On Being An American

My son-in-law, an Englishman by birth, has held a green card for several years. This week he took the test and the oath and now he is an American. 

This is a strange time for Americans, as the dominating force at the top is the most anti-American we have ever had to contend with. Even during the Gilded Age of the turn of the 19th/20th century, it was not as bad as this. It was bad for the poor and the working classes, but right now all the programs that were instituted for support and relief of general society–which were fought for and hard-won by humanists and humanitarians–are under threat. Now it is a matter of deprivation of benefits that have become how Americans with less luck than to be born to security live with less desperation and more hope.

It is not a vague threat, it is an on-going, active assault on every program that serves anyone but the oligarchy. It is reckless, it is an insane attempt to undo everything that has in fact made the United States a world power, everything that fuels this nation’s potential for greatness in the future. Insane, because it totally discounts that the penthouse at the top, the apex of the pyramid where the view is so grand, is supported by the keystones and the blocks of the foundation, and by all the storeys from the ground up. 

Gold is heavy: When it is all gathered at the top, when the foundation has been eaten away to a fragile filigree, who do they imagine will survive the collapse?

In the face of all this, why does anyone want to be an American?

I have thought about this lately quite a lot. I have considered whether it is time to walk away, to turn my back on what America has become. I’ve questioned where my sense of nationalistic pride comes from, whether it is more than the indoctrination of every school day starting with the Pledge of Allegiance–as if a child can be legally held to such a Pledge!

As a child I loved the patriotic songs, the commemorative holidays and events. I believed all the sweetened history, and believed that the US was in fact the best country in the world. 

But when I was in high school, I began to see the inconsistencies between the glorious words and the hard realities. Things were no longer simple, no longer merely black and white, and the range was wide. I stood but stopped repeating the Pledge every morning. I chose not to participate in what seemed the height of hypocrisy. Then one day I took a step further in my thinking and realized that the Pledge is not a statement of what is, but of ideal, of intention. 

And that is why, today, I am raising a glass to all the new Americans who have chosen to identify themselves with this nation,and dismissing my thoughts of deserting what was only mine by chance.  I reject the current misadministration’s redefining of America, and continue in faith that the true spirit of the United States, set up by the Founding Fathers and so clearly defined by Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address, will outlast the wholesale tearing down of all that ever made America great.