My Country Tis of Me by Linda Davis

My Country Tis of Me

By Linda Davis

“I’m not patriotic.” That’s been my line forever, relating more to countries without imperialistic tendencies—ones that provide healthcare and month-long summer vacations. I often saw America through the lens of elsewhere. The ‘ugly American,’ ‘American exceptionalism,’ ‘capitalism over quality,’ ‘nation of cowboys.’ All of the tropes seemed apt.

Not defining myself as patriotic, did not mean I wasn’t politically engaged. I’ve worked for every democratic candidate since Bill Clinton. It was during that time, in October 1992, I met my future husband at a film screening. We were wearing dueling political pins. “Whoever wins the election gets taken to lunch by the loser.” Not only did I win the bet and my husband, but George never voted Republican again.

Which is why, when I wake up panicked this morning, I’m comforted to know it’s not related to anything amiss between us. Last night’s ratatouille seems to be deciding whether it wants to head to the north or south exits of my body. Normally when I have this feeling, it’s related to my family. As the mother of an autistic son, an adopted daughter, and a son who wants a career in the arts, I am no stranger to heartache. And while there are always issues with my brood, today’s queasiness is not about my family, but rather, my country. Specifically, I’m terrified about the election. 

I’m not like most people who seem to be able to shrug off politics like a coat they’ve outgrown—if they’ve even tried that coat on in the first place. My best friend never voted until she was forty, and my son’s occupational therapist, an earth-loving yogi, boasts about being apolitical, as if having a voice in your country’s future is somehow anti-Zen. Meanwhile, I spend my days wrestling with that coat, listening to a half dozen political podcasts, consuming a steady diet of cable news, and yes, working for the candidates. It’s hard for me not to bring up politics with friends, and a few have made a point of politely telling me to change the topic. My husband has even warned me not to bring up politics with the right-leaning friends of his past, and business associates. Recently, I was at a social gathering where someone said, “It’s not polite to talk politics at dinner.” Perhaps that’s why I feel more of a kinship with other countries, like Europe, where conversations in the pubs and cafes are centered around politics. What’s more important to discuss? The weather? TikTok videos?

I imagine you can feel my political fervor through the page. So where did all this intensity originate? I trace it all back to an 8x10 photo of J.F.K. by my mother’s bedside in the Massachusetts suburban home I grew up in. My mother loved the Kennedys, and I loved my mother. My second political memory came the day after the 1972 election, when I felt extremely proud that Massachusetts was the only state that voted for McGovern. And we all know how Nixon’s presidency went.

Cut to college, when I first voted, and where Reagan’s every policy, from slashing healthcare and education programs, to Reaganomics, hurt my insides. How is it Americans haven’t put together that homelessness started because of his policies? A politically engaged friend and I used to debate who was a worse president: Reagan or the second Bush? Though the Middle East would look completely different today had we not invaded Iraq, we both agreed: Reagan won hands down.

I suppose I epitomize a stereotype myself; that of the ‘bleeding heart liberal,’ since I often fantasize about the country America could have been if fate had taken a different turn. If Bobby Kennedy had lived. If the Supreme Court in 2000 had not sided with Bush. Imagine the boon to the environment and the aforementioned Middle East had Gore been president. But never have I wished for a different fate more than in 2016. Between James Comey’s damning, last-minute news conference and the perfect storm that brought us Donald Trump’s reign, for the first time ever, I had an awful, sickening feeling that I didn’t know my country.

Sometimes I think my whole life of liberal politics has led to the moment we’re in now where my biggest fears of right-wing extremism have been realized. There has been a major shift in America. We are no longer a nation of Democrats and Republicans. The Republican Party is now the MAGA party and should be referred to as such, everywhere from in the media to election ballots.

When my second son minored in Holocaust History, and read scores of books about Hitler, I read along. The Third Reich is the blueprint for MAGA. Fox News and right-wing media mirror Goebbel’s propaganda machine, and the dominant dogma of fear of the ‘other’ has switched from the Jews in Germany to the catch-all brown immigrant crossing our southern border. MAGA extremists not only want to rip up the welcome mat, but they also want to deport the immigrants who are already here. Part of what has made the U.S. the world’s most powerful nation is, indeed, another stereotype. The U.S. is the great melting pot of the world.

Politics matter. Who is in the White House matters. American women lost one of their fundamental freedoms because of Trump’s conservative court appointments. The Supreme Court, once seen as the guardrail between two increasingly disparate political parties, has collapsed under the weight of partisan politics. Nobody can save this democracy but its citizens. But our republic is in the hands of low and mis-information voters. So it is to them I want to relay a quick story of my first visit to a Muslim country. Women everywhere were covered from head to toe in burkas, many with only their eyes showing. As an American woman, it’s extremely hard to look at a burka and not see a cage. These women, whose rights have been severely restricted, are not running in the morning, playing tennis in the afternoon, or wearing a bathing suit outside of cloistered walls. Many are not allowed to work, drive or even pursue an education. I never take my rights for granted just because I happened to be born at the right degrees of longitude and latitude. And that’s the new reality for our country. Body autonomy depends on the state in which a woman lives. Talk about borders. It’s said that the first tenet of authoritarianism is to take away women’s rights. Afghani and Iranian women had rights, until they didn’t. Which is why, the question isn’t how can someone be political, it’s how can you not be?

Now that MAGA has co-opted patriotism in this country, I think it’s time to give that word a second look. Googling the word ‘patriotic,’ yields this definition: “having or expressing devotion to and vigorous support of one’s country.” I realize now, it was never patriotism I objected to, but rather ‘American exceptionalism,’ which in the wrong, ‘small’ hands ushers in nationalism and worse, of late, jingoism.

Back to today, October 2024, and the panic I’m feeling. They say action is the antidote to anxiety. As I sit on my couch writing perhaps my 500^th postcard to get out the vote in Pennsylvania, I think of all the political work I’ve put in through the years, and all of the hours I’ve spent defending democracy and realize, what’s more patriotic than that?

Linda Davis’ short story “The War at Home” won the Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction contest. Other story and essay publications include The Iowa Review, The Literary Review, Literal Latte, Kallisto Gaia Press, Gemini Magazine, Mothering Children with Special Needs, and she edited the online literary journal, Lit Angels, with Francesca Lia Block. Linda got her MFA from Antioch University, and is currently working on a novel.