It just feels difficult to have meaningful conversations on here sometimes. Like yes I dislike America, but I don't need to act like nothing good has ever come out of it. Maybe China is better than America, but I don't want Xi nuking American cities. I don't think war is suddenly cool and good because Ukraine has some nazis in it. Not everyone I disagree with is some bumbling mass of idiocy, a lot of times we just differ on certain core values.
Which would be something that isn't America. I don't think it's unreasonable to define America by its ruling class. Its history was certainly shaped by it as well as the culture. The dominating contradiction of America has been that of the ruling class vs the poor. If the ruling class ceases to exist, or is driven out of power, then you have created something that is no longer America. It may be called America and be labeled as such on map, but it won't be the same country.
You might as well say that Imperial China had good things like creating Mao. You can say that, it just doesn't make sense, or is at least a specious statement. You're trying to attribute good to something that wholly opposes what is good, because the good exists in opposition to the bad. You can just say it's bad and move on. If you need further convincing, do this with slavery. The great thing about America is the Civil Rights movement. Sure but it wouldn't have existed had America not been horrible. And the problems it sought to solve were never truly solved. So why hold that up as an example of America being good?
Why do we need to be proud to be Americans? Why do we need patriotic socialism? I know why it exists, I'm asking why it needs to exist in the movement. After 9/11 there is no sense in trying to capture a leftist sense of patriotism in America. Context matters. We're in a different environment than we were back then. One where patriotism has been completely appropriated and owned by liberals/reactionaries. We simply can't carve out any of that space because the space itself is reactionary. Patriotism is not caring for your fellow citizens. At least not in the US as it exists. If we create socialism then we can talk about patriotism because it would be a different country. You can have patriotism for something that isn't America, but you shouldn't have patriotism for America.