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So much more
America, defects and all
September 26, 2001
The Iranian
No, I'm not a historian, but if you question my patriotism, I will tell
you that I love America. I am America. America is not only the land of rampant
consumerism and vast right-wing conspiracies. My America is Robert Kennedy
protesting with the United Farm Workers Union in he 1960's. It is the raised-fist
protest of Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics. It is the
birthplace of Emily Dickinson and Henry David Thoreau.
It is a feminist nation with a 120 -year old suffrage movement. It is
a nation whose former president BOTH emerged from a textbook trailer -trash
background and played the saxophone on late night television and told millions
of MTV viewers about which type of underwear he preferred. What is not to
love? It is -- and I'm getting teary-eyed over this one -- the birthplace
of Jazz.
America is so much more. A country with a strong rebel mythology whose
original founders betrayed their own countries to establish a new one. One
could argue whether this rebel spirit did in fact always materialize into
a place of freedom. Clearly it didn't. But what should be just as clear
is the deep psychological and cultural influence that this mythology has
imprinted in our hearts and minds.
I myself waver between having an intense affection for American people
and being strongly critical of their (our) government. And being so conflicted,
and being a person who's passion for America is itself comprised of a series
of historically anti-American, influences and symbols, I feel quite at home
in a land full of it's own demons and contradictions. A land which has been
known to continually deny rights to Black Americans while simultaneously
putting Malcolm X on a US postal stamp.
America is a land whose leaders attend sacred Native-American places
and listen to people mourn and celebrate indigenous lives and cultures of
America's past while simultaneously endorsing "free trade" policies
with nations like Mexico that end up eradicating indigenous life and culture
there.
Are Americans aware of such things? Have most Americans read the infamous
letter from Chase Manhattan Bank to the U.S. government, in which Chase
advises the Mexican government to "neutralize" the indigenous
population in Mexico in order to boost international investment? Read it.
It's on the Internet.
But more important than all of this is that fact I learned my very critique
of the U.S. government precisely in this land I call America. America created
me. A land with a deep historical affection -- psychological and emotional
affection -- for underdogs. A land which taught me -- either through it's
mass media or various institutions, through the words of people like Mark
Twain or Martin Luther King Jr. -- to care and to be critical.
And frankly, what has bothered me about many of us is that we sometimes
choose to ignore this entire psychological history in order to obsess and
fixate over other connotations that are present. Some of us even continue
to define America solely in terms of European-Americans and in doing so
we make it too easy to define this country as a land of the exclusively
powerful.
Other people live here -- Chicanos, Latinos, Blacks, Asians, the Irish
(often referred to as the "Mexicans of Europe"), and so on. Many
of these people devoted their entire lives to changing American societal
and political norms regarding race and culture. If I hear one more hyper-rational
academic ignore all of this history in pursuit of the whiter connotations,
of the consumer connotations, of the more violent connotations, I will...
meditate peacefully and pray for their kind souls.
So in this country we buy a lot of crap. I know. We buy too much crap.
Unnecessary crap. If we are happy, we buy. If we are unhappy, we buy. And
since this IS a hopeless fate, we are not without our share of dysfunctions.
Some of the crap might even be manufactured in Tibet under oppressive Chinese
rule, or in Mexican factories where astronomical numbers of women are abused
and raped south of the borders. As Americans, we need to be more responsible
and critical of ourselves. If our higher standard of living demands poverty
elsewhere -- either in the country or in the world -- we need to change
our own lives before we expect our government to follow.
And another obvious point: if you were to ask George Bush or William
Bennett or Al Gore, "What makes the best life? Surely none of them
will reply "Oh! the consumer life" or "Having 312 pairs of
shoes!" We all know that money and status and material objects do not
reveal or celebrate our higher selves. But because a plausible escape from
all of this SEEMS unlikely for ordinary Americans, we are left lacking in
spirit. And through such lacking, we create a climate for self-hatred --
the ideal climate, by the way, for advertisers.
The question is, what are we going to do about it? How are you and I
going to revert to Walt Whitman's mythological America? How are we going
to bring about the proper changes? How will we advance and improve it?
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