A Sea of Red, Supporting the Troops, and Real Patriotism

“The soul and substance of what customarily ranks as patriotism is moral cowardice–and always has been.”
-Mark Twain

The Red Friday emails aren’t new. It’s been going around for awhile. The idea is that all God-fearing (preferably a protestant God, even better if there’s some of that evangelical fire-in-the-belly fervor added to it), patriotic, real Americans that love this country and support our troops show that patriotism and support for troops through fashion. Specifically by wearing the color red on Fridays, like some sort of badge that identifies yourself as part of the group.

The choice presented in the Red on Fridays idea is simple. Either do it or admit you aren’t patriotic, you don’t support the troops, and you hate America. 

So did you wear red last Friday? (Which ironically enough, was “black Friday” the day that people wait for hours in a line for admission into a store that opens at 4AM to allow all real Americans adequate opportunity to consume as much as they possibly can; even while they have yet to fully digest the enormous turkey dinner from the day before. Gobble, gobble.)

But I digress.

Couched in the simple-minded, emotionally charged rhetoric of what I am to think and how I am to act in order to properly display my patriotism and “support for the troops” denies me my own facility to think and feel for myself. What better way to separate the saved from the damned, the believers from the non-believers, the patriots from the traitors, the conservatives from the liberals?

A variation on this particular email sent to me recently by a well-meaning yet misguided acquaintance added a tear-jerker of a story. Complete with selfless young soldiers, lonely wives, and little girls that missed their fathers. I will take whomever originally wrote the touching story of Courtney and the sobbing masses at the Atlanta airport on their word that this chain of events actually happened.

It is, indeed, a touching human story. One that has been repeated, in one form or another, as long as war has ravaged society. To paint this particular act of humanity as uniquely American is to not only misunderstand what it means to be uniquely American, but what it is to be simply human.

Nationalistic fervor is not new. It is the domain of monarchs, despots, communists and fascists. It knows no idealogical affiliation and takes no moral high ground.

To blindly subscribe to it is the worst way to support our troops, it is the worst way to “love America”, and it forsakes what men throughout the nation’s history have fought and died for: Freedom of thought, the pursuit of ideas, and the nurturing of the creative human spirit.

It is fine to demonstrate support for our troops serving all over the world, and especially those in the line of fire. All too often, as in the case of the “Wear Red on Friday” phenomenon, it seems to me as a bit of a ruse. Maybe some are well meaning in the gesture, perhaps many. But it is too easily manipulated into something else. Instilling fear where there should be courage, division where there should be community, and intolerance where there should be acceptance.

For those not directly involved in the conflict, that do not have a friend or relative serving in the military, there are better ways to actually support the troops. Here’s one, and another, and one more.

So go ahead and wear red next Friday. It’s a free country. For now. 

But don’t fool yourself that you’re really doing anything that supports the troops, is particularly patriotic, or shows an extraordinary love, or even knowledge of, the principles of America. It takes more than a red shirt, is all I’m sayin’.

Yeah sure, I probably sound mighty smug and sanctimonious to all you folks laying out your red shirts for next Friday.

Get over it.

At the very least, let’s consider that the idea of a “Sea of red across America” as a gesture in support of troops in a war zone as just a little bit off.

Better to have a Sea of Blue. Blue was the color of Lincoln’s army that held the nation together in a war that literally almost tore the country in two. It’s the color of the two great oceans that touch our shores. It’s the color of progress, and the color that binds the fifty stars together as one nation.

Now that’s what this country really needs.