On Patriotism

Say you are a president (prime minister, supreme leader etc) and your government is running out of ways to get people to like you, the best recourse is a call to patriotism. After all, there’s nothing more honourable than mindless, to-the-death loyalty to a group of people belonging to an abstract concept and residing in an arbitrarily defined piece of the planet and nothing more reprehensible than a traitor.

Patriotism will get people lined up behind you. If it works, you get a lifetime prime-ministership and a state funeral of Churchillian proportions. If it fails, however, remember they’re standing behind you. You’ll get a drunk-and-disorderly mug shot on CNN, a brief trial and an even briefer experience on the end of a rope. This is not a risk free strategy.

More dangerous than failure, however, is the possibility that you’ll launch your patriotism push and that someone will start thinking. Do everything you can to prevent that happening. If you think about patriotism you come up with something like this:

“But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.”

(from Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander)

Infamous and imbecile are not words you want to be associated with – don’t let anyone think! In terms of the general population, that’s not a problem - lotteries continue to make good profits and Big Brother has made a comeback – but you might get some smart-arse “thinker” type that gets some air time; make sure you have Will McAvoy and Aaron Sorkin shot early in the piece.

In fact, the general population are your strongest allies here. Give them some happy images, a theme song, a logo and some heart rending stories of courage and loyalty and they’re sold. You can then have the Southern Cross / Union Jack / Stars and Stripes etc on the back of every other bumper and tattooed on the upper arm of every third jock in the country.  You’ll know the patriotism program is going well if the meme self-evolves into logos like “Australia – if you don’t love it, leave” or “Adapt or piss off!” No-one really cares what aspects of Australia are in the “must love” category or who exactly should leave if they fail to adore these sacred relics – it just makes people feel like they’re one of the good guys; almost as good as a soldier on the front line because they stood up for their country. And all that without the necessity of a uniform, any kind of discipline or firing even one neuron into life let alone a shot of any kind.

Play with people’s feelings. People want to feel proud but, in general, are too lazy or disorganised to accomplish anything themselves to feel proud of. So pride is generally a vicarious experience. Pride in the accomplishments of one’s children, in the game played by one’s football team or in the accomplishments of the “great men and women” of one’s country.  Most people haven’t done a damned thing to contribute to any of those things but, like lions without mating rights, they feel like they belong to the pride anyway. Think about this though:

“I’m proud that my kid did …..”

There’s an important ending to that sentence which is the emotion that dares not speak its name:

“and your kid didn’t.”

Pride and patriotism are about defining your group in opposition to another group, then feeling good about belonging to your group. It’s the acceptable-in-adult-company version of the sentiment that our children express as “I’ve not an ice cream and you haven’t got one. Nah nah na nah nah!” You need an “other”, a “stranger”, a “them”, an enemy.

Your whole scheme will come undone, however, if you try to specify what unique qualities your group has that these others do not.  “We live in a free country”, “we speak English”, “we eat bangers and mash”, “we are united under God”, “we wear our national clothing with pride” …. At this point people will start to realise that almost everyone has ice-cream. Don’t go there. Stick with some flag waving. The flag, after all, is probably the only thing (apart from its name) actually unique to your country. The flag is a great asset, if sold correctly:

“We are proud of our flag and stand united behind …”

Proud of our flag? Its design elements? Probably not. There are some flags out there that you would fail a first year design student for creating – even allowing for a plea of insanity as a mitigating factor. Proud of the fact that our forefathers (use old fashioned words here – “forefathers” sounds a lot better than “geezers”) fought under it. Ah! Now it’s a sacred relic that can never be criticised, changed, burned or parodied. By the way, I hope you like what your my-brain-just-fizzes-a-bit first year created for you, because you’re stuck with it now.

The best thing for your patriotism program is an actual war. Once war is started, there’s an unspoken rule that you have to be for one side or another, you’re no longer allowed to see the merits of both cases or be selectively critical of the actions of either side; for us or against us. So people are obliged to line up behind you.  Reframe any criticism as undermining the efforts of our brave men and women in uniform and you’re bullet proof – which is probably more than you can say about the brave men and women in uniform.

Patriotism is a great plan provided no-one thinks too hard. Unite the country behind the flag and position yourself as the person holding the standard. Then hope that you don’t lose.

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