8:11am | Jingoism is the American way.
Probably no society since Ancient Rome was so self-congratulatory. In no country on Earth do you find so much self-satisfaction, so much talk of being better than the rest. We regard our nationhood like it’s ESPN College Football Power Rankings: “We’re #1! We’re #1!”
You’ll see, if you hang in, that this is far from an anti-USA rant. But when did loving one’s country become synonymous with chest-beating?
To state the obvious, the United States is deeply, deeply flawed. Social injustice, economic injustice, political injustice, sexual injustice, racial injustice, and plain old justice injustice abounds. That some countries may be more flawed in some ways doesn’t somehow make it all right. (But if you think the U.S. has less of each of the aforesaid injustices than every other country on Earth, you really need to travel more.)
Yes, we’re one of the freest societies on the planet. And this brings us to our theme. It turns out this is nothing more than a “I’m thankful for freedom” column. But perhaps with a bit of a twist.
In these days of Occupations and disgust with our politicians, of a national debt that won’t quit and the endangerment of a genuine middle class as a species, of systemic problems that just don’t seem to be getting any less problematic, we have a choice.
Regardless of our collective professions of being fed up with the status quo, politically we the People continue to allow ourselves — force ourselves — to be represented in Washington and just about everywhere else by a grand total of two political parties. If you’re a tiny island with a relatively uniform populace, I suppose two parties might be enough. But if you’re both the most diverse and the third most-populous nation in the history of Earth, to have a two-party system is, well, hardly representative government.
Ever take part in a tug of war? It’s a stupid game. Two relatively evenly matched sides pull on opposite ends of a rope, and whoever can muster up the most brute force, wins. It’s literally a one-dimensional game: there’s no thought involved, the rope moves on one plane only, and it’s about nothing more than winning. Stupid.
But we’ve all played it at one time or another, not because we ever found it all that compelling, but because some uncreative P.E. teacher told us to. And we did what we were told, without thinking twice. We the People are pretty good at doing what we’re told. We get an early start.
Imagine, instead, if the principal of our school had told each P.E. teacher to inform each class that we would be working amongst ourselves and with the other classes to invent a game involving that rope. I’m guessing tug of war would not have been the result. Moreover, I doubt that the X number of P.E. classes would have formed ourselves into two teams to butt heads about which one of two possible games we would play. That’s just not how a reasonable group of multifarious, independent minds naturally organizes itself.
The reasons why today the economic and political landscapes look as barren of choice as they do for 300,000,000 Americans is the stuff of tomes, not columns. But to a large extent its stasis comes back to simple freedom of choice. You, my fellow Americans, are perpetuating this reality. It is your choice.
No doubt there are excellent large corporations, and perhaps even the 10 banks holding 84 percent of the nation’s banking assets aren’t all bad. But how responsive to individual customers and small-time investors can JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo be when compared to LBS Financial Credit Union and Farmers & Merchants Bank? Are the biggest bureaucracies usually the best and most compassionate?
No doubt there are good, earnest humans who feel well represented by the Donkey and the Elephant. But the Republicans and Democrats are not the only game in towns, states, and the entire Land of the Free because the vast majority of people believe they are well spoken for by their elected officials; it’s because once upon a time you were taught to play tug of war, and you won’t leave the rope line to explore other options. Are we best served by a government of the biggest pair of political machines this side of the Communist Party of China? Or mightn’t a working multiparty democracy represent us a little better?
I’m a pragmatist, and as such I don’t pretend that if the every single one of Y number of Democrats and Z number of Republicans reading this re-register yourselves as Libertarians or Greens and start voting for individuals — regardless of party affiliation — that the nationwide electoral reality will change in 2012, 2014, or even 2016. But mass change is not the point. That is a freedom You the Person don’t have.
Taking personal responsibility, on the other hand, is left up to you. “Be the change you want to see in the world,” Gandhi is reported to have said. If you want a two-party political system to reign in these United States forever, then never mind. But if you want change, contribute to the world you want — which may affect your friends, your neighbors. Teach your children about 1,001 uses for a long, strong rope.
Teach them, too, that one choice they don’t have is not to play. Not because you say so, but because even inaction is a way of taking part. If I have a quarrel with many of the disaffected folk I encounter, it’s their belief that because the System is broken they should not take part. Um, hello? That’s a pretty effective way of helping the status quo to remain just that. It’s the choices we make — all of which boil down to each individual making each choice, one by one — that (re)make the System.
The same principle is involved with just about any specific problem that’s in vogue right now. Don’t like the consolidation of the wealth into the hands of a few mega-corporations? Don’t put your money there. Dislike what’s being done to the environment, how animals are treated, the quality of cinematic entertainment? Stop rewarding rapacious environmental policies, animal cruelty, bad filmmaking.
You gotta love the United States, though: we are left free to make our country just about as bad as we can stand. Nothing is going to stop us. And that’s the way it should be.
For all my frustration with my homeland, I love living here, in part because of the tremendous variety of its people, in part because we people are largely free to create our own reality. I just wish the political results of the latter fact would better reflect the former.
“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you,” says Sartre. He also says that freedom is a weighty responsibility. And it’s a burden we can’t slough off. Cannot. No choice. We are condemned to be free.
We Americans inhabit a country that is a living embodiment of that philosophical truth. For this I am thankful. Come what may.