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It was near the beginning of Bill Clinton's presidency when my granddad, a professor of economics at a college in Arizona and a WWII Army Air force veteran, verbally bemoaned the demise of American culture over dinner one evening. While he scooped steaming mashed potatoes from his fiestaware plate, he opined about the shifting ideologies of the early 90's. He stated with a feeling of mourning in his tone that "America isn't very American any more."
What he was witnessing at the beginning of the 90's in cultural attitudes about citizenship, nationality, social identity, and pride in country was only a foreshadowing of a shift that would become epic and absolute. We were at that time in the early throes of recession, on the heals of NAFTA, and at the climax (pardon the pervy pun) of the Monica Lewinsky fling. The internet was globalizing us, immigration was expanding our population base, and new generations of tolerant global citizens were coming onto the socio-politcal scene. And my granddad, who had been a very American American for almost 80 years, detested it. He said that it would lead to the ruin of our great nation.
Well, I'm a yoga-doing tea-drinking orphan-adopting tweeting Cost Plus World Market Generation X girl and I thought he was...old and off base. But today, as we near the end of 2015 in a country that I barely recognize, I realize that he was spot on.
America isn't very American any more. In fact, I visit and have had friends visit other countries where they are more exited about American culture than the so-called Americans of today. Every day on the news and social media our citizenry is arguing about policies and ideas and attitudes, and it all comes back to "This is America and we don't DO that here!" But it's clear that most people are frankly completely unaware of history and what America really WAS before they changed it and remade it. And most people just want to get their way. They can point to the Constitution and legal precedent and rights and amendments, but most major movements today are just grasping at straws to validate their utter and total remaking of a nation with constitutionality as justification.
Americans don't want to be American any more. I'm not sure why. There was a time just a generation or two ago when Americans were still more connected to their local communities than the rest of the world, when photography was so new and novel that Bonnie and Clyde weren't recognized by most people and could travel across the country in a killing spree without anyone realizing it was them, when a country girl from the hills of Kentucky would barely imagine what the ocean looked like, when the children of Swedish immigrants in the mountains of Northern Utah were delighted at the marvel of their first encounter with a real life African girl, when people's thoughts revolved around crops and the post office and cousins and the newspaper stories and JC Penney's ads. My husband's grandparents in the Ozarks had never heard of tacos until the 80's and refused to try "ethnic food" when they came to visit us in Arizona!
Those days are over and my kids have FB friends from across the globe and know every HD detail of the architecture of Tibet and the cuisine of Pakistan. We are shifting toward a global culture. That shift with the awareness of and connection to the beautiful and varied peoples of planet earth is wonderful and exciting, but we've let it rot our brains out and forget who WE are.
I'm not a columnist nor a political commentator, I'm just a soccer mom and a healthy living blogger sitting here in my cookie monster pj's pondering, so this is my disclaimer that I'm no expert and my college degree in Russian and political science and my time spent volunteering on a couple of political campaigns and serving on our neighborhood HOA doesn't qualify me as anything. But this is still America and I'm going to hereby exercise my right to have my voice heard.
As a soccer mom, I watch my middle school kids try to find their place in the world. One day my daughter is into music and she's doing the Taylor Swift cat eye thing with her eyeliner and buying a guitar so she can sing in coffee shops. The next day she may be hanging out with the student body president and decided she has to dress more fancy and focus on her grades and volunteer. Then it's the Cross Country kids and she's all tall Nike socks and ponytails. She's in middle school, she's still figuring out who she is. And there have been times where I've seen it straining her emotionally to be into things that she isn't really into. And we've had long talks about knowing who you are and being that person no matter who else you're with.
America is a young, new country. In the timeline of history, we're barely out of elementary school. Now that Pandora's box has been opened and our young Americans see the whole big global world and all it's people, they are rushing to embrace all of it. And just like my 9th grader, they're losing their own identity. As sociologists will tell you, this is not a quintessentially American problem. As the world globalizes, we adopt ideas and goods from other lands. Italians have been consuming pasta for hundred of years thanks to explorers in China, Europe embraced colonial tobacco, the whole world is gaga about Levi denim, my Mexican friends love sushi and my Japanese friends make tamales. Culture and diseases spread at rapid-fire rates across the world.
But yesterday's Americans didn't feel as global, and they didn't feel the need to become global themselves. What is undermining our nation today is a mindset of evolving and constantly redefining values and behaviors. It's not enough for Americans to see the world and enjoy it, we want to become the world. And I'll tell you right now that that attitude, despite the lies and ignorance to the contrary, is completely un-American.
So when the new Americans argue and shout about what America is, they're really debating about what they want it to be and what they wish it was and how they desire to define it, but they're wrong.
- America is not nor ever was global and part of a world citizenry. My pilgrim ancestors left their land and came across an entire ocean to start a new world with new rules far away from Europe for a reason. They did not want to be European and they inevitably fought a war at great cost to seperate from the world. They won, and America was born.
On the Cause of Revolution by Thomas Payne
O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her.—Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.
Americans have prohibited the sick, the unemployed, whole continents, certain races and ideologies, communists, criminals, polygamists, and in general whoever the heck they wanted to prohibit from becoming Americans. The right to practice religion and own property and all those other wonderful rights that we consider so very American are ONLY FOR AMERICAN CITIZENS. We do not, have not, and do not have to invite every person who wants to become an American to do so and we never have.
- America is not an open door. There are too many people today who quote the blasted poem form Ellis Island, "Give us your tired your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..." to justify our open door/open arms attitude toward immigrants. That poem is the romantic musings of a poet. Our immigration policies have actually been very strict and exclusive and have sought at all times to protect the natural resources, beliefs, lifestyles, and culture of the naturalized citizens.
From a congressional speech during the 1920's leading to the Immigration Quotas:
It seems to me the point as to this measure—and I have been so impressed for several years—is that the time has arrived when we should shut the door. We have been called the melting pot of the world. We had an experience just a few years ago, during the great World War, when it looked as though we had allowed influences to enter our borders that were about to melt the pot in place of us being the melting pot.
I think that we have sufficient stock in America now for us to shut the door, Americanize what we have, and save the resources of America for the natural increase of our population.
- America is a gun owning country. This was one of the greatest triumphs of independence and was as much a reason for the Revolution as other issues of taxation, religion, and foreign sovereignty. We Americans fought a war and established an entire country on the right to bear arms. There are people who believe that that right should be curtailed, and they have the right to believe that, but it is not an American ideal and never has been. Perhaps they should build a Mayflower and go forge their own gunless nation elsewhere.
- America is not free FROM religion. The founding fathers prayed publicly and allowed others to do the same, they inscribed marble walls with commandments and scripture verses, they called on the name of God in their battles and they honored the sabbath. My granddad thankfully didn't live to see a football coach threatened with termination for kneeling in pre-game prayer. Our nation was built on freedom of religion and it is not at all American to scrub religion from the public eye, ban the use of the word "Christmas", and regulate the public practices of faith.
Is it possible for us to know who we are and to move forward into the next centuries with our identities intact while also embracing the new and beautiful? Yes, I think so. But in order to do so, which is crucial to the continuation of our entire way of life, we must know who we are. And don't let the un-American American rhetoric confuse you. You are an American. Be that person no matter who else you're with.
