Slate is even worse than The Atlantic in this regard.
Right can’t say a single word without bringing up Left first! What’s their obsession with them? Why they seek constant validation from Left? Pretty clear who’s hateful! Given the current mess, it’s also clear who hates America.
The right gets away with it because they are disingenuous children who argue in bad faith. Don't blame the people criticizing the US; those criticisms are usually valid and reasonable. The right needs to remember that being able to criticize the government/country was a founding principle of the US, and that just because someone says something critical, it doesn't mean hate. Seriously, it's like they have a child's level of discourse.
(In reality, they know exactly what they're doing, of course. The hypocrisy and simple ragebait is entirely the point. It's just bad faith bullshit.)
This is a form of victim blaming. The right side of American politics gets away with it not because the left complains, but because the right doesn’t get punished at the polls for doing it.
As long as the Democratic base insists on caveating every American achievement with the Omnicause, it will keep playing into the Gingrichian rhetoric.
Toxic positivity is when you can’t criticize something even when it deserves criticism. Is America full of brilliant people? Yes. Is it in a steep decline at the moment? Also yes. Apple thrived because Steve Jobs did a coup and steered the ship. America needs the same, but not from an incompetent nincompoop like the current moron.
I don't know? Ask everyone who voted for a second Grump term. Every one of his rambles is some kind of sour puss complaint about our country, and yet people are still lapping it up!
I'd say the better framework is constructive versus destructive. The average American just doesn't want to think about constructive solutions or constructive criticism. The nuance required for incremental improvement is just too much work. But tell them you're going to smash things and hurt people, and they'll buy right in. It's essentially pan-religious fundamentalism.
Of course then the corpos are all too happy to step in with their own constructive but proprietary and anti-individual-liberty solutions. Which points back to the real motives for why the destructive memes end up being so popularized to begin with - destruction creates a power vacuum for the corpos to step into, while constructive governmental solutions get corrupted by lobbyists to overtly benefit corpos.
I really dislike the concept of "patriotism". What does it even mean? I think you'll get different answers if you get different people.
If people think that being critical of the US makes someone "unpatriotic", then that's their problem. If that makes a critical politician less electable, so be it. The alternative -- politicians censoring themselves and pretending everything is amazing -- is much worse.
And I'm not sure where the right is coming from anyway. The whole concept of MAGA is that the US kinda sucks right now and Trump is the savior who will fix it. If anyone has been critical of the US, it's been Trump and the MAGA crowd. But of course hypocrisy is never a problem for the right.
For those that were attracted to it, Trump presented the idea that America and it's people are good at good at their core, and this can be brought back.
Those same people view rhetoric from the other side as saying America is and was fundamentally evil and corrupt. They take this personally as a condemnation of them and their family.