Is it a crime to love my country?

Hello once again, my devoted readership. It's been a good while since I last checked in with anything meaningful (financial contractions caused me to have to shut down my home Internet) so I'll do my best.

I've been reading the paper a lot these past few weeks,as well as listening to the beer-infused rants of the customers around me while at work. There's a good deal of anger going around; two unpopular wars, an explosive health care debate, and an economic situation that's less attractive than a tavern commode. People are angry, bitter and cynical. Even the sunday funnies are, well...not.

A lot of this resonates with me as well; I work two jobs in order to barely support myself, have friends risking their necks in Iraq, and tend to view our current health care system as a polite form of legalized piracy. Occasionally, I succumb to the black humors so prevalent in this modern age. And I've done my fair share of bitching about it.

But most of the time I'm happy to be here.

Seriously, I'm pleased and proud to be an American. Why? For the sunny side of the reasons I just discussed. So I have to work two low-paying jobs; so what? Those jobs keep me in food to eat, a roof over my head and the occasional bit of fun. There are many in other countries that would sell their soul to be able to make such a claim. So our health care system sucks; so what? It doesn't leave us to die in the street of diseases humanity learned to fix before WWII. Can the common inhabitant of Peshawar or Calcutta say the same? So our young men are dying in wars we aren't 100% sure about. Tragic, but at least they volunteered for the job. The child-soldiers in Burma likely wished they were so fortunate.

Another example; about a year ago I was harassed on the streets of Seattle by a young man extolling the virtues of Communism. Seriously; he attempted to press a pamphlet on me with the zeal of a street-corner evangelist and did not leave me alone until I threatened him with bodily harm (to whit, I adopted a cheesy redneck drawl and mumbled something about shooting folks like him where I was from. Stereotypes can occasionally be useful). The incident stuck in my head; it was only after I got home that I realized what bothered me about the confrontation.

In the countries that practiced the form of government he was praising, the young man with the Che Guavra t-shirt and the black birth control glasses would have likely been beaten, jailed or killed for being critical to the established powers-that-be. Only in America is the freedom to do such a thing woven into the most elemental fabric of our legal code.

The point that "things are always worse somewhere else so we should be grateful for what we DO have" is a well worn one, and I understand that. But in the dark times that currently assail us, it is also something we should remember.

Love of country is like love of anything else; it's never perfect and sometimes drives you up the wall, but it's also something you appreciate in the good times. Like all other love, it should never be blind, just accepting of imperfection. I know America is a nation with blood on its hands and skeletons in its closet, but I challenge anyone to find a country that is bereft of such things. Of all the places I could be living, I'd say I fucking well lucked out.

Despite the flaws, I love my country.