I received a good public education. It was a Cold War education. There were two things that my education succeeded in instilling in me.
First, you’ve got to be nuts to admit that you don’t believe in the Biblical God. And, second, you’ve got to be a crazed lunatic to believe in Marxist-Leninism. I believe the Cold War generations were so thoroughly indoctrinated into these two dogmas, that every politician understands and abides by the same wisdom.
George Washington could not tell a lie. Lincoln is known as ‘Honest Abe’. Santa Claus lives on 34th street. And George Bush is a resolute ‘compassionate’ conservative.
I love American myths. In fact, ironically, when I actually studied Washington and Lincoln, I gained respect for them. When I studied Martin Luther King, Jr., I gained respect for him. Even though I was quickly disabused of the saintly myths I had been taught about these historical figures, the truth was even more impressive than the lies.
:::flip:::
We always attempt to make our greatest figures into more than they deserve to be.
But Washington was the perfect counterpoint to monarchy. Lincoln was the principled opponent of slavery, and Dr. King was the principled counter-example to the violent opposition to oppression.
I believe in their myths, and I believe even more in their flaws. Their flaws give us hope that we can approach their resoluteness and their effectivness.
When I think about what I love about America, I think about Washington, Lincoln, and King.
I regret that no politician can admit a skepticism about their belief in the Biblical God, and I see very little in Marxist-Leninism to defend, but I have the typical American affliction…I believe that we have the big things right.
The world is fortunate that it had America to oppose monarchy, fascism, and communism. But we have lost our way.
So, what do you love about America?
I’d love to answer your question, but you seem to want it in present tense. I’m blanking on that right now.
pie
We only make pie in America? Who’d a known?
We used to make other things, but it’s all been outsourced.
Soon, pies from Bombay and Calcutta.
.
Coming to the New World in 1957, we have had our moments of language laughter, sometimes attempting a literal translation from Dutch to English and vice versa.
In the supermarket, the pot pies were never touched. In Dutch it had quite a different meaning.
Many more anecdotes as I recall, but mainly in sixth grade, we competed to learn the American kids more Dutch words, than we learned the English language from them.
Oui – Liberté – Egalité – Fraternité
Leaving pot pies alone is a good choice. Your Dutch dictionary writer must have known his stuff.
I love America because it’s my home, I was born here and my family is here. I love the land. The purple mountain majesty, the desert and the sea and the creatures who live here.
I love American myths too, especially the myths about standing for justice and civil rights for all people.
As you say we’ve lost our way but I still love our ideals.
America is not special. I’m sure people raised in other countries believe in their national myths as well and think their country and their people are special. Perhaps if truths were taught in our schools rather than myths, we wouldn’t find ourselves in our present pickle.
What do I love about America? You know, that’s not a question I normally ponder. I’m more interested in my love for, and preservation of, the entire planet. If I love America it’s the one that used to strive for greater justice and equality for our citizens. But, to be honest, I’m not crazy about the America we’ve become.
Agreed. Yet there are many wonderful things which are uniquely American. See my truncated list, below.
While we rightly disdain the pervasive jingoism currently gripping the country, we should also remember that Americans have made priceless contributions to global culture. We should, as Americans, celebrate that fact. Not in a flag-waving, holier-than-thou manner, but respectfully, and with a thoughtful pride.
Let’s just hope, in the long run, that the bad doesn’t end up outweighing the good.
And nobody can put on entertainment production like Americans. Well, India, maybe.
If Americans would stick to making ketchup and movies, that would save a lot of lives and make the world a much safer and better place.
Yes, but what about the catsup?
Jazz, the Blues & Hip Hop
If we weren’t here we’d just be somewhere else. Here’s good.
Baseball, Walt Whitman, The Benny Goodman Orchestra, cheeseburgers, the beach on Fire Island, New York City, the Hudson River Valley, Stephen Crane, X (80’s L.A. punk band), the presumption of innocence, Noam Chomsky, Iowa pork chops, e.e. cummings, Little Feat, John Ford westerns, George Gershwin, Motown, WPA art, The Shield, Philly cheese steaks, the Dodgers, film noir, Maxine Kumin, Dr. Seuss, Star Trek, The Simpsons, Stanley Kubrick . . . oh, and the right to be a Marxist 😉
I sure hope it isn’t 30 years from now in school textbooks that our progeny learn the truth about the Giggling Butcher of Crawford… by candlelight…
I liked the sense of optimism and can do attitude and intellect that used to be a hallmark of our society… It is a sad irony, IMHO, that this is the very thing that has been perverted and corrupted to the point that it risks destroying everything…
Pizza, pad thai, tacos, burritos, guacamole. And popcorn.
Jazz, blues, folk, blue grass, Kronos Quartet.
Robert Altman.
Sometimes the language.
Otherwise, I’m mad at my country.
Mmmm . . . Altman.
Hmmmn, a good list: perhaps I could grow to like America. The one time I saw the Kronos Quartet I thought they were disappointing.
Because without the bloody Yanks all of us here in Europe would still be under the swastika or some other idiocy.
Yes, the US has lost its way which is why it is so hard these days. The rest of the world expects America to be crazy but it expects it to be crazy in its own unique way.
When the Yanks become just another version of fascist, it becomes really boring and a severe letdown. We expect more. The world wants to be fucked in more creative ways. : )
Pizza.
The most productive farmlands in the world.
The Appalacian Trail.
Railroads.
The Baltimore Orioles.
Stroh’s Beer.
Walt Whitman.
Pirogies.
Concord Grapes.
Philadelphia.
The Ozarks.
Federalism.
Maypo.
Maxwell House.
The smell of eucalyptus trees in Berkeley.
Barber shops.
William Carlos Williams.
John Kruck.
Odor destroying insoles.
Pho.
Branson, MS.
Roy Orbison.
etc.
Mmmm . . . odor destroying insoles.
Spelling “Big” wrong in a subject line, ugh.
Your post reminded me of this:
I got a hit, Schumacher, and Ruddy doesn’t count any more. He was hoping I’d fall on my face with this Beale show, but I didn’t. It’s a big, fat, big-titted hit, and In don’t have to waffle around with Ruddy any more. If he wants to take me up before the C.C. and A. board, let him. And do you think Ruddy’s stupid enough to go to the CCA board and say: “I’m taking our one hit show off the air?” And come November Fourteen, I’m going to be standing up there at the annual CCA management review meeting, and I’m going to announce projected earnings for this network for the first time in five years. And, believe me, Mr. Jensen will be sitting there rocking back and forth in his little chair, and he’s going to say: “That’s very good, Frank, keep it up.” So don’t have any illusions about who’s running this network from now on. You’re fired. I want you out of your office before noon or I’ll have you thrown out.
Paddy Chayefsky was a giant.
I don’t love about America what most people have written about it, whether it’s the food or the sports or the entertainment. Those are all nice, but don’t inspire love in me.
What I love about America is that somewhere, somehow, you can always find someone who will stand up for what’s right. Without assurance, without backing, without approval, without analyzing the consequences, without seeing if someone else said it was ok first. Someone will just have the godalmighty courage to say “no” to authorities, peer pressure and the risk of life and limb when something ain’t right.
It’s easy to be a politician, a religious leader… to speak to thousands or even millions gathered on the Mall in Washington. It’s easy to face the truncheons and the dogs and the billyclubs when you’ve got your brothers and sisters around you. It’s easy to speak up against hatred or cruelty when you’ve got people behind you.
But to stand up all alone? To just quietly say, I am just one person, but this is wrong. It may make absolutely no difference and change nothing and I may be crushed for even daring to resist but this is wrong. Not by me is this ok. Not for another day will I let this wrong go by silently… that’s real courage. A kind of courage that transcends all other courage, even the heat of battle…
And in America, you can find these kinds of people. Whether it’s my personal hero, Rosa Parks, whose name is well known now, or the millions of heroes whose names will never be publically praised, from your neighbor who walks away from an abusive husband to your neighbor who writes the truth in a letter his newspaper to your neighbor who stops a bully to your neighbor who drives the streets at 4am handing out sandwiches to the hungry and desperate…
That’s why I love America.. that its still a land where you can find this sort of person. And it’s still a land where sometimes each of us can be this sort of person and sleep at night knowing we did the right thing even if nobody but our maker will ever witness our actions…
Pax
Very well put. One of our greatest strengths is our individualism. We have always had maverick thinkers who were willing to buck the system, and come hell or high water, make themselves heard.
But I also think that American individualism can be a double-edged sword. The auto industry, for example, has used this contrarian streak to make us all believe that we’re all better off in our own privately owned automobile, and who really cares if the other guy can make it to work or not. Taken to its extreme, American individualism can morph into a cultural selfishness. I think we’re witnessing a manifestation of that right now.
So allow me to get up on my soapbox and say there is something to be said for collectivism, as this excellent blog clearly demonstrates. Health care, public transit, agriculture and energy are all areas where a collective approach would benefit all of humanity.
As much as the oligarchs would like to convince us otherwise, it is we, the working people, who will have to tackle these problems and make the world a livable place.
We’re certainly not going to get much help from the monied class.
p.s. “Blog” isn’t in the spell check. Hehe.
What I love about America is that somewhere, somehow, you can always find someone who will stand up for what’s right.
But that is not uniquely American. Those people exist in other countries as well. Where do you think most Americans came from? Other countries.
These are just samples in random order
Ray Charles
Bob Dylan
Lou Reed
Charlie Parker
Woody Guthrie
Billy Holiday
Patsy Cline
Hopper
Fairfield Porter
Jane Freilicher
Donald Sultan
James McNeil Whistler
Wolf Khan
Frank Gehry
Thomas Pinchon
Don DeLillo
Paul Auster
Ralph Waldo Emerson
John Ashbery
Emily Dickinson
Bill Moyers
Robert F. Kennedy jr.
and much much more…
I’ll keep it simple for this post..cause my family is here.
I love the people. Some accuse us of having no culture, but we do and it’s unlike any other because it truly was founded on a dream. Our people can be as good and as bad as any, but our culture is not dependent on boundaries or landscapes or nationality. It depends only on the ideal that all of us are created equal and are worthy of happiness.
To me, that truly is special. And the pie is really good, too.
I have lived/worked in a number of countries, and I have yet to experience a societal attitude that can match that of the US. We intrinsically believe in the concept that any problem can be resolved if enough people are given sufficient resources. The Marshall Plan is a good example, the Apollo space program another.
I have not found that elsewhere, although it is getting better over that past 15-20 years. In several of my offices, I actually found it necessary to ban the word “impossible” from the office vocabulary. The upside of that is the sheer joy at watching folks accomplish things that they had shortly before labeled “impossible.”
The US has strayed from our ideals, but I somewhat hopefully view this as a temporary diversion from the path, much like the debacle in Vietnam; I am confident that as more and more Americans recognize the need for course corrections, they will happen, and the fringe can go back to being the fringe. Religious whackos will be removed from the front pages of the news, and put back on Sunday morning televangelist programs where they belong.
When I was 23 & real naive, spoke no other language, and was entirely on my own, I went to Europe for the summer, mainly to get away from a relationship that had gotten disillusioning. I said to myself, well, if I can make it, I’ll stay 6 months. Stopped off in London to see a friend, for 3 weeks, only person I knew over there, & then got on a plane & flew to Czechoslovakia–just like that– to go to a film festival in a place called Karlovy Vary. (‘why’ is a longer story than there’s room for, I had accreditation though& was all signed in) I won’t tell you the year but the Berlin Wall was up, Vietnam war was on. Nobody just took off like that in those days.
I found myself just after dark in a big old delapidated grand hotel in the center of Prague for one night. Very Mittle European. Faded grandeur The first language of course was Czech, the 2nd Russian, then German, then French. Nobody spoke English. None of the maps were in English. And nobody but nobody knew the first thing about little old me.
All of a sudden, I got frightened. REally scared. What in the world had I done!
Now, all I knew about Prague were a couple of things: the mythical Golem had supposedly rampaged around there; Kafka had worked for an insurance company there, between the hours of 7 a.m. & 3 p.m. & .. well, you get it, ever so slight and flimsy fragments of pick-up historo-cultural this and that. The festival was bussing a klatch of journalists/critics down to Karlovy Vary at 1 p.m. I just had that one morning in Prague, as far as I knew. So I got up early, couldn’t sleep anyway, and took the elevator down the hotel restaurant in the basement around 6:30 or 7 a.m..
The elevator operator was an old man, very skinny, in a threadbare tuxedo-ish formal garment, with tails and pin=striped trousers. Old & rundown like the whole place & mainly, strange and foreign.
I was the only one in the elevator. We rode down in silence. Then just as he opened the doors, he turned to me and said, “Chicago?”
I shook my head & named my home town. “Philadelphia” even though I was living in NYC.
He said something that sounded like “Cousin” & repeated “Chicago”
Just like that, snap! I suddenly realized something that stood me in good stead during the 12 years I ended up staying in Europe, from that summer on. We are a nation of relatives. Wherever you go, you are bound to bump into somebody who has, knows, loves somebody in America & who, given the chance, given the opening, will treat you the way they hope that person is being treated.
That first fleeting encounter with that old man was a sort of defining epiphany for me. One that lasted. Okay, so I was young, brave, optimistic, excited, scared, open &, if I do say so myself, pretty hot. All that. Nevertheless, from that moment on, I felt at home in the world. Safe. Just because I was the happy beneficiary of a world-wide dream
So, yeah, I love the cultural icons, the can do spirit, the vanishing legacy of fairness, opportunity, & equal justice under the law. But when I think of what I (used to) love most about being American, it’s that.
.
Thanks for relating your experience. The legacy of fairness, opportunity, & equal justice under the law that you love is still alive. It’s the Bush administration that is hated around the world. The world saw the vast numbers of Americans who protested the invasion of Iraq. They saw that Bush was appointed by the Supreme Court in 2000 and voted in by a very narrow margin in 2004.
Seattle?
Great theatre, awesome sculpture and architecture, amazing philosphers. Love the weather. Food a bit spartan (ha, ha).
Not so keen on the rabid nationalism, the cretins usually in charge of the government, the brutal bullying of other nations, the economic imperialism, the slave labour, horrendous industrial working conditions, endemic mistreatment of women.
Gotta take the bad with the good I guess, eh?
All in all, though… I wish Socrates had fled to Canada when he had the chance.
I love America, not for what it stands for, it has stood for many things over its 200+ year history. I Love America because its people have demonstrated over those 200 years that it will persevere, it will survive, it will evolve and still preserve its glow even when tarnished. I love the American people, yes even the Talibaptists, that group that would like nothing more than to destroy the very fabric of our society. I love America because it is not perfect, it is an experiment in democracy that has flourished and floundered, yet has acheived remarkable success in helping other countries find democracy, in a non-violent way. America has warts like any other country and it has many wonderful citizens that work to remove those warts in a positive way. I love America because it is America, it is a country that was a destination for many of the worlds citizens, because they knew they could excel here, they could thrive and achieve all that they could hope for and provide for their families and their new country. America is truly a blessed nation, in that it has received not only the best and brightest of other cultures, it has received the everyday man from those same cultures and has accepted and learned from all who are or want to be citizens of this grand Experiment called America.
That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.