So damn proud of my country and military today!

Not going anti any American tonight who is actively celebrating 250, but agree 100% with your initial post.

Do any of y'all know where one can watch the flybys, or at least a decent compilation?

I really wish I could've been there in DC to see the planes and helos more than anything else

I’m proud of America too. I’m just not confused enough to think the U.S. military belongs to Trump’s ego, or that patriotism means clapping every time he burns taxpayer money or calls himself “daddy.”

The military serves the country, not the cult. That dog won’t hunt.

quote:

---

CrystalPreserves

---

I get what you are saying, but there is a bigger picture here. The left has been shaming America for as long as I’ve been alive (I 64 next month). That is counterproductive.

In the late 1970’s the left wing shaming turned into what Jimmy Carter called “a malaise” that had settled on America. Ronald Reagan came along and re-inspired America. He pointed out the truth - that although we had (and have) faults, America has always been a great liberal project advancing the rights and dignity of the individual over the entrenched and privileged elites.

The constant America-bashing of the left had created similar malaise to that of the 1970s. Trump is trying to rejuvenate the country as Reagan did. If principled leftists would admit, and condemn, the America-bashing I’d take your complaints about Trump more seriously.Some do…

quote:

---

But to return from the realm of instrumentality, it’s worth saying that America is a pretty awesome country. The notion of the United States as a sweet land of liberty did not fully reflect the reality of 1939. But it wasn’t some kind of crazy cynical lie on a par with North Korea’s claim to be a democratic people’s republic. The United States really was founded by a lot of religious dissenters and was genuinely a global pioneer in promoting pluralism and electoral democracy. It’s good and correct to say that the United States fell short of its ideals, but I think it’s also important to talk about the part where heroes fought to make the country live up to them and about the ways in which Americans have, through history, lived up to them. And if you think about the recent history of the United States, there’s something blinkered about viewing the existence of racial tension and ethnic conflict as a distinctive fact of American life rather than a tragic but banal aspect of the human condition. People from all around the world are constantly trying to move here because the United States is a good place to live. The United States has the highest median living standards in the world outside of a handful of very small countries like Norway. We have probably the freest speech you’ll find anywhere. We have a robust and longstanding civic culture of integration, where the children and grandchildren of immigrants can also lay claim to being the metaphorical children of the founding fathers of the country. We landed humans on the Moon, we split the atom, we have the most Nobel Prize winners, we developed the best Covid vaccines, we created the internet, and we’re at the leading edge of artificial intelligence. Americans are not the absolute number one most tolerant people with regard to who we are willing to welcome as neighbors, but we’re way up there. This is basically what schools should teach kids. Not that America is or ever was perfect, but that relative to other actually existing places, the United States has pretty consistently been a beacon of opportunity and freedom without rival. Everyone should sing the songs and pledge the pledges.

---

That was written by Matthew Yglesias, a passionate democrat.

quote:

---

Libs are such fiscal hawks now. It’s truly amazing after years of the most wasteful fraud and spending this country has ever seen

---

No, I’m not a fiscal hawk bubba. I just didn’t lose the ability to count because the waste came with fighter jets and a red hat.

If spending is wasteful when it feeds poor people, funds schools, repairs roads, or helps veterans, then it can also be wasteful when it’s staged as a taxpayer-funded ego parade baw. You don’t get to scream “government waste” all year and then call it patriotism the moment the bill flatters your favorite politician.

quote:

---

I’ll agree with Yglesias on the narrow point: the left has sometimes confused sneering at America with being sophisticated

---

All of your points about Trump are true. Even though I think he has brought sanity back to American policy, I agree that he has an infantile ego and weaponizes the government in service of it.

But this comment from you above shows that you don’t fully admit the problem. We are not just talking about some sophisticates looking down their noses; we are talking about a full-on assault on America’s founding and Constitution. We are talking about a century long project to destabilize America - a project that the Democrat Party used to oppose and is now mostly supporting.

quote:

---

All of your points about Trump are true. Even though I think he has brought sanity back to American policy, I agree that he has an infantile ego and weaponizes the government in service of it. But this comment from you above shows that you don’t fully admit the problem. We are not just talking about some sophisticates looking down their noses; we are talking about a full-on assault on America’s founding and Constitution. We are talking about a century long project to destabilize America - a project that the Democrat Party used to oppose and is now mostly supporting.

---

I appreciate you conceding the point on Trump. That matters.

But I think you’re taking a real problem and hitching it to a runaway horse. Yes, some folks on the left talk about America with contempt. I don’t defend that. It’s foolish, ugly, and politically useless. But criticism of America is not the same thing as hatred of America.

The abolitionists criticized America. Lincoln criticized America. Frederick Douglass criticized America. The civil rights movement criticized America. Sometimes the most American thing you can do is hold the country up to its own founding promises and say, “Live up to this.” That is not an assault on the Constitution. That is the Constitution being taken seriously. Living up to it’s own paperwork.

And if we are talking about real assaults on constitutional order, then we can’t skip over Trump trying to overturn an election, demanding personal loyalty from public institutions, and using government power like a cudgel for his own grievances. You don’t get to call that “sanity” just because he waves the flag while doing it.

Some people on the left need to quit sneering at America. I’ll grant you that all day long. They annoy me too. But I’m not going to pretend the cure for that is handing the country to a man with an infantile ego and a taste for revenge.
It ain’t restoring America. What it is, is putting the fox in charge of the smokehouse because he saluted on the way in.

quote:

---

If spending is wasteful when it feeds poor people, funds schools, repairs roads, or helps veterans,

---

You don't get it.. many of us who are conservatives, are not against these things. The problem is that it has been proven over and over again that the money that is SUPPOSED to be spent on these things are not. The money goes into peoples pockets. At least with the flying of the military, we are getting what we are paying for.

quote:

---

I’m proud of America too.

---

Nobody believes you.

You lefties always have to find something to cry about, don’t you? That must be a miserable way to live.