Content Warning: Pure Id and fury

It is the fifth of March 2025 and Pobochi has things to say.

No. No no no, dropping the bit for this one.

*I* have things to say.

I am a thirty-eight year old white dude who was born in Maryland and lived his whole life here. In the last five years, I came out at Pansexual and through therapy, realized that I was Autistic and have comorbid ADHD. I dyed my hair, got my ears pierced, and am almost done getting a sick tattoo of Great A’Tuin on my back. I have a home, loving family, close friends, and a sweet Pitbull named Chai. I am proud of all these things.

What I am not proud about is this omnifucked fascist scamlord country that I can feel saturating my being like the stench of plastic burning in the oven.

What I am about to say has taken me a decade of learning everything I was never taught and unlearning propaganda that was built into to damn-near every facet of the US experience. There is a non-zero chance this will ruin my life, that I will be doxed and stalked by neo-Nazis and Right-wing career trolls. That the Government and the Techbro parasite infestation will come for me.

I don’t care anymore. I need this out of me.

I fucking hate the United States of America. I hate the stars and stripes. I hate the pledge of allegiance. I hate the Star Spangled Banner. I hate the Founding Fathers. I hate the Constitution. I hate the smiling empty suits on both sides of the aisle whining about civility. I hate the Chamber of Commerce. I hate Wall Street and the stock market. I hate Lobbyists. I hate the Police. I hate the Pentagon. I hate every story where America is the Good Guy. I hate the great scam called the American Dream. I hate American Exceptionalism. I hate every single thing that is required to appear “Patriotic” and every time I hear the words “God Bless America” my jaw clenches

I hate the fact that I have been conditioned from birth to say “American” only in reference to the United States, as if Canada, Mexico, and the entire Southern portion of the continent did not exist.

And holy shit do I hate patriots. I see you. I see you red-faced little shits vibrating in your indignity. Go on and say it. Say the thing that makes you come.

“If you don’t like it here than just leave!!”

As If my family wasn’t here. As If the entire life I built could just fit into a suitcase. As if this country wouldn’t export its bullshit to wherever I went. As if any other country wanted to accept Americans after this country elected Trump again.

Fuck you and fuck your flags and your God Bless America and the song and dance you bastards do. I stay to spite you, to work to make things better (outrageously foolish as that is), but mostly out of spite and the hope that I will see your fucking tears as the world rejoices as we lower your useless fucking flag once and for all and raise something new. Something better.

Can you imagine that? Something better than the bowl of dogshit we have been spoon-fed our whole lives?

Imagine not living in fear of losing your job for no goddamn reason, other than some motherfucker with more money than you will ever see wanted the number to be higher.

Imagine not just internalizing the idea that you or your loved ones will be shot by some crackpot spun up by his facebook thread. I learned that I could die at any moment in middle school. That was Columbine back in 1999 and nothing has changed since then. New Zealand passed extensive gun legislation the month after the Christchurch shooting.

Why do we let these things happen? Because of the Second Amendment? Like it’s a commandment on Moses’s slab?

Imagine not living with the fear that your family will be destroyed with one missed payment, one delayed paycheck, one bill for the ambulance that you begged them not to call even as you felt your bones click against each other in all the wrong ways.

Hell, Imagine being able to *afford* a family? Imagine having one job pay for your home and your groceries and your children’s education? Imagine having daycare. Imagine having free time to just -do- shit? To create? To plan? To dream?

The number one cause of personal bankruptcy are medical bills. Why do we allow that? Why are we allowing politicians to lie to our faces all the goddamn time? Why is the price of entry to any civic function a demonstration of loyalty to an institution that was built on a foundation of human suffering?

Why are you required to be a patriot in order to be good? To be respectable? To be worth listening to? Who fucking decided that??

What is the value in patriotism? Why is it good? What does it serve?

Patriotism is pride and loyalty to one’s country. Okay. Question one. Why do you have to feel pride about something that you have zero control over? I can choose what I spend my money on. I can choose who I associate with. I can choose what aspects and relationships I want to nurture.

But no one asked me if I wanted to be born and raised in the United States so why should I feel any sort of pride in that? This is like rooting for your sports team no matter what. It’s inane to me. What if the quarterback is a dog fighter? What if the coach is a pedophile? What is the team contains wife beaters or sex pests? Am I to root for them even then?

Get the fuck out of here.

Let me plant my flag on the hill I will die on. No one should ever feel pride for their country. That shit is a trap. You can feel a need to protect you home, that makes sense. You can feel loyalty to friends and family. You can seek to protect your community. All of these things are worthy. But we enter dangerous territory when we confuse a nation-state for a community.

The United States of America is not a person. It is a thing. It is a machine that runs on people, yes, but it cannot feel love, nor compassion, nor empathy, nor remorse. The United States is not some hive mind that we are collectively dream into actions. It is, and has always been, a very complicated mechanism for maintaining the wealth and power of a handful of wealthy Anglo-Saxon dudes.

Self-governance and the protection of the people has always been a side effect, never the primary goal of this machine.

Being a patriot does not make you a good person. These days it barely makes you a good citizen. I think that in order to have the political will to push for necessary change, you need to be not only capable, but respected for hating your country. When you hate your country you are demonstrating that you are outraged by something being done “in your name”. Injustice, inequality, corruption, genocide, the United States has routinely engaged in all these things. How is a person to feel pride about any of that? How is a person to react when they are told “yes those things happened but it’s you still need to love your country, because it’s the right thing to do”. You home is not your country. Your home is those things that make you feel at peace. Your community, your family, your friends. The little treasures that we accumulate over a life lived, if we are lucky. Your nation has no claim over any of them.

I submit that what is needed in the United States in this moment is not patriotism. We do not need any more denial. We do not need any more fairy tales about a place that never existed.

We need the righteous fire of outrage and indignation. We need anti-patriotism.

Anti-patriotism is about recognizing that you are not your nation and you are under no obligation to defend anything done by it’s government. Your home and your nation are different, and that you should never allow anyone to make you defend the indefensible actions of the powerful just because they do it wrapped in a flag.

Anti-patriotism means not giving a shit about norms, civility, tradition, or how your behavior reflects on the nation. Anti-patriotism is the how you stomp out nationalism and jingoism from the get go. If someone tries to make a nation state part of their identity, the only correct action is to mock them. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Are you a fanboy? That’s weird and creepy. Stop it.”

At the State of the Union yesterday, Representative Al Green of Texas, an old black man with a cane, stood up and spoke out against a tyrant. And for this he was bodily removed from the room. And his Democratic colleagues? Seated and silent, holding up their goofy signs and wearing their goofy shirts. Because that is “acceptable resistance”. “Civil resistance.” “Patriotic resistance.” Because Heaven forbid that you make a scene in the hollowed halls of Congress.

“All that is required for the triumph of evil is that the good do nothing”.

I keep hearing the Democrats whine about “purity tests”, as if patriotism wasn’t the original purity test. “Oh do you have to much willingness to defy the nation in service to your community? Away with you! Come back when you have a suit and a flag pin and have learned to sound important without promising meaningful action!”

And while we’re talking about Purity test, Do you know what the real purity tests for the democratic party are? Obedience. Complicity. Looking stern but not angry. Being concerned but not outraged. Never raising your voice. Never speaking out of turn. Never making the consultants look foolish. Never making the billionaires frightened.

Do you know what’s not a purity test? Protecting Trans Children and Trans Adults. Speaking out against Genocide. Believing that Billionaires shouldn’t exist. Calling out and fighting corruption. Calling a Nazi a Nazi and those who hang out with them Nazis.

Patriotism is a shackle on being able to call a spade a spade. We need to be able to call our representatives assholes. We need to be able to protest and be applauded for protesting against sending troops and weapons for colonial operations while our children are tormented by zealots and our medications withheld by scam artists. We need to value people over property. We need to be able to say that the constitution has too many problems and there are too many ways for the government to operate without any accountability.

Patriotism is incompatible with justice, community, and empathy because it makes you care more about things than people.

We need to be able to say that this was broken from the start, and that sometimes the best thing you can do is shut it down and start over right.

We need to elect people for virtues other than patriotism. Decency, justice, empathy, compassion, curiosity, humility, and yes even humor! We need to find capital L leaders, the type of people who you need to beg to run. The ones who do not seek power because they actively fear misusing it. The kinds of people who intervene in fights and protect the victim, not the abuser. The kinds that don’t believe in “both sides” between right and wrong. We need people who admit to not knowing enough and seek help from those who know, regardless of their backgrounds. We need people who can look at a well-paid lobbyist or a billionaire offering to change or ruin their life and say “Fuck off” with their whole chest. We need people who are willing to do the right thing and go home and not seek a career playing the game.

All of these things get watered down in the performance of Patriotism. Patriotism demands that you couch each warcrime, each failure of the system, each moral vacuum with “but this is not who we are” and never address the conditions that led to those failures.

The patriot wants to feel like they’re a good person because they live in “a good country” and there is no such thing as “a good country”. Every institution can be corrupted and fail. Every government can be undone by powerful outside forces. Tying your identity to the morality of your country is to ensure your own damnation.

I have spent my life trying to make a home in the United States, and the biggest threat to my home is the United States itself. I am done pretending otherwise.

All Cops Are Bastards

All Patriots are Fascists

I dare you to prove me wrong.