"Why do you love America?"

Love is like the Dude, it abides.

That’s the short answer, anyway.

In truth, I’d love to talk to you about loving America during hard times.

What we have to get out of the way immediately is this idea that “the hard times are unprecedented omg” and “no one’s ever felt as lost and scared as we have.” This idea is self-centered and false.

You don’t have to go back far in history to look for disaster either. The 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal was a COMPLETE disaster, for example. And just because a lot of people - insulated from the GWOT in different ways - didn’t care doesn’t mean it hasn’t left its mark.

Hysteria about the present with no regard for the past makes us feel angry in a helpless way. If you want to maintain perspective, you have to understand that hard times are extremely precedented, and when we look at today’s turmoil, we can channel David Lynch’s masterpiece: “It is happening again.” The world, in general, is always happening.

Now, this is the part of the essay in which I normally showcase some dumb social media post related to my subject of choice and proceed to explain why it’s dumb.

Instead, I want to first recount a conversation I had recently with a friend. Let’s call him Wallace. He’s a good guy - successful, works with children, has his shit firmly together, is kind, and gives me belly laughs. He’s also deeply depressed about the state of America, and questions my love for this country.

But when I ask Wallace questions about how he feels, it’s not the admin that’s truly making him feel that way, or the previous admin, or anything that specific. Instead, he says things like, “We’re in late stage capitalism,” and “I’m tired of the hustle, and that’s what being American is about,” and “This country just isn’t good.”

These are all very generalized leftist talking points and they’re designed to make one feel good about resignation. It’s not as if Wallace isn’t entitled to his emotions! Or that he’s being insincere! It’s that he is painting himself into a corner.

I hear similar statements from my more conservative friends: “Burn it all down and start over.” “The wokes destroyed this country, there is nothing left to save.” “We don’t need alliances, or diplomacy, or anything anymore.” Again, these feelings are sincere! And they are steeped in an angry passivity.

Now this is the part where I DO want to quote a social media post I feel that is dumb, in spite of its eloquence, and it comes from none other than Alon Mizrahi:

There is a lot to argue with here immediately, especially the part where Alon claims that the United States “invented Islamic terrorism and extremism.” (… In a lab? America haters certainly assign America a lot of power - I mean, think about it, apparently we practice mind control on otherwise peaceful individuals whom we force to commit acts of unspeakable violence, imagine that!)

But I would like to focus on the alleged “hollowness” of America.

There are definitely pockets of hollowness here, embodied best by insane levels of corporate greed and greater atomization of society (just think of how lonely parenting can be for many people if you want to know what I mean).

When I was an underinsured college senior, I couldn’t get help for a botched root canal on time, for example. Insurance fucking sucks, and it sucked especially hard before Obamacare. The dentist down the street, the one I couldn’t afford, drove a Jaguar to work. You can bet your ass that I felt trapped in hollowness when I considered my options.

What happened eventually is that I blew out an abscess so big that it was recorded in a dental school textbook. But also what happened is that people helped me.

A good friend drove me a long way to the emergency clinic with low copays. A nurse there gently pressed a cold compress to my forehead after I passed out from the pain and told me that I would be OK. A doctor whom I will never forget not only performed emergency dental surgery, but set up a treatment plan that saved my health in the long run, and helped me figure out my dental care for the foreseeable future while calmly telling me, “It’s not your fault” (I’d typically blamed myself, as I often did in those days of being young and afraid). All of these were ordinary Americans. They didn’t have to be gentle and kind. They chose to be.

I have many such stories of kindness in my life. Some people will scream, “But it was still an injustice that you had to rely on it in the first place!” Sure. Injustice abounds everywhere you look.

Stick a shovel anywhere in the world, and you’ll hit broken bones eventually. This doesn’t make the people who fight against injustice, and suffer from it, hollow. It just makes them tired from time to time, and tempted to give up.

Meanwhile, I don’t know what kind of formaldehyde people like Alon swish their crack rocks around in before they smoke them when they claim that America “has no essence and no identity” either.

I have to wonder if they are simply overwhelmed by the diversity of American identity - how it glitters differently from different angles. I mean, just look at some modern American icons. We love both Dolly Parton and Kendrick Lamar. Two completely different people and artists, who both have stadiums cheering for them and making memes out of them. Products of two distinct communities and experiences who are embraced by millions of Americans.

There is something really cool about that. But people don’t always understand it.

For this powerful a country, America has many essences and identities. Sometimes they intersect beautifully, and sometimes they clash horribly, but the important part is that they exist.

For example, one of the girls I knew through a friend’s church growing up became a fancy accountant who goes to heavy metal shows and is in a lesbian marriage.

What is more American than a sweet girl with a Southern drawl who makes a ton of money on her own, spends it on Black Sabbath and Metallica tickets, and has a stay-at-home-mom she comes home to? That’s the land of fucking opportunity encompassed in one person right there.

We always think of opportunity as money. But it is also freedom, which money provides for. Loving money is a terrible trap. But hating can get pretty silly. Smart people think of money as fuel. A way to get from point A to point B. It’s simple. And very American.

Speaking of getting from point A to point B, I recently went to Moab, Utah with my family. It was shockingly beautiful. The National Parks we have out there (fuck DOGE for trying to gut them, I will see you boys in hell) are a tremendous gift to society, and, I would argue, humanity as a whole.

Moab and its surroundings contain a thick cross-section of history - dinosaurs, cataclysms, Native tribes, colonists, lovers and murderers, tragedies and victories, and tragedies disguised as victories. It reminded me that everything is both temporary and eternal, sending me to the heart of the great paradox of human existence.

One of my favorite pics we took was this, at Dead Horse Point Overlook:

Another great thing about this country? It appreciates a fat ass.

The text was, uh, added later by someone I won’t name, but anyway, the point is, Utah really got me out of my head. Its beauty acts like a portal. You begin to appreciate life from a macro point of view out there.

And my macro point of view is this: Yes, this country is fragile. Everything is fragile. When people tell me, “America will betray you, strip you of your citizenship, stick you in a gulag,” or “America will burn,” I shrug my shoulders and say, “Maybe.”

Anything is possible. I’ve lived a long enough and tumultuous enough life to know that already.

The thing about love, though, is that it exists outside these categories. Stick me in a gulag tomorrow - I won’t be any less American. Burn it all down, if you’re stupid enough, and who I am or who I was won’t change. I am American and I love this country. The rest, as a great American mini-series put it, is confetti.

Social media does not preclude having civilized discussions on this topic. But what I want to tell people who believe Alon is that there is safety in loathing. Love is always a risk. In this world, love requires tremendous courage. That’s why loving one’s country is to go out on a limb, and stand there, getting battered by the cosmic winds.

Haters will always be mad. Any powerful country will always be controversial, it will always have its dark moments, and it will always be hated by some. I’m not saying this to diminish this country’s fuckups; but at the same time, I’ve been forced to be a student of history simply because history regularly happens to me for some damn reason, and I think as far as world history goes, America will be missed one day.

I know I say that a lot, but people don’t always get it.

I hope America doesn’t unravel in my time, and I understand the precipice we are standing on. At the same time, growing up here has shaped my spirit in many ways, and today I combine Ukrainian gallows humor with cheerful American resourcefulness, or so I have been told. While I don’t feel fully prepared for any kind of disaster - who is? And I don’t just mean having flashlights and ammunition - I do think that love is not real unless it is tested.

Many of us are being tested right now, and time will tell if we shall pass the test.