The Dangers of Blind Patriotism
To continuously further our spiritual awakening, it’s imperative we wake up to what manipulates us.
If not, we risk being manipulated by agenda’s that do not serve us or others.
One of the biggest tools used to manipulate the public is blind patriotism.
Patriotism itself is a beautiful thing.
It represents our shared hopes and beliefs in meaningful values.
It’s a shared conviction that our country operates in accordance with these proclaimed hopes and values.
All of this works when our behavior as a country is measured against those values.
It works when we willingly course correct any behavior that’s fallen out of alignment with our values.
It cannot work if the very act of determining if our behavior matches our values is deemed unpatriotic.
This is when blind patriotism becomes a dangerous tool of manipulation to keep people from looking at discrepancies in our country’s behavior.
If someone expresses a grievance and the expression is deemed “unpatriotic”, and you can keep the populace outraged over what has been deemed “unpatriotic”, you can keep people blind to the grievance itself.
So grievances go unheard. Unmeasured against our values. Unbelieved. And deemed complaints by the ungrateful.
It’s a racket to keep us from critically looking at what’s going on.
And it works very well.
On a much smaller scale, it’s the same as holding personal values for ourself without ever checking to see if we’re behaving in accordance with those values. Who would agree that this makes sense?
It’s also the same as someone calling you out for not being what you said you were, but reserving the right to call them crazy for daring to call you something different than you said you were.
It means your behavior is exempt from being judged. Only what you say you are counts.
If we used this logic to assess ourselves, everyone would see it as delusion. But we fail to see this when it comes to blind patriotism.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve heard so many people react in outrage over the recent events playing out in the US.
Not in outrage over a grievance between a group of citizens and the values our country promises us equally, but an outrage over the outrage itself, claiming it as “unpatriotic”.
Patriotism is a powerful tool to keep people moving in a desired direction. In this case, away from considering whether or not a grievance exists.
But true patriotism would call for us to look at the grievance and measure it against our shared values.
True patriotism would ask that we band together and ensure our shared values are being equally applied to the whole populace.
It wouldn’t leave a part of the whole unheard and chastised for bringing up a potential discrepancy.
We’re a country of good hearted people.
We’re also a country who believes good hearted people are patriotic. So to be unpatriotic is to be bad. This is the flaw in blind patriotism. It leaves little to no room for questioning what might be considered unpatriotic.
May our good hearted nature have the courage to challenge the trappings of blind patriotism.
With Love,
Shanna
P.S. In addition to the podcasts and posts I mentioned in last week’s message regarding understanding the systemic issues in our shared institutions, I also recommend checking out the documentary called 13th on Netflix and the podcast called 1619 Project, a short 6 episode audio series.
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