Does America Deserve a Party?
![]() July 3, 2025 Hey there, Meteor readers, We are off tomorrow to partake in the celebration of America having cast off its oppressors, only to turn around and oppress in return. Or July 4th for short! Either way, it’s a day off to spend with your loved ones and wonder what’s up with Joey Chestnut. Or sit alone and do some fun feminist reading, Whatever’s clever, babe. ![]() But before we sign off for the long weekend and before we spend all our brain power fretting about the Big Beautiful Bill becoming a reality, we’re taking an optimistic stroll through the news to find the good happening around the country. Plus, we talk to some of our friends about patriotism. Shannon Melero ![]() WHAT’S GOING ON (GOOD-VIBES-ONLY VERSION)
![]() MICHIGANDERS BUILDING A WALL OF PLASTIC BOTTLES TO “WELCOME” DONALD TRUMP IN 2016. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
![]() THEY REALLY ATE IN THOSE DRESSES, THOUGH. MAYBE WE BRING THEM BACK FOR AN OLDIES NIGHT GAME. (VIA GETTY) ![]() When, If Ever, Do You Feel Patriotic?(You’re allowed to answer with a middle finger.) ![]() THOSE STRIPES DON’T RUN BECAUSE THEY ARE SECURED IN PLACE WITH AT LEAST THREE KNOTS. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) On an Independence Day only a billionaire could love, and in a time when many Americans feel less free than ever, we asked seven women their interpretation of patriotism. There is something in the American psyche that urges us towards problem-solving and exuberant creativity. We celebrate innovation and resilience, and capability in all forms. I feel pride when I see a person from my nation excel because of their indomitable spirit and resilience. But patriotism is also the bittersweet understanding that I love my place of birth and the culture that accompanied it, despite every instance of it not loving me as it should. It is a reminder that love is an unselfish end in itself. Patriotism has always been an odd concept to me. Maybe it’s the Indigenous in me, but pledging loyalty to a government (which is how I view patriotism) always seemed a bit cultish. Particularly as an American, I’ll never understand the desire to put my life on the line for a governing power that provides nothing in return (no healthcare, no education, no childcare, no right-to-a-life-of-dignity-or-safety, should I keep going?). I always thought that patriotism was a “if you love this place, let’s make it better” type of thing, but from 2017-now, I’ve learned I’m on a minority-populated island on that one. How am I supposed to feel patriotism for a country that abandons, betrays, imprisons, and kills its patriots? I see patriotism through the same lens as James Baldwin—a profound love for America that requires constant critique, improvement, and accountability. But I don’t feel patriotic, because I don’t always trust that America will love me back. As a person who thinks in transnational feminism, patriotism is really complicated. I can’t see the word outside of its roots in father/fatherland beliefs and values. Patriotism requires borders, policing, control, and exclusion….It has always been tied to supremacist ideals and patriarchal violence, even in defense of positive values, like democracy. Now more than ever, we have to recognize the critical necessity of solidarity beyond borders, of caring for the displaced and the fugitive…And we have to use new words. We’ve had millennia of patriotism. Maybe use, as so many have suggested before us, matriotism, a love of each other and all living things, rooted mutual care and responsibility, guided by the refusal to glorify war and violence. If the definition of patriotism is devotion to one’s country, then one has to love that country even when she is on her knees. That’s when you have to be loyal the most – when she’s hurting. False patriotism waves flags and indulges in jingoistic mantras and empty pronouncements. True patriotism looks upon a nation with eyes wide open and loves her enough to “criticize her perpetually,” as James Baldwin wrote….Yet being a patriot in dark times isn’t easy. When you are born in Puerto Rico, as I was, an island invaded in 1898 by the United States, called trash by its colonial masters, and fighting for self-determination, you understand that. True patriotism doesn’t hide in a corner; it doesn’t die a coward’s death. It grows strong enough to change the course of history. My patriotism is my people: It lives within each of us. It thrives when we protect one another from the violence of the state. Patriotism is not allegiance to power—it’s love for those who are targets of the state. It’s the courage to care for each other, especially when our government does not. My only childhood memory that could be categorized as patriotic is this: My grandmother—a second-generation Eastern European who voted in every election from the late 1920s to 2008, when, tired of “that fucking Bush,” she delightedly cast a vote for Obama—would drive me every summer to her home in the Catskills. And when her creaky Oldsmobile crested the hill and the mountains and fields came into view, she would break into “America the Beautiful.” (It lasted forever.) She clearly didn’t mean the government. She meant the literal place she lived: the land and its people, the community she was part of. That seems like as good a definition of patriotism as any to me: to make the place you live, where you have neighbors, live up to its promise. ![]() FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend?
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