There's a hypocritical prejudice that infects the left, and an article in the New Yorker demonstrated that very well.
The article was written back in May, but only began making the rounds on social media lately. If that doesn't say something about the bubble that small leftist intelligentsia operates in, I don't know what will.
The article is titled "How Problematic Is Patriotism?" by author Arthur Kyrstal, and it comes complete with a drawing of a man impaling himself with the American flag. The lines on the body indicate this is a regular occurrence for this imaginary "patriot," because he sports multiple stab wounds where he's run himself through.
I'm not going to bore you too much with the content of the article. A lot of it is Kyrstal trying to sound like he's making a case for patriotism not being so great by giving you a history of the word and various thinkers' thoughts on the concept. It doesn't feel like it actually adds to his point, and to be honest, I'm not sure it was supposed to. It felt more like an odd sort of inclusion that passed for a shallow justification mixed with a play at sounding intellectual.
He also adds his own experiences toward patriotic people, effectively framing them as deluded people unwilling to see the reality of the country they love. It's made mistakes, and these mistakes of the past have embittered him. He doesn't say that outright, coming off more like someone tired and disappointed, and justified to be so. It's not hard to see through the prejudice, however.
In fact, the moment he brings up Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States," a book that effectively whittles America's history down to said mistakes and explores the country through a lens of Marxist historical materialism, I knew this essay's soul.
It comes out in a few paragraphs mid-piece. After discussing polls showing patriotism is falling out of vogue, he says this:
Patriotism just isn’t cool anymore. Wokeness, having rightly called attention to racial and gender injustices long endemic to American life, helped chill the left’s admiration for the nation, while its clumsier performances (cancellations, cultural-appropriation scolds, and other exercises in finger-wagging) pushed centrists to the right. Patriotism, you might say, isn’t dead; it’s just dressed up differently. Viking helmets, star-dotted shirts, and military-style jackets, not to mention MAGA caps, are the preferred patriotic attire. Less an ethos than a brand, it makes it hard for the more quietly dressed to own it.
As you can imagine, the article devolves into an anti-Trump screed that paints its tiresome regurgitated leftist account of his and America's social sins with more intellectual filler. He rarely gets to the point, but when he does, he tries to soften it to make himself seem reasonable:
Yet I also think there is something exceptional about America, something noble and beautiful. Exceptionalism, though, has a different connotation when linked to protectionism and isolationism. The MAGA movement, which wants America to be more “American,” idolizes an imaginary past, before affirmative action, feminism, diversity, and immigration “ruined” things. Not all of its adherents envision a racially sanitized America, but they sincerely believe that Trump is good for America and his critics bad for it. The truth is, they have no real appreciation for what Trump, even when he gets things right, stands for.
To be clear, he's calling you stupid. He even makes a note in the very next paragraph that there's a reason tyrants love the uneducated.
I swear, the New Yorker exists solely to make leftists feel smarter while they recite the same drivel everyone else on the left is. There's no real diversity of thought, just the same thought the guy in the black mask tossing bricks is thinking, but with $10 college words sprinkled in here and there.
But I digress.
As you can probably gather, the real point of the article is that it's trying to paint America as less than exceptional despite its exceptionality. Its mistakes define it more than its successes, and the only good it has is the potential to be something "better," and what constitutes "better" is rarely said aloud, but its opposite is often finger-wagged at.
Nationalism is the true evil.
According to these people, you can and should "love" America, but you need to want to fundamentally change it and stop trying to block the forces of modernity sweeping the globe from forcing said change if you truly "love" it.
Never mind the logical fact that you can't love something and want it to be something else as its very core. If that kind of thinking existed in a relationship, it'd be classified as abusive. "I love you, but I want you to be someone else" isn't love. It's erasure disguised as care, and it's cruel. It's badly disguised contempt.
The truth is, America is the greatest nation in the world and demonstrably so. Even the people who claim to hate it flock here for opportunity, safety, and prosperity. It has flaws, sure. We are a flawed species incapable of perfection, but America's successes and virtues far outweigh its negatives.
The left can't ultimately argue against that. Their prejudice can't hold up in a fair debate. If they can't defeat you in the realm of ideas, and you're too good at highlighting the goodness and greatness of the United States, they'll murder you. If they can't murder you, they'll murder your character.
The zealotry has gotten so bad that they don't even try to do it as elegantly as Krystal tries to.
Exhibit A:
You don’t hate the media enough, part eleventy million pic.twitter.com/zS9mX6ian2
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) June 12, 2026
Contrary to what Krystal and the left think, patriotism isn't a gateway to isolationism and social sins. Even when mixed with a healthy dose of nationalism, patriotism can be the fuel by which a nation advances, and in America's case, humanity advances. It's necessary to keep a country running and healthy, and Western civilization would be far better off if we embraced that as a virtue instead of allowing a mass of third-worlders into our nations who have zero respect for our ways, our advancements, and our potential.
Inviting that kind of incompatibility isn't just stupid, it's suicidal, and there's a growing list of dead, raped, and maimed ignored by the left that proves this.
Patriotism is good. You don't have to wear an American flag shirt or a MAGA cap to be a patriot. Trump is ultimately not the embodiment of patriotism, as much as the left would like him to be, but loving the United States and wanting the best for it is a very good thing, and not just for us, but the world.
Full stop.
