There are a lot of Americans with whom I can’t talk politics.  I’m related to many of them.  Some of them, it’s just not worth the trouble to start a conversation that is mostly going to be a demonstration of how their values are the exact opposite of mine.  But there’s a specific flavor of American that I find especially infuriating, a snowflake so special it would deny its kinship with water and steam and start fistfights over the idea that it could melt, and they disturb me so much that, if I ever stop calling myself an American, it will be because of them.

Today, I’m going to call them “Patriot First, Ask Questions Later,” abbreviated PFAQL because it sounds like “flag-fondler” and that is the most appropriate shorthand these partisans could hope for.  Their defining attribute is that whatever the United States is already doing is the exact right way to do things, as a function of the fact that the US is already doing it, and all other conceivable ways are the wrong way because they’re not what the US is already doing.  Anything less is unpatriotic, they insist.