Not so long ago, we grew up thinking of ourselves as apart, living on a huge continent with enormous oceans on both sides of us. Canada was north of us, benign, a place between us and Alaska, but not a way to Alaska. The coastal passage was the way to Alaska. Only during World War II, did it seem to finally occur to us that we might want to be able to drive to Alaska, so the ALCAN Highway fumbled its way across frozen ground and frozen lakes northward. It was the Japanese, probing their way into the Aleutians that spurred us.
South, Mexico waited for something, just there; a place for rich and adventurous Californians to visit and drink margaritas. We vaguely recalled school-book stories about the Alamo, and the Gadsden Purchase, and Spanish riders probing north, long ago, but Davy Crocket and the Alamo and Texas seemed like vague buffers to whatever was south of us. In California, early Spanish missions reminded us of what seemed to be distant Spanish influence and territory. It was quaint.
I recall learning the phrase, "Fifty-four forty or fight!", as having something to do with the British, and Canada, of the fur traders, or somebody, but like the wispy stories of St. Augustine in Florida, or the French Canadians in Montreal, all of that was distant: stories.
We were isolated by oceans. Like Moses crossing the Red Sea, we were, if not a chosen nation, a separated one, between Europe over there, and probably China and Japan across an even bigger ocean. India was somewhere, and Russia, too. We were in the promised land, except that there had been no promise: we just took it; maybe stole it.
One of the enduring memories of my childhood was listening to the grownups talk about the war in Europe, and Hitler, and the Jews, and the Russians, and England standing all alone, pleading with us to get involved in that distant war. We didn't want to get involved in that war. That wasn't our war. It was something European, something awful, and scary, but not our war. Winston Churchill pleaded the case that we were somehow one people, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to nudge us to take action, but we didn't want to. Reluctantly, we sent help to the Russians in their frozen war against the Nazis, but we called it, "Lend-Lease", which we insisted was just a kind of business transaction, not taking sides, not really.
When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, which we later learned was in Hawaii, somewhere out in the Pacific, we necessarily became participants in that Second World War. But Roosevelt was accused of somehow maneuvering us out of our isolation, out of our continental fortress, out of our Second Eden back into the Old World and its war.
When I was thirty-three, I went back to graduate school, again. We had had another war in the time since World War II: Korea. But that seemed like a leftover from World War II, involving China, and something about a Chinese version of Russian Communism, and it seemed a mess. It was a mess. It still is. But by the 1960s, it was Vietnam, and the consequences of French Colonialism, and more Communism that occupied us. And the government was coercing us into that war, too. That is what the students all said. "Look!", they said, "the universities and the government are in this together! They are lying to us, sharing our grades, pushing us into war, scheming in Latin America to do something vaguely awful and undemocratic, and we want to be left out of it!"
It might be that George W. Bush did not lie to us about Saddam Hussein having nuclear weapons and a jug full of Lysol. He might have believed it. But whether he was lying or actually believed it, he conned us into a war that was really about a fool's dream to establish a safe place for oil drilling in the Mideast. Either way, it was bad.
We learned how to mistrust our own government, and for good reasons.
It has become a national pastime; almost an obsession. We don't trust our own government. We are not sure just how much government we really need. Probably a lot less. To hell with Social Security, and governmental programs! Let the bridges fall! Maybe sell the whole highway system to an investment firm, and give health care to the insurance companies! The banks know best! Give them our retirement money! Turn good, old, American know-how loose in the private sector! Our taxes are being wasted!
So the bridges are beginning to fall. No taxes, no bridges. No taxes, no teachers. Just unpaid-for wars, possibly.
It isn't a sensible position to hold, but it is understandable. It isn't sensible because a nation is not a cowboy on his horse, or a trapper in his cabin. A nation is not a family, or a clan. It is a nation, and nations need teachers, and fire hydrants, and roads and rules and laws. Nations need to protect their drinking water, and their air, and their property. They need parks, and day care and old age care. Else we are just cowboys and coal miner owners and derivative-selling shysters.
Right now, there is a wonderful example of trembling trust in us as a nation. The President has said that children who came here illegally, who are American in every way except for where they were born--quite like the original colonists who came here for a chance to make a new life in this new world--may apply to stay here if they can show they have kept out of trouble, and want to go to school, or have served this country well.
It is a terrible trust that, as a nation, we will behave honorably, in spite of all the howling to throw the rascals out. They are taking a chance that our nation has a soul, and that they can become a part of what we are. They have to fearfully trust in the goodness of government.
And I hope they are right.
South, Mexico waited for something, just there; a place for rich and adventurous Californians to visit and drink margaritas. We vaguely recalled school-book stories about the Alamo, and the Gadsden Purchase, and Spanish riders probing north, long ago, but Davy Crocket and the Alamo and Texas seemed like vague buffers to whatever was south of us. In California, early Spanish missions reminded us of what seemed to be distant Spanish influence and territory. It was quaint.
I recall learning the phrase, "Fifty-four forty or fight!", as having something to do with the British, and Canada, of the fur traders, or somebody, but like the wispy stories of St. Augustine in Florida, or the French Canadians in Montreal, all of that was distant: stories.
We were isolated by oceans. Like Moses crossing the Red Sea, we were, if not a chosen nation, a separated one, between Europe over there, and probably China and Japan across an even bigger ocean. India was somewhere, and Russia, too. We were in the promised land, except that there had been no promise: we just took it; maybe stole it.
* * *
One of the enduring memories of my childhood was listening to the grownups talk about the war in Europe, and Hitler, and the Jews, and the Russians, and England standing all alone, pleading with us to get involved in that distant war. We didn't want to get involved in that war. That wasn't our war. It was something European, something awful, and scary, but not our war. Winston Churchill pleaded the case that we were somehow one people, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to nudge us to take action, but we didn't want to. Reluctantly, we sent help to the Russians in their frozen war against the Nazis, but we called it, "Lend-Lease", which we insisted was just a kind of business transaction, not taking sides, not really.
When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, which we later learned was in Hawaii, somewhere out in the Pacific, we necessarily became participants in that Second World War. But Roosevelt was accused of somehow maneuvering us out of our isolation, out of our continental fortress, out of our Second Eden back into the Old World and its war.
* * *
When I was thirty-three, I went back to graduate school, again. We had had another war in the time since World War II: Korea. But that seemed like a leftover from World War II, involving China, and something about a Chinese version of Russian Communism, and it seemed a mess. It was a mess. It still is. But by the 1960s, it was Vietnam, and the consequences of French Colonialism, and more Communism that occupied us. And the government was coercing us into that war, too. That is what the students all said. "Look!", they said, "the universities and the government are in this together! They are lying to us, sharing our grades, pushing us into war, scheming in Latin America to do something vaguely awful and undemocratic, and we want to be left out of it!"
It might be that George W. Bush did not lie to us about Saddam Hussein having nuclear weapons and a jug full of Lysol. He might have believed it. But whether he was lying or actually believed it, he conned us into a war that was really about a fool's dream to establish a safe place for oil drilling in the Mideast. Either way, it was bad.
We learned how to mistrust our own government, and for good reasons.
* * *
It has become a national pastime; almost an obsession. We don't trust our own government. We are not sure just how much government we really need. Probably a lot less. To hell with Social Security, and governmental programs! Let the bridges fall! Maybe sell the whole highway system to an investment firm, and give health care to the insurance companies! The banks know best! Give them our retirement money! Turn good, old, American know-how loose in the private sector! Our taxes are being wasted!
So the bridges are beginning to fall. No taxes, no bridges. No taxes, no teachers. Just unpaid-for wars, possibly.
It isn't a sensible position to hold, but it is understandable. It isn't sensible because a nation is not a cowboy on his horse, or a trapper in his cabin. A nation is not a family, or a clan. It is a nation, and nations need teachers, and fire hydrants, and roads and rules and laws. Nations need to protect their drinking water, and their air, and their property. They need parks, and day care and old age care. Else we are just cowboys and coal miner owners and derivative-selling shysters.
* * *
Right now, there is a wonderful example of trembling trust in us as a nation. The President has said that children who came here illegally, who are American in every way except for where they were born--quite like the original colonists who came here for a chance to make a new life in this new world--may apply to stay here if they can show they have kept out of trouble, and want to go to school, or have served this country well.
It is a terrible trust that, as a nation, we will behave honorably, in spite of all the howling to throw the rascals out. They are taking a chance that our nation has a soul, and that they can become a part of what we are. They have to fearfully trust in the goodness of government.
And I hope they are right.
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