Patriotic Kitsch and Capitalism's Doomed Warriors
It’s been a very long time since I have been forced to visit Chicago’s Navy Pier and I have never had the honor of perambulating about the Jersey Boardwalk but thanks to social media, my novelty tee-shirt needs are more than covered, particularly where patriotism is concerned.
This seems appropriate, since social media is our culture’s white-hot epicenter of performative patriotism. Despite Conservatives complaining constantly about being oppressed and censored on these platforms, Facebook and Twitter are the homes of social media warriors who express their feverish love of country and its empty symbols just like the founding fathers did: through patriotic hashtags, screaming bald eagles, American flag avatars and the Punisher logo altered to reflect their renegade worship of the police and the military.
I’ve been overwhelmed with Facebook ads for novelty tee-shirts from a Teespring designer called One Nation that specializes in macho, flag-waving, outlaw tee shirts designed to create the impression that the wearer is just looking for a reason to murder you.
In that respect, I imagine one of the greatest disappointments of Conservative and Alt-Right types is that despite their masturbatory fantasies and fondest wishes, Barack Obama never sent jack-booted thugs to take their guns away. Here they spent eight solid years preparing for that glorious moment when they’d get to use their machine guns to defend the only right they care about yet were cruelly denied. This fantasy is so powerful that nearly a full presidential term since Obama left office One Nation still sells shirts vowing that its wearer will “defend my rights against all enemies, foreign and Obama.”
I hate to break it to these folks, but Obama is enjoying his life the best anyone can at this point, spending time with his family and enjoying his millions and the respect and adoration of his countrymen. He’s not coming for your guns. He never was.
On countless One Nation shirts, hokey representations of macho masculinity DARE the police or military (two organizations that are otherwise treated as Gods among men and the only worthwhile human beings) to try to take away their guns. A typically subtle shirt in this vein features a rifle-toting skeleton and the words, “If you come for me guns, I’m coming for your soul.”
In the tough-guy world of One Nation, the United States consists of heroes in the military, past and present, the police, first responders, the fire department and a bunch of lily-livered snowflakes who should get down on their hands and knees and thank the Lord for these heroes, because without them we’d all be ruled by a coalition of Nazis, Jihadists and Barack Obama.
No one is more performative in his patriotism than draft dodger Donald Trump, who made a clumsy piece of patriotic garb—the red “Make America Great Again” baseball hat—the defining piece of iconography of his campaign and his presidency as well. It did not hurt that the Make America Great Again hat is an ugly and charmless piece of propaganda: in fact it probably helped a great deal because Trump’s cult adores ugly and charmless right-wing propaganda, both because it “owns the libs” and because it echoes their own jingoistic brand of patriotism, which is all about deifying empty symbols like the flag rather than the ideals they stand for.
This is evident by a tee-shirt of a typically badass America eagle holding an American flag with the words, “If you aren’t willing to fight for this country then you lose the right to complain.” At the risk of being “politically correct” I’m pretty sure the First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, and by extension, the freedom to complain as a fundamental right of everyone, not just veterans.
The tee shirts of One Nation depict angry, ornery patriots as warriors of various sorts. On the most literal level, many of their tee shirts are targeted to current soldiers or veterans. But the war language extends to war of a spiritual and cultural nature as well. One Nation makes tee shirts for warriors of Christ, and warriors against political correctness and warriors with badges fighting a righteous war against the criminal scum of the earth.
Am I crazy or would this actually be a really cool national slogan?
Trump may not be a smart man, or a kind man, or a man capable of basic decency but he understands the fantasies, delusions and paranoia of his base. So it’s incredibly telling that yesterday he told an interviewer in regards to his horrible mishandling of COVID-19 and desire to re-open the country for business no matter how many people die, “I’m viewing our great citizens of this country to a certain extent and to a large extent as warriors. They’re warriors. We can’t keep our country closed. We have to open our country. Will some people be badly affected? Yes.”
By “badly affected” Trump means that some people will die. Actually, LOTS of people will die but that’s what happens in war, right?
What is war, after all, if not people who have nothing fighting and dying for the political and financial interests of people who have everything? I suspect the people who buy One Nation tee shirts will have an easier time accepting the preventable death of their loved ones if it is framed as a righteous AMERICAN war against Trump’s fabled “invisible enemy” that affords them a chance to be WARRIORS for freedom, and justice, and the American way. Also, money? Actually, mostly money.
They will accept being casualties of this terrible pandemic if it’s contextualized as nothing less than an all-out spiritual and practical war to preserve the American way of life and capitalism, with an opportunity to die a noble death.
These everyday “warriors” will die needlessly for Wal-Mart and Donald Trump’s casinos and the Koch brothers. They’ll die at the altar of capitalism, convinced of the righteousness of their suffering and their needless sacrifices. And there’s a chance they’ll be wearing a cartoonishly patriotic novelty tee shirt from One Nation when the grim reaper comes for them.
These people will lose their lives needlessly for the sake of free enterprise but at least they’ll be able to hold onto their guns. And cool tee shirts.
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