Patriotism
Before I get to greatness for America or anywhere else, no matter where you live, you are a patriot. You may happily decry the noise, the smell, the weather, the sanitation, the road repair, the taxes, and all the rest of the litany of dismay, but let someone visit from away. Let them say one word against your home, your neighborhood, your town or your country and you are prepared for that argument. How dare they?!
The home and the neighborhood are usually easy to carry in our hearts, as long as they haven’t recently featured in a special segment on the local news. But that’s sort of the problem with defending your country writ small. There’s just too much information out there about all the misdeeds that have brought the United States to its current place in time.
Regardless of how you view the U.S.A. today, our past is littered with land grabbing and slave trading; war mongering and war profiteering. Our predecessors did some heinous shit. They bragged about it, too. Unfortunately, for everyone else on the planet, their ancestors perpetrated some pretty awful shit, too. Whoever you are, somebody above or below ground has a justifiable beef with your ancestors (and quite possibly you, too).
So, when we talk about patriotism, a relatively newfangled concept made popular in the 19th century by European governments that were trying to unite disparate groups of people into nations, you’re talking about allegiance to an idea, not a shared history. Back then, someone had to figure out what it meant to be a German, for example. (That one took some twists and turns, didn’t it?) As you might imagine, language, education, and bureaucracy also came along for the nation-building ride.
Defining America
In our case, the idea of the U.S.A. must have felt like “we like big business; we’ve got the biggest business of them all”- something that became possible with incredible expansion which provided uncountable resources. Big business created jobs, which lured waves of immigrants. That led to one of our favorite ideas: the melting pot of America.
This remains a favorite story that we tell ourselves, as if all people are always welcome. The experiences of those who were here when Europeans arrived, those transported here against their will, and those who suffered endless prejudice upon arrival belie the melting pot.
Then we brag about our freedoms enshrined in our Constitution. For better or worse over the years, our highest court justices would tell you that those are not freedoms. In their writing, the less circumspect have come right out and called them restrictions. They stop certain people from doing certain things. Freedom is a creation of individual experience within the restrictions of any given moment. Consider that every freedom for the individual is a restriction on the group’s ability to prevent something from happening. We have to let you say your bit because we believe in the freedom of speech. We have no good way to describe any freedom without stating that the freedom is exercised at the tolerance of the rest of the people.
As for democracy… let’s just say that we cherish it like a pawnbroker cherishes his wares. Everything is for sale for the right price. The tail wags the dog and we have no savior because democracy inherently cannot be saved by one person. Democracy is an extension of the body politic, a malleable mass that may not be for sale, but is always for rent.
Let’s not forget
Yet, I believe in the greatness of the promise of our country . And I do believe that other people do look to the U.S.A. as a beacon, but probably not for the reasons touted by travel brochures and government propaganda. I’m not the first to say that we live in one of the first modern countries- arguably the first.
Pre-modern countries would be those where your role in life is determined at birth. Essentially, you will do what your parents did. Social mobility may not be completely unknown, but it is extremely rare. The advantages were that you knew what you were doing tomorrow, next week and next year. In its most basic form, you could outline your life for anyone interested and be pretty dead right straight through to death. On a larger scale, this meant that the country was in a groove and likely to continue on its current path. The rulers were going to come from a small cohort and they would ensure that the status quo remained unchanged. Bureaucracy could remain relatively small. The middle class was mostly unnecessary because who needs currency? You get the idea.
Modern countries birth children who have no clue what tomorrow is bringing. They have to figure it out for themselves. They arrive in a world driven by money and an endless array of choices. A similarly long list demands their time and energy. Animals, including humans, have to learn how to thrive in such a design because we are not necessarily equipped for such a life. Nothing about our mammal brains suggests that we can cope with economics and meteorology and recipes for kugel. Except, it is either that or we go back to a world in which virtually all of us live in mud and watch our children die.
And yet
As a nation, this means that we have no idea where we are going. Periodically, we reach for comfort by electing someone that reassures us that tomorrow will be just like yesterday. Sometimes that’s a familiar name from yesteryear or someone who spouts reassurances that they can bring back the “old ways.”
We assume the ability to auto-correct quickly. We expect rapid change and facilitate it. If our lives hold the promise of social mobility in a relatively short time, then we can veer from villainy to heroism and back even more quickly. As a nation, we can do it in annual cycles. Since our successes are admired, the world accelerates around us, though not always on the basis of a foundation like that provided by our predecessors. They were nowhere near perfect nor in harmony, but they recognized something about the need to allow for change over time. Something about that might lead to better places.
Moreover, in our effort to look ahead, we assume the past is irrelevant. Willful ignorance (and not a lack of conservative principles) leads us to avoid hard truths learned by those who came before us. Our system is heavily weighted in favor of those with money and a working knowledge of game theory. This is possible when majorities ignore accumulated learning and treat the world of ideas as a marketplace and not as a scientific laboratory.
What makes us great and we don’t talk about
At times, you can feel the rest of the world looking at us a little askance (unless they live somewhere that they feel things are moving too fast into the future, too). They know what the true greatness of the U.S.A. is. Sometimes we forget, but that beacon of hope is that we will make a future for ourselves. We can never know what it will look like, which can be terrifying. Yet, that is the whole point of being a citizen here. We grasp hands and take a flying leap into the unknown because that’s the real promise our Founding Fathers made: the future is unwritten.