Restoring the American Legacy

Over at Glenn Greenwald's place, Anonymous Liberal sits in and pens a wonderful piece on the meaning of the "Defining America Down," as performed by Bushnev and the Busheviks. He understands that, before the New Politburo, for all our consumption and self-absorption, Americans held a special place in the world and its history for its beliefs in the integrity of and opportunities for common people. Fairness and a very special willingness to be critical of our failures, which have been many, to live up to our ideals have separated us from most of the other "great powers" of human history. This has given us a claim on moral high ground and self-reform that has acted literally as extra power in the face of challengers, including Commies and Nazis. All this has been forfeited for the foreseeable future and whether it can be recovered is frankly not clear right now.

AL's piece gets at something I've referred to regularly here as this nation's claim to a unique place in history, the American Legacy, the belief in freedom and opportunity for all, in truly responsive and democratic government. No, we haven't always lived up to the ideal, but our history can greatly be seen as a march toward those ideals, even in the face of those Americans in it only for themselves, for power, wealth, and glory, who have polluted that history. But, compared with 300 years ago, my God, look at what we've done. We're voting on whether gays can be married? We might as well have been talking quantum physics even 100 years ago. Bushnev and his Legacy betrayers do represent that dark side of the American nature that has been there since the first Puritan, but the Legacy will be our legacy, not those human excrements, even if it doesn't survive them.

My two greatest political heroes are Lincoln and Franklin, living embodiments of the Legacy. Nothing given to them at birth, constant striving with unabashed ambition to better themselves AND their communities and nation, a capacity for self-reflection and acknowledgement of flaws, deep wisdom and deep humor into the strengths and weaknesses of human nature, a sense that in the grand scheme of things NO ONE IS THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS. Humility and the perpetual quest to overcome the things that made them humble.

They've always appealed to me because I, too, am white trash to the bone. Born to a single mother long before it was common and accepted, a childhood living with and off of different relatives. In other nations, cultures, times, I wouldn't have had much of a life. But in America (and being white and male), I was able to make a life with a good woman and son. Because there were free public schools, someone like me who was verbally facile (see?) could be mistakenly seen as intelligent (the mistake is one of humanity's most common) and given support and esteem. Because taxpayers picked up the bulk of my tuition to college and grad school, I was able to build credentials to move into respectable trades. Because government took policy and those trained in it seriously, I had jobs and promotions that I never would have seen in another nation, culture, time. I'm not Lincoln or Franklin, but, because of them and the values they represented, enacted into public policies, I'm not in prison, on governmental assistance, or worked to death by now. I'm appreciative.

That's one of the things I treasure about the American Legacy, how it allowed people like me to have better lives and to contribute. It's what AL refers to when he says foreigners view us as a land of opportunity despite our ego and obtuseness. It's what we should be working toward everyday, and a world the Bushnevs, Cheneyovs, and all those spoiled, over-credentialed, self-serving bastards running it can never understand and thus can never protect.

I'm proud when this nation changes if the mirror of its actions shows ugly, when it reports on its flaws, its disasters, its massacres, when it recognizes the potential value of all its people. I'm disappointed when it fails to look at itself realistically, when it hides its failures and scars, when it flaunts its power and forgets that pride always goes before the fall. I have been angry to the point of despondency at our inability to learn from our history, from all history, where empire and plutocracy, where failure to invest in and cherish our shared communities, take us. I watch us eating our seed corn, dismissing the Constitution and Bill of Rights, elevating the puerile, venal and self-exalting to status, ignoring and shortchanging the Lincolns and Franklins of all colors, genders, and desired life-partners who still need that Legacy to be upheld.

As I've said here before, great nations all fail at some point. Great legacies can, too. I don't know if this is our time or not. I do know that our current institutional structure is better set for failure than rejuvenation. I think I know from history that restoring the American Legacy will take far more effort and sacrifice than we can predict right now. I see very few people among our leaders in politics, business, media, or religion (or the blogosphere) who really have a clue. Most seem to think things will be better simply with a successful election. They won't, not without a transformative energy that will hold Legacy betrayers responsible and pull the rest of us together in a moral equivalent of war. The few who understand the work required have put forward the same amount of plans as the number of exit plans from Iraq.

Still, every long journey and all that. The problem needs to be spelled out clearly, without requiring solutions before we talk, as that ridiculous cliche spouts. I appreciate that Greenwald and his crew at Unclaimed Territory are staking the ground. I hope more pay attention. Maybe they can work it in somewhere at Yearly Kos between the slots and Wayne Newton. There's still a chance.