Patriotism – A plethora of scoundrels

I hid away for V.E. Day. I’m not judging those who celebrated it, or criticising them. It’s a personal choice of course. However, as I alluded to in a recent post, I worry that patriotism is being used in a less than savoury way. Expressing National pride is one thing, but to do so blindly is as far from patriotism as it is possible to get. The overwhelming majority of those that celebrated yesterday did so in good faith. They did so to commemorate the victory over extreme nationalism. My concern is that as we do so, we become complacent about what our current nationalistic government are doing. Let’s not forget that our exceptionalistic approach has been a costly exercise. We have ignored the dire warnings of medical professionals from overseas, as we have “the best health service in the world”. Now of course, it would be easy to go down the route of “Why don’t you pay more into it then?” but that’s another argument for another day. We have spent the Brexit years evoking the myth that we stood as one against the evil empire during the war, which quite apart from being completely untrue, is an insult to the millions of dead from other countries we had as allies. It also conveniently misses out the behaviour of some of those “Allies”…Stalin anyone? Again, another argument for another day. If we must insist on continuing with the wartime narrative, why don’t we ever seem to look at the war as a collaboration between nations to fight evil? Why must our small minded exceptionalism always ignore inconvenient truths? Well the answer is simple. We are being lied to, and always have been. This is not some tinpot conspiracy theory. History has shown us this countless times, but what use is history without an action to counter it? As our numbers of dead reach similar levels to those that died in the Blitz, I wonder how long before people start to realise. My fear is, that our own form of nationalism has been normalised over the years to appear completely fine. We express our patriotism in a way that relies as much on the dislike of others as it does on the love of ourselves. This explain the desperate chase toward evocation of war at every opportunity….”Two World Wars and one world cup”…repeat to fade.

So what is the answer? Well I think it is not to look at others. Not to judge a nation on past misdemeanours. Perhaps to look more at ourselves through the spectrum of our mistakes? If we are to celebrate our heroes, we should be prepared to look at their mistakes, and judge them as human beings rather than mythical deities. Churchill was a man prone to huge errors of judgement, and it’s OK to say that without denigrating his achievements. Whilst we are on the subject of heroes, I would like our patriotism to be expressed more through creativity and Science. I think back to the moment I felt most patriotic. The Danny Boyle opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics. It expressed Patriotism through so much more than a tired old cliche with the theme of the Dambusters as a backdrop. It was a positive expression of pride…not a scoundrel in site! We still seem to sneer at cultural achievement….Shakespeare is boring, Art is a soft subject….And yet…What have we all started to rely on more in times of national crisis? We have seen huge online audiences for theatre, Book sales and online Library use have gone up. Nearly every house in the area had some form of self created rainbow in the window. We are watching more TV series, Films. Music is becoming a bonding experience in the streets. Perhaps, just perhaps, we have seen the Industrial revolution, turn into the technological revolution, and now we have the dawn of the cultural revolution? Now that really would get me waving flags!