When I watched the video of the song Make America Love Again, based on a Spike Lee comment, it set me thinking. Can a nation experience love? Love is usually considered a personal thing –intimate, invisible, subjective. It is felt by one person for another person or for an animal or object. People love – but countries? It is difficult to imagine them having emotions and moons, except in some highly metaphorical sense. Was the song meaningless, I wondered? Well meant but not much help? I have a literal mind and I couldn’t help pursuing this: what would it mean for a country to love? I am going to rephrase this question to make it specific. What the title implies, I think, is that love can be a political as well as a personal virtue.
– Nick Inman
