‘God Bless America’

I couldn’t help thinking, the other day, when I saw this sign in a window in Ogdensburg, how strongly Irving Berlin must have been feeling the day he wrote it. I mean: to wish the blessings of the highest being one can imagine on an entity, on a group of people, on a landmass with non-specific boundaries, on a vision, a shared dream, a collective effort—I guess my generation is too far removed from any great revolutionary moments to fully appreciate the intensity of that kind of emotion, at least as it relates to a piece of land. But it moved me. Yes, even embarrassed me a little. I’m not one to speak of it, especially as an American living abroad, but, if I’m honest, yes, my programming is still in place.



When I was a kid, I read with interest and horror of the shortcuts my ancestors had taken to acquire the ‘right’ to the land they ‘discovered.’ I was so incensed that in my youthful agitation, I chose a quiet, but, I felt, meaningful protest; I refused to, as it was the custom, stand and recite the ‘Pledge of Allegiance’ in my school classroom. My teachers were naturally upset, rebellion of any form being seen as a disruption in a routine based system, but I was more surprised to find that my classmates were upset as well—‘Don’t you know about the Indians?’ I asked, ‘The smallpox blankets? Wounded Knee? The trail of tears?’ Some of our ancestors were definitely not the good guys. Slavery was also and still is a huge stain of on the face of my nation, and my generation, as the first desegregated one in my small southern town, was still itchy and uncomfortable in its new multicoloured clothes. Perhaps that’s why they didn’t care, ‘This is America,’ they said, ‘love it or leave it.’ Patriotism has always been a hard road for me.



I don’t understand why most folks can’t seem to see the connection between ‘patriotism’ and ‘nationalism,’ (i.e.: ‘fascism.’) All patriotism, to me, seems to be built upon the simple preconception that we are better than them, for some reason. And really, are we? Do we actually have some divine gift that puts us above our peers? By virtue of an address? A Zip Code? Seriously, American ‘exceptionalism’ as it is called these days, when examined closely, is little more than a philosophy of thinly veiled racism.



I do love much about America. My programming aside, America is my nostalgic home, I love Thomas Jefferson’s words (more than his actions, actually,) and I love that a rebellion of tax shirkers could actually produce a fairly even handed and intelligent method of self government. I like checks and balances and I like term limits, I like that even the worst of presidents can only really get away with about 8 years in office and that, if we want to, we can flip the whole card and start fresh without firing a single bullet. It seems smart; it acknowledges the pendulum of public sentiment and provides a mechanism for bloodless revolution. And when you think about it, it would take a bunch of people who’d lost so much in a bloody one to come up with and actually agree on such a radical idea. I’m sure my historians out there will want to remind me of the Magna Carta or even of ancient Greek philosophers who laid out the framework that the ‘founding fathers’ adopted long before, but, nonetheless, they could have gone a few different directions once they had the reins, and yet, at the moment, they chose democracy, for better or worse.



So, do I love it or hate it? Well, both. I’ve travelled a bit more now, and I also now live here, in Canada, a place that tells you they find patriotism distasteful, but makes exceptions for hockey, Canada day, any rendering of the anthem, or any mention or presence of any native Canadian anywhere in American popular culture. I’ve also visited Europe, in a ‘post 9-11’ world and met equal parts admiration for our exciting culture and horror at our actions on the world stage, horror that mirrored my own youthful disgust at my reading of my country’s history. I have hated the way, from a distance, America looks more and more like a selfish bully, even with ‘a new face’; it still projects willful ignorance regarding it’s own behaviour and seems to consume everything around it at an alarming rate like one of it’s famously obese children. Yet, as I say, I have travelled a bit more now and have also seen that American people are no worse at heart than the people in any of these other places either; I have met with racism and stereotypes wherever I have gone, ignorance and childish, selfish behaviour, even with boorish and criminally violent foolishness. America, it seems, has no trademark on stupidity whether you love it or leave it.



‘Democracy,’ as Winston Churchill said, ‘is the worst form of government, except for all those others that have been tried...’ A telling quote. I love much about the idea of America, and much about the idea of Canada, Norway, Denmark, even Japan and yes, even China. I love lots of ideas behind governments, I love the idealism from which they spring and I love the facets of them that seem to work for however long people put their minds to it. But in the end, it always seems to come back to our nature, our avarice, our greed, our compassion and our desire for joy, for love, for security or for safety. The same universal human emotional behaviours that make us choose between decaf and regular, between charity and big screen televisions, behind, beneath and surrounding every decision we make every day. Governments, countries, landmasses of non-specific boundaries, these collective groups of people work and don’t work because they are conceived by, made up of and belong to, of, and by people. Human, frail, weak, and beautiful people.



God Bless America. I checked the lyrics, and it didn’t say, ‘She’s gonna need it.’ But maybe it should have. And really, maybe it should say ‘God bless this planet,’ because that’s where all this patriotism, this pride in ‘our people’ is going to have to redirect itself if we want to see our grandchildren enjoying the ‘pursuit of happiness’ instead of the ‘pursuit of potable water’ like the folks in desertified swaths of Africa our carbon economies have helped to create. Woody Guthrie knew this; he hated Berlin’s heart swelling opus and responded with ‘God Blessed America for Me’ a song he eventually changed to ‘This Land is Your Land’, his most famous song and an important poem in its own right. His answer to ‘God Bless America’ did not speak of a lofty divine being whose hand could guide us through a night with a light, he spoke of America’s terrestrial beauty, of how his own two feet carried him across it, of nature’s bounty. And he spoke of a fence:

As I went walking I saw a sign there

And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."

But on the other side it didn't say nothing,

That side was made for you and me.



I’ll leave it there. This land was made for you and me.