A mainstay of Republican rallies for the last three decades or longer has been the Lee Greenwood’s anthem, “God Bless the U.S.A., with its central theme of being “proud to be an American.” Which conjures up the current question, given the last two-plus years, are you proud to be an American?
Are you proud that our president dangles foreign military aid to a beleaguered country fighting Russian-backed incursions in the hope it will actively work to uncover dirt on his political rivals?
Are you proud that our president praises autocrats like Turkey’s Erdogen, Russia’s Putin, Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammad bin Salman, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un while trashing present and past leaders of allies like Trudeau of Canada, Engel of Germany, May of United Kingdom and Macron of France?
Are you proud that our president encourages his supporters to cry out for the incarceration of his political rivals?
Are you proud that our president sullies members of Congress who disagree with him?
Are you proud that our president is more concerned with his weather forecasting reputation than the lives of millions coping with the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian?
Are you proud that our president is so fixated on building a wall along our southern border that he has stripped funding for military projects that are needed to educate and train our servicemen and their families?
Are you proud that when our president speaks or tweets it is often impossible to separate fact from fiction?
Are you proud that our president has turned his back on our country’s historic commitment of being a land of opportunity for the downtrodden from around the globe?
Are you proud that our president rejects science?
Are you proud that Russia interfered with our election without any consequences, that our president believes Vladimir Putin that Russia didn’t spook our election and rejects the findings of our own intelligence community that it did, and that our president now wants to involve Ukraine in his re-election bid in violation of federal law?
Are you proud that our president considers whistleblowers “traitors”?
Are you proud that our president has politicized the Justice Department?
Are you proud that our president has so kowtowed Republicans that they no longer have allegiance to the Constitution but rather to him because they fear his impact on their election/re-election if they publicly disagree with him?
Are you proud that our president has put together one of the most corrupt and immoral administrations in the history of our nation?
Lee Greenwood recorded the song in late 1983. I’m not too proud to admit I really enjoyed listening to it, so much so that I obtained a cassette of Greenwood’s album that contained it. But I find it increasingly difficult to square his patriotic gushings with the insults Trump has visited on our republic.
I’d like to be proud again.
