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  "publishedAt": "2026-02-19T21:00:44.000Z",
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  "textContent": "I had an 1200 word long post sitting in the back of my drafts for awhile. I'm rewriting it from scratch again, I guess.\n\nThe problem with \"American pride\" is that the 00s saw patriotism as a cloying miasma spewing from the censor of fear choking out the throats of anyone who did not want the total obliteration of every living being the middle east. America is an oppressive force throughout the world. And it's not just the torture and the war and the extraction and the forcible poverty and the slavery. It's to the extent where American politics is relevant news to potentially every living human being.\n\nI end up spending most of my words trying to prove that I am aware that America sucks and that \"American pride\" is a phrase with a portent of doom. And that I am also aware that Woody Guthrie style leftist-American-pride, with his \"I'm a proud antifascist American\" stuff, as a trend that repeats every now and then and is considered annoying.\n\n* * *\n\nBut...\n\nPeople are still talking about Bad Bunny's halftime show, and the (very funny) TPUSA \"All American\" halftime show.\n\nThe thing is that Bad Bunny (an American) was able to perform for the Super Bowl (in America) in Spanish (a language 50 million Americans are fluent in). The fascist argument delegitimizes Bad Bunny's halftime show as \"not truly American\", and I think that deserves a lot more push back.\n\nIt's a fact that Bad Bunny is American. Puerto Rico is part of America. The half-time show was already \"All American\". You can't really understand the politics of argument for statehood vs independence without understanding that Puerto Rico is American. You necessarily internalize and perpetuate the view that whiteness is necessary for Americanness, which is one of the foundational precepts of the fascism we have today.\n\nSo, I think maybe I will be an annoying Woody-Guthrie-lite antifascist? In the same way I will continue to be an annoying atheist, annoying feminist, annoying half-trans queerqueer, etc.\n\n* * *\n\nWith those thoughts roiling in my mind, I thought back to my time in undergrad and then grad school. Near the end of undergrad and in my lab, nearly my entire social group was international students, most of which were Chinese. Everyone there was America on purpose because they wanted to be here. And my undergrad group was mostly lesbians, away from home for the first time, happily in a liberal part of an LGBT-friendly country. There was a lot of American enthusiasm.\n\nBut I'm not trying to legitimize American pride through the assumed lens of people who I met years ago and miss now. I'm saying another cool thing about America was that we got to meet in the first place.\n\nThat's something that's seeping away. America has destroyed its status as a destination for researchers and students.\n\nAmerican pride gives way to grief when you're seeing something beautiful dying.\n\nSo, I'll cut out the section on being proud of America as a relatively safe place to be trans.\n\n* * *\n\nThe impetus for the first draft of this post was a phone call with a friend of mine recently, almost a week after Alex Pretti was shot and killed.\n\nA trans man and a naturalized citizen with family in the Philippines, his grief is more than mine could be. He's leaving the United States by the end of the year, and doesn't know if he will come back in his life. He belted out all the things he loved about America, and all the things he never got to love.\n\nThe melting pot, shores and mountains he visited, shores and mountains he won't get to, New York City, Grindr, taking the Amtrak, etc.\n\nThese were the exact feelings I had and have. Part of me wanted this post to be a list of things I feel proud about. Everyone I've kissed, everything I've learned, everything I've done and seen and heard. Almost all of which was under this flag.\n\n* * *\n\nBut the thing is that \"pride\" is a feeling. It's not merely appreciation. It's not something that usually requires qualifying all the disgust and mourning and hatred you feel about the thing you're proud of.\n\nCan I feel proud of the MRNA vax when we also produced a new, more fervent generation of antivaxxers? Can I feel proud of our feminist academia and action when we also produced the trillion-dollar woman hatred machine?\n\nAmerica has been taken over by unabashed fascists. I can't feel proud yet.\n\nIt was naive for me to think these levels of xenophobia and racism were things left behind in chapters of history textbooks. Bigotry was either strong enough to win another election, or our elections are rigged. Either way, that precludes pride.\n\nBut we still have people like Woody Guthries, but we've found better things than guitars and silly stickers with trite sayings to fight fascism.\n\n* * *\n\nSo, I think I want an America to be proud of. An America we take back from the fascists who have taken over. An America with an intentional culture of opposing fascism, that won't disappear in seven decades.\n\nNot in the lofty \"let's create our perfect utopia\" sense, but in a more short-term tangible \"We can defeat the fascists and have the trials we should have had in 1865 or 1945\" sense.\n\nOnly then can I be proud in America without writing another 1200 words on the matter.\n\n* * *\n\n**tldr: taking \"american pride\" to include everything within the bounds of our empire, there's a lot to be proud of, even if our country is evil**. if we can defeat the fascists, maybe we can have something to be proud of.",
  "title": "proud in america",
  "updatedAt": "2026-02-19T21:00:44.000Z"
}