Explaining the Right is a weekly series that looks at what the right wing is currently obsessing over, how it influences politics—and why you need to know.
President Donald Trump doesn’t understand American patriotism.
He certainly believes that he understands the concept—which millions of schoolchildren from coast to coast are able to grasp—but his recent actions underline the fact that it continues to escape him and other Republicans.
As part of the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States, Trump held a UFC cage match on the White House lawn. Not only was it a spectacle of fighters pummeling each other on historic ground, but it was also underlined by a fighter’s transphobic insult hurled at former first lady Michelle Obama.
But don’t worry—Trump still had a good time.
He also announced that the Fourth of July celebration in Washington, D.C., will shed its historic non-partisan stance and instead operate as a “Trump rally,” echoing the rhetoric that led to the Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol.
Additionally, the Trump administration is holding a concert with a handful of has-beens—at least those who haven’t dropped out. Trump also pushed a last-minute rework of the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial, which has resulted in a pool of puke-colored, algae-covered water.
The aesthetic trainwreck works well as a stand-in for the mess that Trump has made of both foreign and domestic policy, with his capitulation to Iran, petty tariffs, and high gas prices.
This is how Republicans believe America should celebrate its 250th birthday: by once again stressing phony muscularity over real strength.
But this isn’t just a Trump-era problem. Under former President George W. Bush, Republicans sought to intertwine the hostile invasion and occupation of Iraq with patriotism. And former President Ronald Reagan presided over events like invading Grenada and illegally trading arms for hostages with Iran.
As a whole, Republicans don’t understand the idea of American patriotism, which is far more complex and unifying than bellicose virtue signaling about being “strong” and “powerful.”
Of course, the Founding Fathers were flawed human beings, who built a nation on stolen land with enslaved labor, but who nonetheless embraced revolutionary ideas.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. explained this idea in his speech before the 1963 March on Washington, noting that, in creating the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, the founders had written a “promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.”
“This note was a promise that all men—yes, Black men as well as white men—would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” he said.
From the very beginning, America has been about power resting with the people and not in the hands of the elite. After winning the Revolutionary War, George Washington didn’t crown himself king but instead resigned his military commission and made clear that he worked under the Continental Congress.
Washington also didn’t take up the mantle of official leadership until he had the consent of voters, and then after eight years, he voluntarily gave up power. He didn’t pull a Trump and entertain the notion of ruling for life.
Also inherent in the founding of America is the notion of constant improvement and learning from one’s mistakes. The Constitution was not ratified into law as a perfect, flawless document. It has the ability to be amended and changed over time—a notion that runs counter to the Trump administration’s insistence that history must be ignored or inaccurately recorded through the lens of wealthy white men.
America has often failed to live up to the lofty ideals that the founders expressed—it certainly wasn’t the fairy tale that the right so often espouses as “real” history. U.S. history is soaked in blood and filled with imperialism, white supremacy, and misogyny.
But the ideals are still there, which is why leaders from across a wide spectrum of diverse backgrounds—race, ethnicity, disability, gender, sexual orientation, and beyond—have cited the Founding Fathers as a guide for what can be achieved.
It was never about cage fights or military parades for an octogenarian and his cronies.
America is about a diverse group of people achieving national goals, ranging from winning wars against fascism to landing humans on the moon.
Republicans are of limited scope—they can’t understand America as anything but the story of faux macho men.
They don’t understand America at all.
We’ll get straight to the point: The financial hardships that Daily Kos is facing this year are tough.
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Oliver Willis
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