“The ideological clap trap that builds on that attachment to create fanatical patriotism leads only to tragedy.” Patriotism, per Piven, is a delusion, a dangerous indulgence: “It’s not healthy,” she says, “to wax sentimental about origins, because it divides us from the rest of humanity.” At which point I feel a helpless swell of pity for her, my fellow human after all. And I have to wonder whether Piven, being Canadian by birth, isn’t perhaps a little jealous. Nothing makes self-affirmed socialist and perennial democratic-socialist candidate Nomiki Konst love the land of plenty more than leaving it. When we talk, Konst is visiting family in Athens, where the far-left party fell out of favor when the Greek economy crumbled into a protracted fiscal torpor. In 2012, it went from parliament’s largest party to its smallest. Still now, the Greek debt crisis rumbles on. amends, if amends are ever possible,” for the sin of slavery. “It is natural to have an emotional attachment to home,” she allows. “But the ideological clap trap that builds on that attachment to create fanatical patriotism leads only to tragedy.” particular motivates the love – or so I thought – that propels her political activism. The founders don’t deserve our admiration, she adds, proving Richard Painter right. Although “some of the founders might qualify as aspirational democrats,” they “never made
Konst, a New Yorker, wanders the graffitied side streets missing her hometown storefronts. “I’m a bad socialist!” she jokes. “In New York, you walk right outside your door and you have access to everything, from the best Indian food outside of India to the best Thai food outside of Thailand.” In a turn toward the ideologically consistent, she then adds that Trumpian nationalism – “I consider it fascism,” Konst clarifies – puts America’s rich consumer-driven culture of culinary pluralism at risk. But then again, so might leaving the socialists in charge until they run out of other people’s money... “This is where the socialism in me has to be questioned,” she admits, “because I’ve been conditioned to be able to have access to anything at any time.” In the Athenian neighborhood where she’s staying, every cafe has its quaint specialty, but none of them has whatever you want, all the time. “You throw a rock out your window in New York and hit whatever it is you need, like a vegan restaurant or a good pizza place,” says Konst, starting to sound fed up with feta. It makes a strange sort of sense that the most genuinely affectionate answer should come from a homesick socialist on vacation in the debt-ridden bedrock of democracy. She’s talking about its food specifically, but Konst seems to speak for – and about – the whole country. What’s to love? “It’s not only the best,” she says, in sum, “but there’s the most of it.”
Alice Lloyd is a writer in Washington, D.C.
American Consequences
29
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online