Am I patriotic? What does ‘patriotic’ mean to me?
I am. I deeply believe in this country and the values that it stands for. The ideals. And when we fall short of those values and ideals, as we so often do, it’s why I stand up and criticize, or vote, or debate, etc.
I hold it as a self-evident truth, for example, that all men and women are created equal. So, no — you don’t get to treat someone who’s gay any differently from someone who’s straight. Nor do you get to turn a blind eye to or pretend that racism is still rampant in our country and that people are treated very differently because of the color of their skin.
I believe in the freedom of religion, which includes the freedom to not practice any given religion. This country is not a christian country. It was never meant to be, otherwise our founding fathers would have said so. Did they imagine when they wrote those words, there would be debate as to whether it meant muslims? Probably not. They were all christian, and much of the colonies had been founded by sects of christianity that were persecuted in mainland England. But even though the world changes in two hundred years, the ideals and values remain the same: equality. Tolerance. Diversity. Opportunity. The embracing of the frontier and the unknown. Those are the things, to me, that make this country great, and I will fiercely defend them.
———
I feel fine enough burying this little overshare four paragraphs deep in the entry…but it is an overshare, lol: I have the biggest zit on the side of my lower back I have ever had in my life. It’s genuinely massive. And so painful. Looks like three or four pores all got inflamed at the same time, somehow. Or, not ‘somehow’ because as soon as I sat down in my desk chair this morning, the damn thing is right where my back touches a part of my chair. So, that’s clearly how it happened. But, oh, man…this is unprecedented. Hopefully it heals quickly. And my apologies for the overshare, ha! Definitely on my mind tonight, though, so it’s only the truth I guess.
Today was a great Sunday. I got all the little stuff done I needed to, took a nice little nap, got to hang out some with Liz, who’s a little under the weather, the pups…got almost all of the rest of Henry VI Part 3 read for the second time. Just act five to finish tomorrow and then it’s onto
Titus Andronicus. Woohoo! I wonder what I’ll think of it. I watched the Anthony Hopkins movie of it way back when and was definitely disturbed by it—wildly bloody play…but I wonder how the writing actually is. We’ll see.
Night night.