What is "patriotism"?
I found this meme floating around FB the last few days and it has been sticking in the back of my head.
According to the poll, 40% of Republicans, the party that has traditionally been more anti-communist, anti-flag burning and anti-NFL player kneeling, think that it's OK that Trump colluded with Russia and/or Russia tinkered with our election process in order to get Trump elected POTUS.
Put simply, almost half of Republicans think that Russia, our most ardent, continual and formidable enemy over the last 70 years, helped pick OUR president... and that's just fine. Let that sink in.
At the same time, they want to lock Hillary up because she was careless with her email server (proven to have used private and unsecured email systems just as her predecessors had and as several in Trump's administration have also proven to be using), and some state secrets MAY have been stolen by Russia from her servers. Although no one has ever been proven that any secret information was stolen from her State Department email systems--only her campaign email systems, which aren't state property-- "Lock Her UP!" continues to be the standard war whoop at Trump rallies.
Put simply, POSSIBLE stolen information from Russia causes these folks into fomenting and slobbery rage, but PROVEN meddling from Russia in electing Trump is perfectly fine. Let that sink in.
This begs the question, what is "patriotism"?
Image/meme source: unknown FB poster
Full Yahoo/Surveymonkey Poll see HERE
Even more incredulous, domestic Nazis and other white supremacists also see themselves as patriots. That's as accurate as Donald seeing himself as a "stable genius."
A patriot is an individual who puts country before self. That excludes supporters of Russian election interference and extremists at either end of the political spectrum.