This whole, noxious, “love it or leave it” trope that is spilling out of the angry mouths of Individual-1’s screaming sycophants really gets on my nerves, something that it’s designed to do, I’m sure. Notwithstanding the irony -and willful ignorance- of many the people who repeat the trope sporting shirts advertising their wanting to live in Russia rather than be Democrats or flying Confederate flags, it challenges the absolute necessity of toleration and support of dissenting voices in a democracy, which in turn challenges the freedom of expression. It’s such an...anti-democratic slogan.
A few years ago, Jonathan Green, an Australian writer, wrote and article about a similar sentiment in Australia titled, “The real problem with ‘love it or leave’. Green worked through motivations of why people who shout such a trope say it. He hits the nail right on the head, it’s Individual-1 followers’ fear of change, of progress, of science, of tolerance, of differences, that the world is changing, and always will change:
“The anger behind love it or leave is at the prospect of change and the loss of a reality that is essentially imagined, or narrowly self-reflective and nostalgic.
It's not patriotism, but something sadder, paranoid and uncertain.
It's anger at the inevitability that it won't be them who either love it or leave, but you.”
Take a few minutes and read the article, please.