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CounterPunch
February
28, 2003
Why the Right Hates America
If They Love America So Much,
Why Are They Working Overtime to Destroy It?
By MARK ZEPEZAUER
As a leftist, I'm getting just a bit weary of
hearing how much I "hate America." Ever since the big
you-know what in late 2001, that little zinger has been the comeback
of choice for any objections to US foreign policy. Don't like
our new wars? Gee, you must really hate this country.
Friends on the right, you wound us. If
we didn't love America, why would we spend so much time and energy
on bake sales and discussion groups and lecture series and petition
drives and demonstrations to make it a better place? I mean,
there may be some parts of Dallas we're not too keen on, and
personally, you couldn't pay me enough to live in Phoenix, but
on the whole, sure, love that America. Friendly people, nice
beaches, great forests, er, what's left of them.
Of course, the relationship is just a
bit more complicated than that. We love America kind of like
we might love a dear friend or relative who's drinking too much
and putting his health in danger, or messing up his home life.
We're kind of embarrassed and more than a little bit worried
for good old America. But that doesn't mean we don't love her.
Hey, we're family!
You know, it occurs to me that when rightwingers
can't come up with a  better argument than "you
hate America," they might actually be projecting. After
all, who was it that said that the 9/11 attacks allowed, quote,
"the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve"?
It wasn't any leftist, that's for sure. It was that jolly old
moral majoritarian, the Rev. Jerry Falwell.
The more you think about it, the more
it makes sense. The right can't stand American culture. Rock
& roll swept the planet, helped bring down the Berlin wall,
inspired everyone with its free-spirited, rebellious American
energy. Who fought it every step of the way? The right, that's
who. Same goes for hip-hop, another great American export, subject
of Congressional inquisitions. And don't even get me started
on Hollywood. Billions of people love our movies, but the right
acts like the whole movie industry is the last refuge of Stalinism.
The right hates our heroes, too. They
had to be dragged kicking and screaming into making a holiday
to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King, who helped us try to fulfill
the promises of Reconstruction. And some of them still grumble,
as Ronald Reagan did, that he was some kind of "communist."
Still others, like John Ashcroft, express nostalgia for the Confederacy's
fight to maintain slavery as a noble cause.
Come to think of it, the right hates
our constitution, too, except for the Second Amendment, and maybe
the Eleventh, now that the Rehnquist Court has rewritten it to
mean "Congress shall pass no law that we don't like."
But the First, the Fourth, the Fifth, and um, the Sixth, and
the Eighth, and pretty much the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments
are right out the window these days. Damn shame, too, if you
ask me. Plus the right is still itching to overturn old decisions
like Miranda and Bakke and Roe, if not Griswald. Some of them
aren't too crazy about Brown v. Board, either, if you know what
I mean.
And it's obvious by now that the right
wing really, really hates democracy. If you even bring up the
word, they go on about how the Founding Fathers made a republic,
not a democracy. Well, sure, but they also wrote in the parts
about blacks being three-fifths of a person, and only land-owning
males being able to vote. Some of those cool old amendments moved
us closer to actual democracy, at least for a while there. Now
the rightwingers on the Supreme Court have made it clear that
we have no actual right to vote, let alone have the votes counted
if it's inconvenient for their candidate.
And the election of 2000 isn't the only
one stolen by the right. In 1968, and again in 1980, the right-wing
candidates, as private citizens, interfered with foreign-policy
negotiations of the US government in order to (successfully)
gain electoral advantage. Come to think of it, they did that
again in 2000, advising the Israelis to drag their feet in the
Camp David talks. But I guess they can get away with that, since
they love America more than us pesky leftists.
But if the right loves America so much,
why do they keep subsidizing the corporations that foul our air,
despoil our coasts, and clear-cut our forests? Just how patriotic
is the Bush administration's new rule that allows mining companies
to shear off the tops of our purple-mountain'd majesty and dump
them into our streams? Don't you think we could express our love
of country a little better by tightening up those fuel economy
standards, instead of squeezing the Middle East for more fuel
for our Hummers?
Now that reminds me. Why does the right
keep making so many enemies for our country? You know, like overthrowing
elected governments in Iran and Chile and so on, or backing torture-happy
juntas in Turkey and Pakistan, or paying for proxy terrorists
in Nicaragua and Angola, or subsidizing the occupation of East
Timor and the West Bank. Didn't the left keep saying, "Um,
excuse us, if we keep supporting violence and terrorism abroad,
it might come back to haunt us"? And we're the unpatriotic
ones?
Oh, but that's where we got started here.
Any time we criticize US foreign policy, we're making excuses
for the terrorists. I guess it's inconceivable that the left
could love America enough to want us to stop making new enemies.
Well, okay, America. If invading Iraq doesn't work out as nicely
as planned, you might give us a call. We still have a few ideas,
and, gosh, we just love ya to pieces. Write sometime! After all,
who gave you votes for women and blacks, and the weekend, and
overtime, and retirement pay, and family leave? Your old pals
on the left. God love ya.
Mark Zepezauer is
an author and cartoonist based in Tucson, Arizona. His most recent
book is Boomerang!
How Our Covert Wars Have Created Enemies Across The Middle East
And Brought Terror To America, from Common Courage Press.
He can be reached at: comicnews@earthlink.net
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February 22
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