Real Americans

July 29, 2019 11:12 AM

This land is your land, this land is our land, it belongs to you and me. We’re here, we’re not going back, we’re raising our kids here. It’s our country now…. We’re not letting the bastards take it back. It’s our America now.
posted by Ahmad Khani (5 comments total)

I think I should get some of this printed on business cards to hand out at appropriate moments

“A valuable feature of Mehta’s argument is that it is procedurally radical. It rejects the programmatic self-doubt that is central to American liberalism—and, arguably, central to its defeat by its Republican adversaries, who without hesitation embrace self-righteousness, domination, and the fait accompli. If Lepore is right and the nation is indeed the fight, liberals must understand what a fight involves. That is, you can’t fight performatively when the other side is fighting to win: that kind of fight simply won’t go on for very long. You have no option but to fight to win, too. You want to win because you are right and they are wrong; because you have a moral right to power and they don’t; because you are real Americans and they’re not.”
posted by The Whelk at 11:35 AM on July 29, 2019 [13 favorites]

I think this gets to the crux of it, personally. Dark money and gerrymandering legitimately call into question whether a government of the people, by the people, for the people will perish. Do we the people still tell the government what to do? How stands Reagan's shining city on a hill? A city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here? I want my country back, the one that stood for democracy, justice, equality, and freedom from tyranny.
posted by xammerboy at 1:23 PM on July 29, 2019 [3 favorites]

As an American I do agree with you.
I love this sentence "This land is your land, this land is our land, it belongs to you and me."

Actually, Trump president is not good for us. Anytime anyway may be started 3rd world war.

Thanks
posted by gregorystreit at 1:34 PM on July 29, 2019

One of these days we’ll bring democracy to America.
posted by The Whelk at 2:13 PM on July 29, 2019 [6 favorites]

That is, you can’t fight performatively when the other side is fighting to win:

God, what I wouldn’t give to make more people understand this. Most of the left has been dancing with their dukes up like they’re about to fight the Marquess of Queensbury while the right has been preparing their AR-15s loaded with chemical weapons. Like Jesus bugfuck CHRIST they want to kill us you absolute morons.

You know how it’s supposed to be difficult to get a man to understand something when his income depends on him not understanding it? I think it’s even harder when his sense of safety in the world depends on not understanding it.

There’s a certain subset of the population that would willingly walk to their doom if doing so allowed them to believe they weren’t in actual danger. We should probably stop listening to them.
posted by schadenfrau at 3:19 PM on July 29, 2019 [21 favorites]