Thursday, December 28, 2017

Bumper Sticker Reflections

A fairly common bumper sticker up here reads: Love My Country- Fear My Government. It's usually associated with a redneck/libertarian "patriot" kind of attitude which means I Don't Mind Killing Ragheads for My Country but I Sure Hate Being Taxed by my Govment. In other words, not a super deep analysis of the role of the State- more jingoistic flag waving paranoia about The New World Order.

But it's not a bad slogan when you think about it. If by "country" you mean the landscape and physical features and by "government" you mean the gang of corrupt capitalist oligarchs that pull all the strings, yeah, I could put the sticker on the old blue car.

Unfortunately, patriotic "love my country" tends to mean disavow the history of racism and exploitation and genocide, it means embrace the mythologizing Hollywood story, the romantic epic of taming the wilderness and creating wealth. As for fearing your government: Definitely Be Very Very Afraid. Of THIS government. Doesn't mean governance is evil, just something you have to pay attention to.

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