BILL MAHER: They all pulled out. This is a question about what looks best for the Democrats, because I don’t think that looks good.
It looks like you are just what people say about you, you don’t really love America. It looks you think Trump is more important than the country itself.
Now it’s just a big MAGA rally, this whole thing, because they all pull out. So now it’s Trump and Lee Greenwood. Um, wouldn’t it have been better to play this gig? It’s a month-long gig, lots of people, like, just celebrating America. Can’t we all just celebrate America itself and leave Trump out of it?
- https://www.mediaite.com/media/entertain...e-america/
An NBC News survey released Sunday morning shows that America’s deep political polarization is increasingly spilling over into national identity and expressions of national pride.
...
About 90% of Republicans say they are proud to be American, compared with just 29% of Democrats who say the same.
...
Meanwhile, 30% of Democrats said they are “not at all” proud of the nation.
Quote:Fewer than 30% of Democrats say they are extremely or very proud to be an American ahead of the country’s 250th anniversary...
That's pretty much the result of having a president who is lying monosyllabic pussy-grabber who constantly embarrasses our country on the world stage. Elect a decent intelligent man with character and integrity like Obama was and watch that percentage change.
An NBC News survey released Sunday morning shows that America’s deep political polarization is increasingly spilling over into national identity and expressions of national pride.
...
About 90% of Republicans say they are proud to be American, compared with just 29% of Democrats who say the same.
...
Meanwhile, 30% of Democrats said they are “not at all” proud of the nation.
The irony is that this is again abandoning reason for responses or decision-making based on automatically rejecting anything Trump touches, endorses, or implements. ("Jesus is contaminated by Trump's taint now, so I am going to switch to Islam."). I mean, thanks to that, Trump can now even get Dems to reject the Semiquincentennial and thereby have fodder to declare them anti-American.
If he's deliberately utilizing that contrarian principle or reaction to achieve results like these (and he certainly has exploited such in the past), then a lot of what looks like random, narcissistic impulses is instead political strategy. (That doesn't mean all of it is, though; sometimes it really is just crazy stuff instead of the tactical savvy of a business magnate.)
EXCERPTS: [...] rooting for your country’s national soccer team doesn’t mean that you endorse everything your country does, any more than wanting a friend to get a promotion at work requires you to support all of their behavior. [...] For fans who choose to watch, then, my suggestion is to view the action on the field as you would any other sporting event. Root for whomever you want to win, for more or less any reason that moves you. [...] Of course, nuance can be difficult in today’s political climate, and the rhetoric around the World Cup likely won’t change that. When the U.S. men’s hockey team won gold at the Olympics back in February, Donald Trump attempted to turn it into a personal political victory by inviting the team to his State of the Union address...
Happened before, though, or kind of analogus to the homegrown anti-Americanism during the Vietnam War era of the 1960s and early '70s. Including the espousal of Maoism in some pockets of the New Left. No relevant and overt communist organizations today, so it's fascination with the mitigated anti-capitalism of the DSA (Mamdani, Platner, etc) that alternatively replaces it. There was plenty of anti-Zionism then, too, as Zachary Foster (an anti-Israel Jew) covers in the The forgotten history of Jewish anti-Zionism. (Despite the hordes of Jews migrating to Palestine, he also tries to frame that there was a majority rejection of Zionism among Jews prior to the Holocaust and Soviet influence.)
Maoism in the United States: After the tumultuous 1960s ... proponents of Maoist ideology constituted the "largest and most dynamic" branch of American socialism. From this branch came a collection of "newspapers, journals, books, and pamphlets," each of which spoke on the unreasonability of the American system and proclaimed the need for a concerted social revolution. Among the many Maoist principles, the group of aspiring American revolutionaries sympathised with the idea of a protracted people's war, which would allow citizens to address the oppressive nature of global capitalism martially. Maoism was a major influence on the New Communist movement.
Zachary Foster: Many of Israel’s Jewish critics in the US in the 1960s and 1970s were inspired by the liberationist, civil rights and anti-war movements of the time, seeing the Palestinian struggle in a similar light. By the mid-late 1970s, the seeds of a new generation of Jewish anti-Zionists were planted in Australia, the US and the UK. Small anti-Zionist groups emerged, such as the Australian Jews Against Zionism and Anti-Semitism (JAZA), formed by a small group of Jewish Marxists in 1979 who saw Zionism as an attempt to turn Jews into a race or a nation, similar to what Nazism tried to do to the Germans; or the British Anti-Zionist Organization (BAZO), formed by George Mitchell in 1975, or the Jewish Alliance Against Zionism (JAAZ), formed by anti-Zionist Jewish activists in the San Francisco Bay Area from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. The State of Israel squashed some of these movements, silencing Zionism’s critics at home and abroad through smear campaigns, censorship and police brutality. Zionists now had a state, a diplomatic core and an army, which they used to crush anti-Zionist Jews wherever they sprung up.
It takes way more courage and patriotism to go out into the streets and protest your own government's human rights violations than it does to mindlessly wave a flag and cheer on a military parade.
SyneJun 15, 2026 08:22 PM (This post was last modified: Jun 15, 2026 08:24 PM by Syne.)
(Jun 15, 2026 03:43 PM)Magical Realist Wrote:
Quote:Fewer than 30% of Democrats say they are extremely or very proud to be an American ahead of the country’s 250th anniversary...
That's pretty much the result of having a president who is lying monosyllabic pussy-grabber who constantly embarrasses our country on the world stage. Elect a decent intelligent man with character and integrity like Obama was and watch that percentage change.
It's proof that they care more about which party is in power than the country itself.
You can hate the president, and even not be proud of what your county is doing, and still be proud to be an American.
(Jun 15, 2026 06:31 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: It takes way more courage and patriotism to go out into the streets and protest your own government's human rights violations than it does to mindlessly wave a flag and cheer on a military parade.
If they actually had any courage, they'd be doing it red states... not blue cities/states that allow riots, vandalism, looting, etc..
Jun 8, 2026 01:28 AM
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