Tag: America

Our flag was still there

I took this picture of my library’s flagpole not long before a sudden and severe thunderstorm tore through the area, which is evident in the ominous clouds and shadows obscuring the otherwise vibrant colors on the flag.

This view brought to mind the final lines of “The Star-Spangled Banner”, which I pondered a few years ago during the Kaepernick kneeling kerfuffle and remain resonant today:

And the rockets’ red glare,
the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night
that our flag was still there

That flag survived the bombardment, and its survival was made evident by the bombardment itself.

You can pick the metaphor to represent what we’re living through now—just some turbulent weather or a straight-up bombardment. Either way, as a nation we’ve endured lots of them throughout history. (Today being Veteran’s Day is another reminder of this.) And yet our flag is still there.

I take comfort in Sam’s speech to Frodo near the end of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, when they’re stuck in Osgiliath in a particularly dark moment:

It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.

Here’s hoping for sunnier days. (I do anticipate a brighter forecast starting on or around January 20.)

November 11, 2020 1 Comment

We Americans

This Fourth of July, the words that are echoing in my mind more than any others are the lyrics of “We Americans” by The Avett Brothers, from their recent album Closer Than Together. They beautifully capture the cognitive dissonance I feel about being an American, and even made me tear up the first time I heard them.

Here they are in full. Happy Fourth of July.

I grew up with reverence for the red white and blue
Spoke of God and liberty, reciting the pledge of allegiance
Learned love of country from my own family
Some shivered and prayed approaching the beaches of Normandy
The flag waves high and that’s how it should be
So many lives given and taken in the name of freedom
But the story’s complicated and hard to read
Pages of the book obscured or torn out completely

I am a son of Uncle Sam
And I struggle to understand the good and evil
But I’m doing the best I can
In a place built on stolen land with stolen people

Blood in the soil with the cotton and tobacco
Blood in the soil with the cotton and tobacco
Blood in the soil with the cotton and tobacco

A misnamed people and a kidnapped race
Laws may change but we can’t erase the scars of a nation
Of children devalued and disavowed
Displaced by greed and the arrogance of manifest destiny
Short-sighted to say it was a long time ago
Not even two lifetimes have past since the days of Lincoln
The sins of Andrew Jackson, the shame of Jim Crow
And time moves slow when the tragedies are beyond description

I am a son of Uncle Sam
And I struggle to understand the good and evil
But I’m doing the best I can
In a place built on stolen land with stolen people

We are more than the sum of our parts
All these broken homes and broken hearts
God will you keep us wherever we go
Will you forgive us for where we’ve been
We Americans

Blood on the table with the coffee and the sugar
Blood on the table with the coffee and the sugar
Blood on the table with the coffee and the sugar

I’ve been to every state, seen shore to shore
The still open wounds of the civil war
Watched blind hatred bounce back and forth
Seen vile prejudice both in the south and the north
And accountability is hard to impose
On ghosts of ancestors haunting the halls of our conscience
But the path of grace and goodwill is still here,
For those of us who may be considered among the living

I am a son of God and man
And I may never understand the good and evil
But I dearly love this land
Because of, and in spite of we the people

We are more than the sum of our parts
All these broken bones and broken hearts
God will you keep us wherever we go
Can you forgive us for where we’ve been
We Americans
We Americans

Love in our hearts with the pain and the memory
Love in our hearts with the pain and the memory
Love in our hearts with the pain and the memory

July 4, 2020 1 Comment

America’s greatness is great

Alan Jacobs:

Yesterday my son, who works in the Chicago Loop, saw a woman on a bicycle get hit by a car. She wasn’t seriously injured, but she was knocked to the ground, dazed. He ran up to her to see if she was okay and pulled out his phone to call 911 — but she quickly, urgently said, “No! No! I can’t afford to go to the hospital!” And after taking a moment to gather herself, she got to her feet, picked up her damaged bike, and wobbled off.

And so my son stood there on the corner, surrounded by the glories of Chicago’s architecture, the superb expensive shops on the Magnificent Mile, the wealth that fairly pulsates from every building, and reflected, as one well might, on American Greatness.

I’m starting to see why Austin Kleon is a single-issue voter.

August 6, 2019 2 Comments

Trump’s Razor

Trump is either hiding something so threatening to himself, or he’s criminally incompetent to be commander in chief. It is impossible yet to say which explanation for his behavior is true, but it seems highly likely that one of these scenarios explains Trump’s refusal to respond to Russia’s direct attack on our system — a quiescence that is simply unprecedented for any U.S. president in history. Russia is not our friend. It has acted in a hostile manner. And Trump keeps ignoring it all.

— Thomas Friedman

Trump’s Razor: when presented with competing hypothetical answers to the question of Trump’s behavior, one should select the one that makes the fewest assumptions.

Which means: Once you realize the possibility that Trump is deeply compromised, his behavior makes so much more sense.

And this, for me, is the root of our present crisis. Beneath the “America First” president totally uninterested in defending America’s democratic integrity, the businessman running a chaotic and vapid administration, the “deal maker” with no poker face whatsoever, the demagogue with no ideology but himself—beneath all that is a man in a (presently) invisible prison of his own making. Who also happens to be president of the United States.

Happy Presidents Day, everyone!

February 19, 2018 Add Comment