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A COUNTRY IN CRISIS

I Am A Patriot (2020)

In Trump’s Divided States of America, patriotism is defined by blind obedience. This is the opposite of what is expected of true patriots.

Carl J. Petersen

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Photo by Martin Sanchez on Unsplash

It don’t look like no new patriotism to me, it looks like blind nationalism

-“Little” Steven Van Zandt

So far, the defining event of the Trump presidency has been COVID-19. To date, this pandemic has killed 132,101 Americans. Millions of jobs have been lost and the economy has been thrown into a recession. In the past, an event like this would have had Americans rallying around their president. This has not happened under Trump. Instead, his approval rating only slightly improved from 42.3% to 45.8% before dropping to its current rate of 40.6%.

The approval of the American people has been out of reach for Trump as his favorable rating has never risen above 47.8%. His predecessor jumped through hoops to fulfill campaign promises of uniting the country, while Trump has made little effort to even pretend that he represents Americans who did not vote for him. Instead of uniting the country against the common enemy of a virus, he has doubled down on division, turning the…

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