Mental Strife Redux

There is no such thing as inclusive patriotism. The term is an oxymoron. At best, patriotism is a membership badge: look at me, I'm in the Churchill Club! At worst, it's a driving power behind the combination of megalomania and self-pity that characterises the Trumpstersphere, the Farage Falange and all the rest of the master-racers, ghetto-builders and Other-bashers. One can have good reasons for adopting it, as when a small nation seeks to differentiate itself from an imperial oppressor; but since patriotism itself compels us not to view England, let alone Britain, as small or subordinate to an empire, such stunts as this look all the more fatuously hypocritical. The idea that one can usefully debate a burbling incoherence, as the Blairites tied themselves in knots doing twenty years ago, is very nearly as ludicrous as the hope that one might somehow impose nuance on thugs by having a less heated debate over who's Out and who's In.