Paranoid Patriotism Makes You A Real American? According To The Fox"News" Website It Does.

Fox"News", never one to let the chance to inject the deaths of over 3000 people and the unfathomable loss of others into a story, has as their lead-story on their website a tale of a "real American".

This portion really struck me as what Fox considers a "real American" to be:

In the days after the attack, Krimstein said he felt an overwhelming desire to hang an American flag in his home, something he says he probably would not have done before the attacks. So he ran down to a “25-cent store,” bought a small flag on a wooden stick and taped it outside the window of his apartment.

“I think I wanted to hang the flag so much because I just kept hearing in my head over and over again that we had been attacked, that what we stand for — our freedom, our ideals — was under siege,” he said. “I was really struck by how much of a threat freedom in our society was to some people.”

Now, it would be more than unfair to slight this man, and his family, for expressing their patriotism in this way. There is nothing wrong with it. But, in the context of the story, the way that Fox has "framed" it, the man's fear has coaxed this dormant desire to look to a symbol for comfort.

True, symbols have power. But, is it symbolism or action that makes our country great?

On September 11th, 2001, I was in college at Western Kentucky University. After hearing of the attack, seeing it played ad infinitum on every channel imaginable, I saw the entire town flocking to gas stations, filling up their cars, rushing here and there speculating on what would happen next.

This tragedy had caused an entire community to consume on a mass scale.

There was no gas in Bowling Green, Kentucky for 2 days after that.

They would be consumers on another level.

Flags, in all kinds of sizes.

Stickers on cars, on trucks, SUVs ( lots of those ), windows on houses, shops, gas station, small flags on car radio antenna, big flags on virtually every building you could think of.

"Patriotism" motivated by fear.

The conservative movement teaches fear of people of "another color", another ethnicity, of people from California, of people that went to a certain school, of poor people, people who don't vote the way they do, of news networks, of gays, even fear of yourself at times.

If you don't have a flag on your house, if you don't think that a flag lapel pin matters, you are not a "real American".