Even before those murders, despite the overall calm, the defense of the cops had been just as shrill and unyielding and frankly anti-democratic as it was when crime was spiking in the 60s and 70s. It’s no accident Rudy Giuliani became the national spokesman for the cops’ point of view. Sean Hannity, the pride of Nassau’s Franklin Square, turned his show into a headquarters for the defense of Darren Wilson, the Ferguson officer who killed an unarmed Mike Brown in August.
And of course, there’s no one more shrill in defending the cops than the pride of Chaminade High School, Bill O’Reilly. He’s attacked protests of police brutality by NFL players because they “aren’t smart enough” to understand the issue. In mid-December he took his trolling to a new level, suggesting that instead of wearing “I can’t breathe” T-shirts, memorializing Eric Garner’s last words as he was choked to death by police, African-Americans wear “Don’t get pregnant at 14” T-shirts.In fact, Colbert’s character often schooled Limbaugh on his understanding of U.S. history. In a bit from March 5, 2009, Colbert shows Limbaugh attacking Obama for supposedly violating the principles of the Constitution only to then quote from it. The quote, though, was from the Declaration of Independence. And Limbaugh actually gets that quote wrong: it is not “life, liberty, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness.” The word “freedom” does not appear there. This leads Colbert to conclude that he is applauding Limbaugh for “changing the Constitution” since “the liberals all want it to be a living document, but Rush took it one step further and made it a Wikipedia entry. He does not care what the Constitution says, which is final proof that he is the true leader of the Republican Party.” So, as Colbert gave his own viewers a lesson in U.S. history, he also showed us that one of the great so-called patriots of the right had his facts wrong.
One of Colbert’s greatest gifts was his ability to expose logical fallacies and faulty reasoning. His second book, “America Again: Re-Becoming the Greatness We Never Weren’t,” epitomized one of the primary flaws in logic to conservative patriotism: How can the United States be the greatest nation ever and also be on the verge of total collapse? Or, as Limbaugh put it in his attack on me: “Meanwhile, we’re losing everything this country’s known for. The culture is rotting away, the culture is corrupting itself away, being perverted away, and all of that’s being celebrated.”
Again and again, Colbert showed us that the right had created an almost devotional quality to their version of American exceptionalism, one that could not account for practical realities and one that could not handle any sort of questioning. If you asked about the treatment of Native Americans, then you hated freedom. If you thought that the U.S. should not practice unilateral foreign policy, you were weak. Any time anyone had a different view on these issues they were immediately attacked for “hating” their country.
It’s worth pausing to reflect on the very idea of attacking someone for “hating” their country when you disagree politically. How did politics become overrun with hyperbolic emotion? When Colbert began his show, much conservative political discourse had devolved to highly emotional language. There is no question that a degree of affect and emotion is a part of politics regardless of party affiliation, but most scholars of democracy agree that democracy works best when its citizens use reason and judgment to form their decisions.
This is why Colbert returned often to the idea that there was a difference between nationalism based on reasoned judgment versus emotional attachment. And he loved pointing out the hypocrisy of a party that claimed we all had to support our president when it was George W. Bush in office only to quickly reverse course and attack Obama from day one. As Limbaugh put it after Obama’s inauguration: “I hope Obama fails.” That doesn’t sound very patriotic now does it? But worse than that, Limbaugh often becomes angry and emotional, explaining his political views in terms of affect — fear, hatred, love and so on. Or, as Limbaugh phrases it, “All the stuff I’m steaming about.”
The core issue here, and one that Colbert consistently parodied, is the idea that blind faith and emotional attachment to nationalism are more consistent with fascism and fundamentalism than they are with democracy. Simply calling yourself patriotic does not make it so, which is why Colbert loved to used patriotic puns to describe himself — Megamerican, Lincolnish, Libertease, etc.
As Colbert’s parody of a right-wing pundit showed, a commitment to our nation’s democratic ideals requires engaged critical thinking. It also requires understanding that our nation has not always lived up to its ideals and that achieving equality and justice and tolerance requires active engagement on the part of us all. That, after all, is what defines democracy. Logic, reasoned judgment, engaged hope, these are all qualities that are also a key part of democratic political action. U.S. patriotism does not need to be defined by nostalgic love for a once-great nation that still is great — as long as it doesn’t include anyone with a different view. Colbert used satire to show us that it was time to resist that version of our nation and push back.