Set aside for a moment, if you can, what has been drilled into you from birth. Forget temporarily, just for the sake of discussion, the culture from which you spring and all the baggage that comes with it. I may be asking too much here, it's not entirely possible of course, but I think it's a worthwhile mental exercise. It's a complicated world and truth is elusive, but reality matters. We should all strive for an awareness of what's been drilled into us and seriously question its true value, as it's not all benign. Clarity is hard to come by when you inhabit the most heavily propagandized culture ever to exist, but it's worth striving for. Understanding without hindrance is helpful in this plane of existence. Simplistic ideology, nationalistic knee-jerkism, naive parochialism, ethnocentrism, unquestioning acceptance of hateful or harmful notions and thinking without thinking are not.
I accused an acquaintance of racism recently. “I can't help it, it's the way I was raised,” was the response and defense.
“That's no excuse,” I replied, “what hope is there for any of us if we aren't capable of overcoming the way we were raised?”
I too had no reason to doubt or question any of it. My dad was John Wayne. Living proof of American righteousness right there in my own family. And if your dad's John Wayne, how can your country be anything less than true blue? It's good to be vested in a righteous cause. I loved knowing that we were the good guys.
I didn't know about Col. John Chivington or the Sand Creek Massacre.
I didn't know about General Smedly Darlington Butler, enforcer for capitalist gangsters.
The JFK assassination, Gulf of Tonkin, My Lai, Kent State, Jackson State and Watergate hadn't happened yet.
Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were still alive.
George W. Bush and the American embrace of torture and preemptive war were a long way off in the unimaginable future.
Things look different depending on what kind of light you throw on them. I used to take unabashed pride in my father's service, but I don't see military service in the same light anymore. World War II is a long time gone. I now realize that no one is fighting for anyone's freedom, no one is protecting democracy, and the only American way of life at stake is the right of American fat cats to profit hideously from their shabby and shameful mistreatment of others.
My father was a soldier
If we can't rise above the bad, wrong or hateful ideas that have been inculcated in us by our culture, Wall Street, the Pentagon or whomever, how will anything ever get better?
It won't. That's the answer.
I pledge allegiance to the truth and the nation we could become if only we would face it.