The Most Patriotic Thing You Can Do Right Now
Not to stand and salute—
but to kneel and remember.
They will tell you that patriotism is stillness.
A hand to your heart.
A silence in your throat.
A script you were never allowed to edit.
But I say:
The most patriotic thing you can do right now
is weep for this country.
Weep for what it could’ve been.
Weep for what it demands you forget.
And then—
with trembling hands and salt-wet cheeks—
write it all down.
So the forgetting never wins.
🩸 To Love a Country That Has Hurt You
To love America right now is to ache.
It is not easy. It is not blind. It is not safe.
It is standing in the ruins
of a promise you inherited
but never fully received—
and still whispering,
“I believe we can do better.”
Because what they call “patriotism”
has become a mask for cowardice.
They love America like a trophy wife:
as long as she’s obedient, quiet, and beautiful from a distance.
But the moment she starts remembering—
the moment she bleeds, or speaks out of turn,
they call her ungrateful.
They call her broken.
But I call her alive.
And I love her anyway.
🎖️ This Is What Patriotism Looks Like
Patriotism is not fireworks.
It’s not ballgames.
It’s not a child with a flag and a camera in her face
before she’s old enough to know
what the stars and stripes have cost.
Patriotism is not a performance.
It is a pulse.
A broken rhythm beneath the ribcage
of every citizen who wakes up wondering
how we keep surviving this.
Patriotism is telling your children the truth
even when your voice shakes.
Patriotism is holding your country
like you would hold a grieving
mother—
not with pride, but with reverence.
🕯️ What We Must Remember
Remember the ones who didn’t come home.
Remember the ones we turned away.
Remember that barbed wire once fenced children.
That churches have burned.
That ballots have bled.
That justice still limps like a veteran
dragging one good leg through a rigged parade.
Remember.
Because if we don’t,
we are not a country.
We are just a marketing campaign
with better fireworks.
⚓ A New Kind of Allegiance
I pledge allegiance
not to the flag—
but to the hands that sew it.
To the lungs that protest it.
To the voices they tried to erase from the anthem.
I pledge allegiance
to every Black mother
still waiting for her child to be treated like a child.
To every migrant who learned our laws better than we did—
and still wasn’t welcome.
To every queer kid
who’s ever had to justify their existence
to the same government that prints “liberty” on its currency.
I pledge allegiance
to the uncomfortable conversations.
To the hard questions.
To the broken-hearted believers
who stay anyway.
🇺🇸 And If You Still Love America…
If you still love America,
don’t show me a flag.
Show me the books you’re reading.
The truths you’re unlearning.
The silence you broke.
The shelter you offered.
The history you teach your children
when no one is grading.
Show me your grief.
Your fury.
Your hope like wildfire.
Because I still believe in us.
In the bones of this broken house.
In the ghosts who haven’t given up.
In the hands that plant seeds
where others salt the earth.
That, to me,
is the most patriotic thing a person can do.
With Liberty & Justice for All,
—Rebecca M. Bell
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