BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY FEB. 17, 2020) — On this President’s Day, THE PLANET asks about “patriotism.”

As a child who grew up in the halcyonic Fifties and who “came of age” — a term subject to many definitions — by the mid-Sixties, we loved America, or should we say “the idea of America.” What else would one expect during a time of the Red Scare, TVs The Big Picture, McCarthyism, John Wayne, playgrounds, Davy Crockett, Ted Williams, the atom bomb, and church on Sundays?

Mom used to tell the story of how, as a lad, THE PLANET would stand before the television set, hand over heart like the ballplayers, while the “Star Spangled Banner” preambled a baseball game on “The Game of the Week.” We made no evaluations and felt no need, not with the acceptance that youth has of the good and bad in life, and certainly not with the soft padding of innocence that cushioned the blows and turned most everything els into a kind of wonder and magic.

Things changed in the late 60s, or do we have to say?

“It’s your thing. Do what you want to do with it.”

“Sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll.”

JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinated.

Malcom X. Urban renewal. Black Panthers. The Monkees.

Who could you believe? What could you trust?

In 1968, Apollo 8 orbited the moon just before Christmas. We were in our junior year at PHS, eight months into an apprenticeship in the drafting room at GE (Bldg. 28) and head-over-heels in love with a girl from Connecticut named Linda. When we saw “Earthrise,” the famous photo of earth taken by the astronauts, the upending of everything assumed a perspective. From 238,000 miles away, our world hung in the blackness of space as a blue-and-tan pearl of infinite worth. Then and there, we perceived unity, all mankind sharing this planet, no boundaries keeping “us” from “them.” The Age of Aquarius.

The photo shocked us into an epiphany that our history classes only touched upon: national borders are arbitrary and fake, no more “real” than a Bigfoot, no more permanent than the foam that rides the surface of a lapping ocean wave. Nations erected borders as a result of war. At that moment, we realized that patriotism should not be confused with nationalism. The first stems from love, the second from a bullying and militaristic might — probably the most misapplied of all our survivalist necessities.

But what of the difference between patriotism and nationalism?

An incident at Nicholas Senn High School in Chicago helps us explore the question.

On Jan. 30, the school had an assembly honor Hispanic heritage. The ceremony began with the “Star Spangled Banner.” Students were asked to rise. All did but Tionda Cobb, 18, and Yesica Salazar,17.

Two teachers approached them and gave them a choice: stand or leave. One of the teachers told the girls that standing was a way to honor those who gave their lives for the country. The girls refused, saying they were protesting racism in America and police brutality — the “usual suspects” always found as residue from The Kaepernick-Smollett Effect. The teacher, a white male, then allegedly then asked the girls if they were on the free-lunch program at school. He then allegedly said, “Go back to your country.” One of the girls is an American citizen.

The girls were allowed to remain in the room, the anthem concluded, and the school conducted the event without incident.

Two weeks later, a student took to social media about the incident. Since then, fights have plagued the school on Chitown’s North Side. One student, 15, has been charged with assault on a Cobb staff member. The teacher in question has been suspended pending an investigation by the Chicago Public Schools and the D.A.’s office. This punitive action, of course, amounts to guilty until proven innocent — prejudged guilty of being white and male.

Such is sad case of justice in this fragmented and accusatory time. No habeas corpus. No presumption of innocence. Everyone so hair-triggered to be “offended” by everything and everyone else. Everyone a “victim.”

Patriotism? Nationalism?

There’s a bit of both in this incident.

We’ll let you sort it out.

Happy President’s Day. Now go out and buy a car.

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“Ideological certainty easily degenerates into an insistence upon ignorance” — Daniel P. Moynihan.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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