Media portrays Americans as hating their country: The truth is more complicated

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In media news today, the Los Angeles Times says Kamala Harris now 'owns' Afghanistan policy after touting her role in withdrawal decision, Columbia Journal Review torches NYT, CNN for their roles in the 'Cuomo myth,' and media outlets repeat Biden remark that GOP governors are 'banning masks in schools'

Anti-American sentiment seems to be on the rise across the United States, from woke corporate training to critical race theory being taught in schools and athletes protesting the national anthem. 

In stark examples, Olympic hammer thrower Gwen Berry turned her back on the national anthem during the U.S. Olympic trials, and over the summer, MSNBC contributor Mara Gay claimed she was "disturbed" to see "dozens of American flags" flown on Long Island.

It’s a concern that former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem called the "biggest cultural challenge of our lifetime" in a recent Fox News opinion, and Harmeet Dhillon, CEO, and founder of the Center for American Liberty, suggested that Americans should not be surprised by the trend - the United States is not the first country to experience it.

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According to a study by the Pew Research Center earlier this year, only 39% of Americans say they are proud of their country most of the time. A video from Campus Reform where Georgetown students struggled to answer whether they were "proud" to be American seemed to confirm this trend. 

Dhillon, who is also a member of the Republican National Committee, told Fox News that this phenomenon has been taking shape in America for decades, and stems from our universities, where students are away from their parents for the first time and taught that communism and socialism are "the way of the future." 

"I began to see it in our cities with the Occupy Wall Street movement," said Dhillon. "During economic downturns, you began to see disaffected people targeting corporations as their enemy. And you had weak Democrat leaders in cities putting up with it because this rhetoric was at the fringes of the…Democratic Party and they didn't want to turn off their voters, supposedly." 

She said the same tactics and ideas that led to the Occupy Wall Street movement are the same tactics and ideas that led to Antifa, riots, and the destruction of many American cities.

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America is not the only country that has experienced a trend of disdain by its own citizens, Dhillon said, "It’s really something you see in other decadent societies." 

"You saw it in ancient Rome, you see successful societies collapse when people get very complacent and fat with everything they’ve been given. They aren’t thankful for it. They don’t understand the special place of America in the world." 

Mainstream media has latched on to this trend, going so far as to claim that the American flag is a symbol of divisiveness and that it will be "harder" to celebrate America’s upcoming 250th birthday.

But Dhillon said much of middle America has not seen the same fever pitch of anti-American sentiment. 

"What you see in our liberal cities is amplified in our news media as if it were everywhere in the country," she said. 

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Dhillon went on to say that even smaller and mid-sized metropolitan areas like Nashville, which are liberal compared to other rural areas, do not have the same view of America as her hometown of San Francisco and other coastal cities. 

"I think you see a very biased and skewed view of the world through social media and through traditional media today," she said.

Dhillon, an immigrant herself, has a unique perspective on sentiment toward America.

"Almost every immigrant I know is very thankful to be in America instead of the country they came from because they chose this country because this country is the best in the world because we know it is having been exposed to other countries," she said. 

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Dhillon compared the United States to her birth country of India, which she called a "so-called democracy," where the government will suspend voting, and there is religious-based violence.

"America is a place where someone can be an immigrant and a member of the Republican National Committee representing the most populous state in America," she said. "That doesn’t happen in the rest of the world."