Skirmishes with Patriotism: Recent Episodes
Tad Tuleja
Part memoir and part cultural history, Skirmishes with Patriotism attempts to work out, in a tapestry of 10- to 15-minute riffs, the moral tangles implicit in an American shibboleth. Beginning as a reckoning with my “unpatriotic” response to the Vietnam War, the project evolved into a broader meditation on violence, duty, sacrifice, and national pride. While my intent is not polemical—and certainly not “anti-patriotic”—I do invite the questioning of nationalistic zeal, especially in its current guise of triumphalist bombast. I try to confront therefore not just the troubled history of the American experiment but the specific rancor of this fragmented moment.I dedicate this podcast to two American patriots: Union officer Silas Soule, who in 1864 refused an order to murder Cheyenne women and children at the Sand Creek Massacre; and my godfather, U.S. Army infantryman Paul Faraci, who in 1944 died liberating Italy from Fascist control.
Revisiting the notion of "embedded pictures" that I raised early in the podcast, I try to come to terms again with seeing American history as if in double exposure.
Reflections on the cliche "Nation of Immigrants"
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com.
Are we reverting to the Tribal Twenties? A sobering look at how patriotism is appropriated and weaponized by opportunists.
Patriotism in its louder and angrier mood: triumphalism. With thoughts on Samuel Johnson's famous characterization of patriotism as "the last refuge of a scoundrel."
To the listener: If you'd like to share thoughts about this podcast, I invite you to email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com.
Reflections on patriotism's sacrificial mood and on its ultimate expression: soldiers' willingness to give up their lives for their country.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
Beginning a new sequence of episodes focusing on the uses--and abuses--of patriotism, I discuss in this episode the connection of patriotism to images of "home" and its appearance in its most appealing mode, that of self-sacrifice.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
A last reflection on the war that I avoided, as I attempt to read the faces of three men who fought it.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
I have few regrets about not going to Vietnam, but the ones I do have are worth remembering. I discuss them in this episode.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
Reflections on military comradeship--and on the "brothers in arms" that many soldiers say is what they're really fighting for.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
America's most unpopular war counted among its discontents not only home-front protestors but also some of those who were doing the fighting. This episode focuses on what they later said about their service.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
All wars are ugly. This episode explores the special ugliness of conflicts in which distinguishing between combatants and civilians is nearly impossible.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
What Vietnam veterans' memoirs tell us about the "little cruelties" of the war zone. And a question: What would I have done in those soldiers' place?
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
Battling Vietnam-era stereotypes of the American soldier: Hippies spitting on veterans versus "Kill anything that moves."
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
After a decade and a half of turning away from thoughts about Vietnam, I am inspired by a new war to rethink what had happened there, and I begin trying to imagine Vietnam from the perspective of those who went there.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
A decade and a half of trying to forget about Vietnam while looking to Hollywood for stories that might help it make sense.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
A last look at the Vietnam War as its memory was still fresh, through the perspective of a song written one week after the fall of Saigon.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
A two-year self-imposed exile in Europe presents the opportunity to apply an Old World perspective to America and its involvement in Vietnam.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
The role of fear in decisions to go--or not to go--to war.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
How getting out of the war with a medical disqualification seemed both "the right thing to do" and a move that has taken me decades to fully "own."
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
Weighing the options facing young men in the 1960s upon being drafted for a war they considered unjust.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
Reflections on the congeries of 1960s idealists and antiwar malcontents who spoke of themselves collectively as "The Movement."
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
The American dilemma and the interracial music scene in Fair Ithaca, New York, ca. 1967.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
Reflections on the war in Vietnam, ca. 1966-1968.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
How the American fetishization of individual liberty helped to confirm one young student's opposition to the war in Vietnam.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
The United States of America as two countries, one blessed by God and devoted to progress, the other inextricably linked to racist exploitation. Seeing the hidden coyote in the American story.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
At the "Old Yale" of the mid-1960s, coming to terms with the escalating war in Vietnam and with my own unease in a bastion of privilege.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
A brief flirtation with the U.S. Army, enhanced by my naive appreciation of war as an elegant board game.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
How a summer job at a military camp in 1962 began to shatter the verities of a patriotic childhood.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
Beyond the "Happy Days" cliche of the American 1950s.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
The high-water mark of my childhood patriotism: attendance at New Jersey Boys State and a heart-gripping speech by a U.S. Navy veteran.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
How an American teenager's first understanding of politics was shaped by an imagined conversation between Ayn Rand and George Orwell.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
Scouting, patriotism, and veneration of the flag in the waning years of Eisenhower's America.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this podcast with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening.
How my embrace of patriotism in the American 1950s was reinforced by my reading of two flag-waving texts: a Young Adult biography of George Armstrong Custer and Edward Everett Hale's mawkishly inspirational "Man Without a Country."
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this episode or any episode with me, you can email me at tftuleja@yahoo.com.
In this episode, I talk about how respect for those who guard America's two "gates" becomes an unquestioned "folk idea" even before we leave childhood.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this episode or any episode with me, I'd love to hear from you. My email is tftuleja@yahoo.com.
In this weekly podcast I wrestle, critically but affectionately, with the concept of American exceptionalism, moving from the Eisenhower 1950s, where I grew up, through the Vietnam War years to the battles over who “owns” America that we are witnessing today. In Episode 1, “The Open Door,” I analyze a photograph of a typically patriotic family—my family—taken two years after the end of World War II.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this episode or any episode with me, I'd love to hear from you. My email is tftuleja@yahoo.com.
A very brief curtain-raiser to the podcast proper. Part dream, part memory, part invention, it's entitled "Captive." It debuted on the Fourth of July, 2021.
To the listener: If you'd like to share your thoughts about this episode or any episode with me, I'd love to hear from you. My email is tftuleja@yahoo.com.