What a weekend of fireworks, partying and total immersion in a 250th birthday bash of U.S. patriotism that left us all prouder than ever to be Americans.
OK, maybe not all of us.
In a Suffolk University survey of 500 residents of Philadelphia — a city deluged with patriotic commemorations — for the Philadelphia Inquirer CityView poll, 67% said they considered themselves American patriots. Not bad, until you dig beneath the veneer and find that somewhere along the road, American exceptionalism fell out of the trunk.
Just 37% of these self-described patriots said the U.S. was the greatest or one of the greatest countries in the world. In a 2020 national Suffolk poll, that number was 60%. In Philly, amid all the semiquincentennial hoopla, 16% said we’re just average, and 39% said we’ve fallen behind the world’s other major countries (!).
This year is also the 210th anniversary of Navy Commodore Stephen Decatur’s famous quote about support for our country in foreign affairs: “May she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.” Asked if they agreed with that sentiment, the 67% of avowed patriots in the Philly survey split 48-44% between those who did and those who felt “my patriotism depends on the country’s direction.”
Land of the free, home of the brave, domain of the disillusioned. Looks like instinctive saluting of the flag has gone the way of phone booths, newsprint and NBA dynasties. In 1998, national polling showed 70% of respondents felt patriotism was “very important.” More recently, it's down to 38%.
What happened to Decatur’s unconditional love of country?
Hyperpartisanship, for one thing. Democrats drive the “depends” number, Republicans the “right or wrong” allegiance. A sentiment that was once a transcendent given “is now filtered through political party affiliation,” says Suffolk pollster Dave Paleologos.
Like the algae and peeling paint in the reflecting pool, the conditional patriots of Philadelphia are seeing something ugly when they look at Washington. Asked to explain their reservations, 19% cite the current administration, with another 9% saying they’re “embarrassed” by the Trump show, 9% citing anti-immigration vibes, 7% mentioning racism, and 11% straight-up labeling America as “a bad place.”
Times are tough, but Paleologos notes patriotism wasn’t this shaky back in the 1970s, another high-cost era featuring a corrupt administration mired in an unpopular war. “That was a pretty bad time, but this is even worse in the sense that everything is now looked through with those political glasses, and the more polarized we are as a society, the more challenging it's going to become,” says Paleologos.
While there was plenty of division over the politics of the 1960s and 1970s, “there was a bigger group of people who could be swung one way or another for a particular election [the so-called persuadables],” he notes. “Today, there's bigger groups of people on the left and on the right, and the extreme right is pulling the Republican party and their primaries to the right, and the Democratic Socialists are trying to pull the mainstream Democratic candidates to the left, and that's a big vacuum that's left in the middle.”
If nature abhors a vacuum, politics may be fatally allergic to it. It’s hard to see how any of the day’s major problems can be cured amid such an uber-toxic environment, when the reflex reaction to change is NIMBYism. Google “US economic, military and political mobilization after Pearl Harbor” and judge for yourself if that monumental national effort could be duplicated today. Even the singular national response to the pandemic — the COVID vaccine — had to navigate brainless politics. (Still does.)
Back in the 1940s, America was the antonym for apathy. Today we’re the avatar for it.
In a 2024 presidential election decided by a 2 million vote margin, close to 90 million qualified voters couldn’t be bothered. “That troubles me as we look ahead,” says Paleologos. “Apathy is the big winner.”
Along with oligarchs and algae.
Excuse the redundancy.
