around us — a subway car’s broken air conditioning, a double-parked Mack truck, a crowded sidewalk. I think of how we all unified, scowling at the city, a hearty laugh at the absurdities just beneath the surface. I think of the rural West Texas desert where I cut my teeth in the summers as a teenager and just finished building a house last year. I think of the bays of Cape Cod, where I learned to love cold ocean water and fresh seafood and the rocking deck of a boat as a young boy. I think of the immeasurable beauty of the Grand Tetons or the Pittsburgh winters or southern California in the fall or Seattle in the summer or New Orleans at any time and the way Idaho looks like a scene out of The Land Before Time, just waiting for a dinosaur to lurch around the corner. 

There is so much I love about America that I have no other answer than to say, well, yes — I do love this country. I love the fresh-cut grass of a minor league baseball outfield and the warm bun of a hot dog in my hand. I love big trucks and electric cars and good medicine and cheap technology and seeing our athletes dominate all the Olympic events. I love being able to write that the president or governor or my local city council representative is an idiot when they’re acting like an idiot and then sleep soundly without fear of repercussions. Sometimes, I love being loud and bombastic for the sake of being loud and bombastic, and being accepted as such because it’s America. I love redemption, and few countries celebrate redemption as America does. I love a society that insists on telling each other our grand dreams are within reach — that all you need is some hard work and little luck and a good idea, even if it’s not always the reality for all people.

I love the convenience of traversing state lines where food and laws and culture change as if you’ve entered a new country, yet we still share a common language. Some days I love being gluttonous, and I love that this country makes it easy. I love the dumb slang these dumb American teenagers are using these days. I love a cold shitty beer at the end of a long day of work, and America specializes in both shitty beer and long work days. Man, I love the sports and the entertainment. I love the NBA, the NFL, a crowded stadium of drunk and rowdy fans or the way my heart rate goes up when a new, highly anticipated movie trailer is released. I hate Hollywood with a love I can’t explain. This tacky, cheesy, ritzy, awful, imaginative place that people cross oceans and countries to come to just so they can tell their story, just so we can watch it on a giant screen and talk about how beautiful or boring or meaningful it really was. 

Do I love democracy and freedom and individual rights and the pursuit of improving and expanding it all? Hell yeah, I do. But how many of these things are unique to us? How much of this is America? What about those things that make America, America, but in a bad way?

“Do I love prisons?” that voice in my head asks. Do I love obesity? Do I love gun violence? Do I love addiction and depression and loneliness and expensive healthcare to treat it all?

Do I love ideals that people want to quote, or put on placards, or keep in their email signatures, but can’t live up to in practice? Do I love our floundering schools or the fact that nearly half of our country doesn’t vote, or the way we demand you must love this place to live in it?

If I’m honest with myself, if I’m really honest with myself, I love America for some of the same reasons other people hate it. Sometimes I like sticking my chest out and thumping it. Sometimes I feel a little tinge of pride when I read that we’ve used our military might to threaten another country that has been threatening others and our threat has “worked.” I like feeling safe and strong and big and in control. I love being important, and I love that my ancestors built this important thing, and I love that even if you hate America you care about it — that we matter, that our country has influence and control and sets the standard. Even with our leaders, as corruptible and spineless as they can sometimes be, I’m often glad it isn’t the other people running the show.

Shoot, I even love the guns! Not in schools or in the streets or in the hands of abusers. But I sure do love hearing the crack of a rifle echo across the land, watching the spoons spin or the can flop or the milk jug explode; and I love the notion of self-protection and independence infused into so much Second Amendment culture. 

Do I just love America because it’s mine? Is my love unconditional, as it is with friends or family I’ve known my whole life?  

I think about the things I hate about this country — the injustices, the partisanship, the conspiracies, the hackery, the materialism, the way simple, scared, angry people have gotten so good at climbing to the top — and I wonder, isn’t that enough not to love this country?

I think of how some of the great writers answered this question. C.S. Lewis put it like this:

It is like loving your children only "if they're good," your wife only while she keeps her looks, your husband only so long as he is famous and successful. "No man," said one of the Greeks, "loves his city because it is great, but because it is his." A man who really loves his country will love her in her ruin and degeneration.

Or, I think of how my predecessors answered the question. John Lewis, however you feel about his politics, loved his country even though it beat him for asking for a vote, even though it treated him like less than a man, even though it dragged him through the streets for the crime of struggling for equality. “When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war,” Lewis said in his final piece of writing. “So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.”

Who am I to not love this country, when John Lewis did? 

I remember the first few months I lived in New York City. There was something about it that was so different from Philadelphia or Pittsburgh or Jerusalem or any other big city I’d spent a lot of time in. There was the obvious: Everything was on your block. Grocery store, bank, liquor store, park, laundromat, restaurants, bars, hordes of people unlike any you’d see elsewhere — you could walk to it all and soak it all in.

But there was something else, too. There was this way people walked with each other, this silent unified front against the beast of the city that you could not see. “Sometimes New York just slaps you in the face,” I once told a group of my friends. Many of them laughed because they knew exactly what I meant. The City has a personality — a being, an energy, and this symphony of smells and sounds and characters and tastes and barely functioning things your taxes are paying for. Sometimes New York hands you the best night of your life out of the blue, for no particular reason, just by virtue of you opening your heart to it. 

And, sometimes, it slaps you in the face.

I often think of America as the New York City of the world: It’s the best country on the planet but it smells like piss and nothing really works how it’s supposed to. As I sit here thinking about this country — its partisan rancor, rising political violence, exportation of militarism across the globe, and often not-functioning Congress — I can see why so many people struggle to feel a love of country right now. 

But the visibility of these flaws — the ability to not just discuss them openly but also elicit change and try to fix them — that is the fundamentally American project. We are a sometimes great, sometimes loathsome, eternally imperfect nation built on a set of ideas that are so fundamentally superior to anything else civilization has come up with that they’ve been copied and pasted across the globe.

And when you spend time in this place, when you view it with fresh eyes, it’s impossible to ignore how beautifully we’ve built a country to fit the needs, wants, and desires of so many. Ski or swim. Hard work or laziness. Religious zealotry or rabid atheism. Blue or red or purple or “mad and not paying attention.” Cheesesteaks or the tastiest Nigerian food west of Nigeria. I once counted six languages on a 30-minute commute to work in New York City; I once stopped at a peach stand in Mississippi and couldn’t understand the English that was being spoken to me by the American owner.

This is America.

And maybe this is just the story I tell myself because this is my home, but it’s a story I love. It’s a story of love. Do I love America? Shoot, I think so. I care for it. I want it to be good and fair and just and kind and confident and strong and welcoming and capable of brute force strength whenever the calling comes. I don’t mind if it slaps me around every now and then, but I’d love if it could just function a little better, avoid a few more wars, and allow us to share a reality and lean on wisdom and look to evidence and treasure our elderly and be forgiving and fair and nice to our children — even if just a little more than we are.

I’ve been thinking a lot about whether I love America. And on this Independence Day I want to. I do. I love America, I tell myself. I think I do.

I think I always might.

One more thing...

Don't forget: Last night, I sat down with Tangle Editor-at-Large Kmele Foster to discuss his piece on the 2020 racial reckoning. Check out our live conversation, where were took questions from the Tangle audience, here: