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They really hate this place.
Like, a lot.
I'm talking about your friends, the ones who wear American flag clothes and post memes of soldiers kneeling in front of a cross on Memorial day. I'm talking about the guys whose car bumpers are so filled with political stickers that you can barely read the license plate. Your friends who love the military, that pray for soldiers and pretend that they consider the 4th of July to be anything other than excuse to day-drink. The friends who use every opportunity they can to bring up the first and second amendment to the Constitution, never mentioning any of the other amendments, who also insist on "constitutional purity", which is weird considering their favorite parts of said constitution are literally "amendments", meaning that there were edits to the original text.
Your friends who don't trust anything "the media" says about, well, anything. Especially their favorite "not a politician" politician, Donald Trump. They don't trust American politicians, they don't trust American schools, they don't trust American doctors, they don't trust American intelligence agencies, they don't trust American pharmaceutical manufacturers, they don't trust one half of the entire nations political party, they don't trust American regulatory bodies, they don't trust the CDC, the FDA, they don't trust a single 3 letter agency in the country. They hate every ally except Israel, they hate NATO for god sakes.
They hate NATO.
Above all else, above every single institution they hate, they hate the US government the most. You don't have to take my word for it, they'll explicitly tell you this. Especially if you try to discuss anything even remotely politically adjacent within earshot of these people, which prompts an almost immediate, visceral response filled with emotionally driven diatribes about how "everything is corrupt" and "there's no point in voting" and they "can't believe Trump is being prosecuted when the whole governments corrupt".
They hate the government of the US. They hate the US political system so much that they actively chose not to participate in it until Donald Trump came along, who promised to undo all the institutions that make America what it is. They voted for Donald Trump because he was the antithesis of American politics. For better or worse, despite all the problems that the US political system actually has, the primary motivation for people who voted for Donald Trump was that he represented something other than the American political system.
They don't even like the people that fucking live here. They actively despise their neighbors. They will rant and rave about the dangers of "socialism", and not wanting to be financially responsible for someone else's health, well being, education, or general overall welfare. They don't care about anything, seemingly, except themselves. Well, and Donald Trump. The guy that confirms their apparent per-conceived notions about their distrust in American institutions. I personally think that this supersedes Trumps permission for people to be their worst selves. Above the racism, the bigotry and the ignorance, the most important component of people's faith in Donald Trump is his message that American institutions and the professionals that staff them only exist to manipulate and take advantage of the American people. His immovable base of support all these years later isn't due to permissible bigotry, it's Trump's promise that he will turn America into something else entirely, something that more closely reflects an imaginary version of America that never existed.
They hate the American government so much, they hate the American political system so deeply, that they physically stormed the capitol building on January 6th, and then proceeded to complain when the FBI arrested them.
They hate America.
But what do they like?
Well, that list is pretty short. They like the flag, confederate statues, and the military.
That's it.
The flag, confederate statues, and the military are the only aspects of America that these people actually feel proud of. After they exhaust their extremely limited vocabulary in expressing that they hate every American institution, they'll opine about how great America "used to be", what the flag represents, how powerful our military is, and how nobody should remove confederate statues because if we don't have confederate statues then nobody will know anything about Americas past, because these people haven't touched a book cover since elementary school.
Symbols. They love symbols. They hate America, but they love American symbols.
They love American symbols because to them, symbolism is more important than existing systems, structures and institutions. Symbols allow them to define what they believe America is, or what it should be, rather than acknowledge the systemic issues America has in real life. American symbols of freedom and democracy are the only aspects of freedom and democracy that your flag waving friend can even enunciate.
They love American symbols more than the American reality because, well, they're Nationalists.
Encyclopedia Britannica definition of Nationalism: nationalism, ideology based on the premise that the individual’s loyalty and devotion to the nation-state surpass other individual or group interests.
I put "Real" in quotes in the title for a reason.
Your American symbol obsessed friend thinks that they are "Real Americans". The only Real Americans. They fundamentally believe that every single American institution is out to get them, while simultaneously considering themselves to be die-hard loyalists to a nation that........is out to get them.
Yeah, it's not supposed to make sense. Nationalistic fervor can only be whipped up in the minds of a countries dumbest population, and since we have a lot of dumb people, America has a lot of Nationalists that don't even realize that they're Nationalists because they don't actually know the difference between Nationalism and Patriotism.
They unironically think it's patriotic to hate everything about a country except the symbols it uses.
They're Nationalists. They're idiots. They hate America.
That's why they love Trump.