Vol. 3: In Search of Sustainable Patriotism; Trump's Underground People
Mark looks back on the legacy of Toby Keith's brand of jingoistic patriotism; Jack compares Dostoevsky's Underground Man to the common Trump supporter.
Legacies Assessed
Toby Keith, James Baldwin, and A More Sustainable Foundation for Patriotism
By Mark McKibbin
Toby Keith (L) and James Baldwin (R). Credit: Wikimedia Commons; R.L. Oliver for The Los Angeles Times
On February 5, legendary country music singer Toby Keith died at age sixty-two following a monthslong battle with cancer. Following Keith’s death, many of the eulogies to Keith understandably focused on his legacy as one of America’s most patriotic music artists.
Keith’s archetype of a patriotic American was a person who worked with their hands, shunned foreign-made products, loved the troops, and wrapped themselves in the American flag (without letting it touch the ground, of course – the line on flag desecration has to be drawn somewhere). For Keith, the archetype of individual masculinity and patriotism could easily be extrapolated to the national. After 9/11, Keith’s song “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)” brought the nation together in a roaring cry of fury, promising to put a “boot in [the] ass” of those who attacked the United States.
“The Angry American” was but another note in the pro-war chorus of the time that drove the United States to pay for an unnecessary war on a credit card while lowering taxes for the wealthiest Americans, exacerbating the national debt, and irreparably damaging our international credibility. Keith never expressed regret about these lyrics—they were part of his creed to “never apologize for being patriotic.”
In the wake of Keith’s passing, faithful right-wing culture warriors have employed Keith’s legacy as fodder for their claims that the Left is coming to take your guns and plastic straws, all while indoctrinating your children with their Marxist propaganda and drowning them in the fires of “critical race theory.”
Take Jeremiah Poff, a commentary writer for the right-wing Washington Examiner, who asked in his recent tribute to Keith, “How much better off would the soul of the nation be if Keith’s sense of patriotism were rekindled in the American psyche?” But from Poff’s other articles, which obsess over how much Ibram X. Kendi is getting paid to speak at various universities and zero in on Chasten Buttigieg’s efforts to create inclusive, safe environments for LGBTQ+ teens, it is not difficult to figure out what and whom Poff thinks a proper “sense of patriotism” looks like.
It is even less of an inferential leap to surmise how Poff’s Washington Examiner colleague Ian Haworth sees Toby Keith’s Patriotism. One week before Haworth wrote “Remembering Toby Keith’s America,” he penned an article titled “Ilhan Omar hates America,” referring to the Somali-American Congresswoman from Minnesota. Poff and Haworth were joined in their politicization of Keith's legacy by Daily Caller writer Gage Klipper, who wrote that “the liberal left” has contempt “for those clear-minded American patriots.” In addition to Keith, Klipper undoubtedly included himself as one of these “clear-minded” individuals.
These three writers have used Keith’s legacy to advance a notion of patriotism resting on a foundation of willful ignorance. Theirs is a patriotism that fears learning and speaking truth about America’s past, because that past is an ugly one, and if one learns about it, so this logic goes, it might diminish their patriotic spirit.
These commentaries beg the question: to what extent do Keith’s songs invite this kind of politicization?
On the one hand, Keith himself actively worked to appear politically neutral. He was one of the few artists who performed at both Obama and Trump’s inaugurations, saying in a 2017 statement, "I don't apologize for performing for our country or military. I performed at events for previous presidents [George W.] Bush and [Barack] Obama and over 200 shows in Iraq and Afghanistan for the USO.” He was a Democrat until 2008, when he switched to become an independent.
Whether or not Keith succeeded in his attempted neutrality, it seems fairly clear that he saw patriotism as a message that should unite Americans. He cannot be put on the same plane as Lee Greenwood, for example, who performed his song “God Bless the USA” at Trump’s inauguration and campaign rallies, held Trump up as a model patriot, and switched up the song’s lyrics to sing “God Bless the NRA!” for his live performance at the National Rifle Association’s 2017 meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.
On the other hand, Keith was well aware of who his base was and did not publicly object to the right-wing politicization of his songs or discourage the willful ignorance patriotism his lyrics so readily encouraged. If I leave an open tub of popcorn on the edge of my counter, I cannot act blameless when my new and still-in-training puppy jumps up and steals it.
The Keith song that perhaps best illustrates Keith’s culpability in the right-wing appropriation of his songs is not “The Angry American,” but “Made in America,” where Keith declares in the chorus that the patriotic American he is singing about “ain’t prejudiced, he’s just made in America.” The absurdity of suggesting that simply claiming one is not prejudiced absolves them from being accused of prejudice, even if that person also says and does things that are undeniably prejudiced, cannot be overstated.
So, what is one to do? Must they immediately cease listening to Keith’s music, remove him from their Spotify playlists, and angrily walk out whenever they hear one of Keith’s songs at their local sports bar?
To each their own, but for me, the answer to these questions is an unequivocal “no.” I have been listening to patriotic country music since I was young. This kind of music is a part of who I am. It is something that connects me with people in my life who I care for deeply despite our disagreements or lack of common interests elsewhere. Toby Keith will remain on my playlist.
But I can only listen to this kind of music with a clear conscience if I listen to it thoughtfully. I can only listen to it free from shame because I have tried to shed willful ignorance and build my sense of patriotism on a second, more sustainable foundation of acknowledged paradox.
A paradox is not a contradiction. A contradiction denotes combining two things together that do not match in their logic. By contrast, a paradox denotes combining two things that seem oddly joined at first but make up a harmonious mosaic when one looks closer.
A patriotism based on acknowledged paradox simultaneously puts together certain value statements with statements of fact that seem to go against those values. For example, it is paradoxical to call America “the land of the free” while acknowledging that we have the highest per capita incarceration rate in the developed world. It is paradoxical to claim liberty and justice as American values while also pointing out that the United States is responsible for inventing the cruelest system of slavery in human history, engineering a systematic genocide of Native Americans that helped inspire Adolf Hitler’s blueprint for murdering six million Jews during the Holocaust, and that we conducted the largest aerial bombing campaign in human history in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.
I have looked to the work of the author James Baldwin to operationalize how to build a patriotism on a foundation of acknowledged paradox. In Notes of a Native Son, Baldwin wrote, “I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” But to give this quote its full context, we must also consider Baldwin’s next sentence:
“I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one’s own moral center, and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one aright.”
With this quote, Baldwin underscores that for his sense of patriotism to be sustainable, it must be a patriotism that is open to learning and changing one’s mind. It is also a patriotism that calls on one to push back respectfully when their “moral center” tells them to.
A consistent theme in Baldwin’s work is that we as Americans should not be afraid to learn and accept the less flattering parts of American history. He implores his readers to accept reality without relying on myth and fantasy as a crutch. "People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction,” Baldwin writes in Native Son, “and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster."
The “monster” Baldwin refers to is prevalent in American politics today. For example, a handful of state legislatures would rather erase transgender individuals and take actions that have been demonstrably shown to drive up suicide rates among LGBTQ+ youth than have honest and difficult conversations about gender and sexuality issues. Take Ohio, which recently enacted a ban on gender-affirming care after the state legislature overrode the veto of Republican governor Mike DeWine, who wrote in his veto message that “parents looked me in the eye and told me that their child is alive today only because of the gender-affirming care that they have received.”
I still have much to learn about transgender and gender identity issues. But one thing I can say for certain is this: using the hand of government to terrorize and torment the families of kids questioning their gender identity is sadistic, immoral, and abominable.
Baldwin acknowledged the paradoxical nature of a sustainable American patriotism, referring to it as a thing of “bottomless confusion” in Nobody Knows My Name. When one faces a collision between myth and reality, Baldwin said, they have two choices: meet and accept the collision, or retreat from it. He believed the first option was by far the better choice. "I think we have to look grim facts in the face,” wrote Baldwin, “because if we don't, we can never hope to change them." Baldwin poignantly echoes this statement in the essay, “As Much Truth as One Can Bear,” where he writes that, “not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced."
Baldwin understood that accepting reality often comes with the pang of obligation, and specifically the obligation to take action to right wrongs, correct injustices, and sculpt a more humane future. He acknowledged the difficulty of change, writing in The Fire Next Time that "people find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger." But to be willing to make this sacrifice, to be willing to put oneself in “danger,” to be willing to be vulnerable—to Baldwin, these were deeply noble actions. When done together, they embodied the most honorable and sustainable kind of patriotism.
In the outstanding book Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, Princeton Professor Eddie Glaude underscores Baldwin’s emphasis on rejecting whitewashed stories of American history. The stories we tell about the past shape the present and our future. Understanding history is only useful to the extent it helps us understand the present moment. Once we have that understanding, we must use it to be a part of creating a better, more humane future in health care, criminal justice, workers’ rights, gun violence prevention, clean energy, and many other areas that are beyond the scope of this piece to explore.
James Baldwin’s patriotism, a patriotism of acknowledged paradox, allows for an ability to relentlessly criticize one’s country without losing their patriotic spirit. It gives way to a persistent search for truth without a fear that what one might find will force them to shed their patriotism. And it enables one to keep patriotic Toby Keith songs on their playlist guilt-free. ♦
Start Making Sense
Trump’s Underground People
By Jack Carter Benjamin
Image credit: Elimende Inagella, Unsplash
Do humans desire what is good for them?
That is the core theme of Fyodor Dosteovsky's 1864 novella Notes from Underground. In Part I ("Underground"), the narrator's polemic centers around whether a utopian society is possible given peoples’ innate nature – indeed, innate desire – to act against their self-interest for the mere sake of expressing free will.
"There is one case, only one, when a man may intentionally, consciously desire even something harmful to himself, something stupid, even very stupid, namely: in order to have the right to desire something even very stupid and not be bound by an obligation to desire only what’s smart."
In Notes, the narrator further weighs the positives of acting irrationally and rejecting falsehoods. The simplest example of this: agreeing with the statement "two plus two equals five," merely because you can.
"I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing," the Underground Man writes, "but, if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing, too."
These two ideas of acting against one's own self-interest and rejecting falsehoods to gain a sense of control, power, or pride embody the mindset of many a Trump supporter.
The only economic demographic Trump won in the 2020 election were those with incomes above one hundred thousand dollars per annum. But plenty of voters below this income threshold still support Trump, and in doing so, choose to prioritize their perceived cultural interests over their glaring financial interests. The fiscal policy of Trump (and, more broadly, the entire GOP for decades) is pretty simple: cut taxes for the rich and make up for the loss in government income by cutting social programs that benefit those in need. Why would any member of the working class support such a candidate? The answer, according to political science research, is because racially-motivated fears supplanted complex financial concerns as the primary force driving their vote.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket,” once said Lyndon B. Johnson. “Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
This behavior is doubly effective because it drives snobbish, well-educated "elites" up a wall. It is a big middle finger to "the system," as if to say, "See, we have the power to declare two and two make five. What are you going to do about it?"
Of course this is irrational. That is the point. The irrationality brings joy.
Trump supporters typify the person who wants to have it both ways – and feels they can because there is nothing incongruous to them in taking diametrically opposed positions on an issue. If two plus two equals five, then one can claim they don’t like taking handouts while simultaneously benefiting from a slew of social safety net programs; one can say they support seceding from the union while living in a state that takes more resources from the federal government than it gives in tax revenue; one can complain of immigrants taking their jobs while lamenting of a decline in work ethic; one can believe big corporations are stealing from the little guys like them while cheering as Trump signs a two-trillion-dollar tax cut for the wealthy.
There needs to be greater acceptance on the left, the center, and the center-right (the Reasonables) that we are not dealing with rational actors. In fact, we are dealing with, in many cases, willfully irrational actors who prefer lies precisely because they are so galling. They are the internet trolls brought to life.
From this standpoint, McKay Coppins’ recent suggestion that sane, politically interested individuals attend a Trump rally to "take in the scene" and "talk to his fans" appears nonsensical.
"Regardless of your personal orientation toward Trump, attending one of his rallies will be a clarifying experience," he writes in The Atlantic. "You’ll get a tactile sense of the man who’s dominated American politics for nearly a decade, and of the movement he commands. People who comment on politics for a living—journalists, academics—might find certain premises challenged, or at least complicated. Opponents and activists might come away with new urgency (and maybe a dash of empathy for the people Trump has under his sway)."
The obvious response to Coppins, and one that was popularly circulated on social media, is to question why we must seek, even after all this time, to empathize with those who lack empathy for others, tolerate those who are intolerant, and attempt to rationalize with those who prefer to think and act irrationally.
That is all well and fair, but it is also not forward-thinking. Trump's Underground People are not going away anytime soon; their exorcism remains unlikely. In Colorado last month, Representative Lauren Boebert and six other GOP candidates were cheered for raising their hands to indicate they had arrest records. This toothpaste cannot be so easily put back in the tube, even if Donald Trump himself dies or goes to jail. Republicans' increasing cries for Civil War aside, we will have to find a way to coexist with the Underground People. The fate of our country depends on it.
Writing amidst the Second World War, George Orwell (who notably and famously used the "two plus two equals five" concept in his 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four) explained the Nazis' embrace of anti-intellectualism and the disdain for truth.
"Nazi theory specifically denies that such a thing as 'the truth' exists," he wrote. "There is, for instance, no such thing as 'Science.' There is only 'German Science,' 'Jewish science,' et cetera. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls the past as well as the future. If the Leader says of such and such an event, 'It never happened' — well, it never happened. If he says that 'two and two are five' — well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs."
This “nightmare world” is particularly exemplified in the revisionism around January 6. Trump insists January 6 did not happen when it clearly and obviously did. And yet, among his supporters, the vast majority, including highly educated Congresspeople who know better (in part because they were victims of the attack, such as Elise Stefanik) now toe the line. It wasn't an insurrection – the attackers were actually "hostages," because the Leader has said so and He must be right.
These are the philosophies that exist Underground: the embracing of non-truths. It is little coincidence that the Underground Man, despite being clearly more thoughtful and intellectual than the average Trump supporter, is also quite similar to them in his behavior. He is a misanthrope who spends practically all his time indoors, shut off from the rest of standard society. If the internet were around in the 1860s, you can bet the Underground Man would be lost in conspiracy forums, finding social connections digitally while he otherwise exists entirely apart from others. He is also a hater of women, shown most clearly in his treatment of the prostitute Liza in Part II of the novella ("Apropos of the Wet Snow").
The Trump supporter in 2016 is not the same as the Trump supporter in 2020, and neither necessarily resembles the Trump supporter in 2024. I lost a lot of friends in 2016, practically blacklisting those I knew who voted for Trump from my life. I don't regret this on principle (and they weren't great friends anyway), because I knew then what Trump obviously stood for (hate, fear, a policy stance that I could never sign onto, underpinned by values that reveal the very worst about the American spirit). And yet, one could at least forgive the 2016 Trump voter, or for that matter, left-of-center voters who sat out the election because they did not like Hillary Clinton. Trump, despite widely understood to be a conman, was then a political unknown. That means he was easy to make excuses for. "Congress and the bureaucracy will reign him in." "It won't be that bad." "He won't actually try to overthrow the government, that would be crazy."
Such people are gullible and not beyond reproach, but also not beyond repentance either. They are people who not only know two plus two equals four but choose to believe it. Many of these voters are now finding their voice, electing to vote for Nikki Haley in Republican primaries and signaling they will never vote for Trump again after the attempted insurrection and his role in overturning Roe v. Wade and his botching of the Covid-19 pandemic and his hateful rhetoric and his four indictments and and and.
But if you are still voting for the man, you're either actively a fascist or practically tolerant of fascism. Plain and simple. Trump can't be any clearer in his language; he is repeatedly invoking Hitler, consistently embracing white supremacists, and showing no remorse for doing so. There are no more reasonable excuses or ways to minimize his danger to democracy without choosing to jump from two plus two equals four to two plus two equals five.
What should our response be to these members of the Underground? No, we do not need to attend their rallies and interview them and study them as though they are some great unknown. Rather, they need to be shamed back into the darkness from whence they came; back Underground.
Writing in the mid-aughts, the late Hunter S. Thompson attempted just that: "Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads?" he asked. "Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush? […] They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us – they are the Klu Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them."
Underground People may prefer two and two equaling five. They may choose to believe it always. The key is to make doing so publicly unacceptable. To accomplish that, we must rid ourselves of the creeping norm of utilizing fascist tactics to seize power and appeal to a person’s innate irrational desires.
Push the Underground People back Underground, and the rest of society can prosper.
At least until the time inevitably comes once more when they decide to peek their heads out from the crawlspace. ♦