Are you patriotic? What does being patriotic mean to you?
Do I love my country? Yes.
The word “patriotic” has been tarnished for me because it has been hijacked by certain factions who believe they are the “true patriots” and this has been exploited to divide us. That’s disgusting and shameful. Patriotism isn’t about having the loudest voice or the biggest flag.
But loving your country and its people is not such a bad thing. The United States of America (where I live) is a geographically and culturally diverse place bound together by certain ideals. It’s an amazing place and I feel like there’s still a lot of untapped potential in this country.
Some “patriotic” people might see “culturally diverse” and have a knee jerk reaction similar to the one I have to the word “patriotic,” but even they should recognize that the cultures of Texas and Maine are as different as the weather in those places, even with the common threads of American culture running through both. This is a good thing.
I’m one of the people very unhappy with the chaotic turn my country has taken recently, and some of the proposed chaos will almost certainly affect me directly if things go on as they have for the last few weeks. This is distressing, of course, but all I can do is buckle down and do what I can to make things better around me. Maybe that’s patriotism too.
The Mia Experiment 