Last year I wrote a blog about how much I love the U.S.A. and I included links to some of the music that is generated from my particular point of observation on what that love means.
I wrote about Springsteen's rendition of Pete Seeger's "Bring Em Home,"an anti-war song from the 60s that might be even more relevant now. I also wrote about one of my all time favorite songs, a tune about the life of this country and the way we are made up by and for everyone, "This Land Is Your Land."
For the last few days that tune has been rolling around in my head along with the thought that I need to follow up on those observations of a year ago with new thoughts on what being "an American" and being a "Patriot" and being George Washington's cousin actually means to me. It seems particularly important right now as we close in on the end of an excruciatingly long presidential campaign, as well as a presidential regime that could very possibly be the worst in history, and is certainly the worst in my lifetime (and there have been some BAD presidencies in the last 53 years!).
The questions of what it really means to be a "loyal American" have been flying fast and furious. Not a week goes by without a good friend of mine in Florida sending me some right wing diatribe (or worse... outright lies and/or complete distortions of fact) about how Obama isn't a "real American" because everyone knows he's actually a muslim, or because he rarely wears a flag pin, or because he doesn't properly salute the flag, or because the former pastor of his former church has the guts and the balls to stand up and do what preachers have been called by God to do since the first Jeremiah spoke truthfully to HIS government.
These intermittent missives almost always carry with them some sort of implied, or directly stated, inference that the the good old U.S.A. would be a better place if we'd just get rid of (deport, incarcerate, or execute) everyone of darker hue and lesser bank balance. they almost always end with some racist declaration of "what America really is..." inevitably, some version of a lily white, self-aggrandizing culture of greed, power and hubris. In other words, pretty much the very picture that most of the rest of the world already holds.
But we aren't that country and we never have been. The startlingly beautiful reality of this country is that we ARE, almost entirely, an immigrant culture. (I consider myself Irish-American, but really, I'm Irish, English, German.. AND George Washington's Cousin). A nation of half-breeds, where the amazing eclecticism of the whole world is brought together in its inevitable ugliness and difficulty, its hatred and war, and its magic, and beauty, and love. ALL of its glorious shining magic. For the most part we got this way, not because of some grand and glorious scheme but because of the darker motives of men (because it was indeed almost entirely men) who in their grasp for unimaginable wealth were in need of fodder for their farms, their factories and their transportation systems (railroad, interstate, and information superhighway). When these dreams were coupled with the hopes and dreams of those they enslaved, conscripted, and kidnapped, we wound up with this weird mix that is the U.S.A. (and no other place in the world).
This country has been built, from day one, on bad promises made to poor people. A reality that Martin Luther King Jr. called a check that has, over and over, come back "marked insufficient funds." Over and over and over again people have worked, struggled, climbed and fought their way out of the cages, jails, and holding pens they were put in... Africans, Chinese, Italians, Irish, Mexicans, Japanese... and of course the Original AMericans who were here at the beginning.
This is THEIR Land.
This is YOUR Land.
This is MY Land.
This is OUR Land.
232 years ago my cousin and a bunch of free thinking men and women (not just a bunch of Christians... no matter what the religious wrong try to tell you) got this whole thing started and damn if they didn't have a great idea!
Happy Independence Day!
