The American Myth
Through the Looking Glass
American exceptionalism: Do you believe in it? It is supposed to stand for the circumstance created by peaceful capitalism. I’m trying to think of America and peaceful in the same thought, and it’s exceptionally difficult.
As we stand before our flag with our hands over our hearts, we drink the Kool-aid and believe, in those same hearts, that we are a good people. Perhaps if we really looked at those hands, we’d see the blood on them.
This country was built on violence and genocide and slavery. Is it possible that the fear of the warrior natives and the uprising of those we would keep down to work in our fields, first from Africa and then from Mexico, has led us to develop a gene of fear and distrust?
We hold these truths to be self-evident:that all men [sic] are created equal. And yet we focus on the differences between us. The gene of fear and distrust passed down through generations.
They say we are a nation of immigrants. And yet we have built walls that are like tiny dams against the river of people migrating to survive. Immigration is like a ladder up which we all climb, stepping on the hands of those on the rung just below us.
People of power don’t like to feel beholden to those that make it possible. The solution is to make them feel insignificant and expendable. They have been whipped and raped and underpaid and not allowed to vote and even today not allowed to seek citizenship.
This is our club, nobody else should be allowed to join.
Here we stand, about to give a good riddance to a president whose election in the first place never ceases to be a source of amazed shame. I thought we were a good people?
Before that aberration, we elected the first black president of the United States. It was a day of immense pride. It did not erase the slavery that once was and the racism that is still woven into the tapestry of our existence. But it did provide some evidence of what we supposedly hold to be self-evident.
That election, won twice by such merit that bigotry couldn’t suppress it, sent shock waves among the fearful and distrustful. I believe the election of his successor was reactionary and racist. Logic and good sense cannot explain it.
Now that we are entering a new and hopefully more reasoned phase of our history, we should take the opportunity to look at our hands, finally, and extend them to our fellow citizens of whatever color and even those who have put their shoulder to the wheel for our economy with no promise of citizenship.
The cultural contribution of Native Americans, African-Americans, and Latinos is greater than you might think, unless you have been fortunate enough to have lived outside of this country. From there you could see the defining characteristics that make up the romantic idea of America, what the others want America to be. These are the fundamental ingredients of the American culture still in its infancy.
We should go beyond refusing racism. We should be foregrounding these cultures that bring us such wealth and depth: the poetic myths of creation, the music born of oppression, the intimate knowledge of the land. It is not the European conquest that writes our story, but the response to it by those whom we thought less than ourselves.
