Yes, My Friends, We Can Check That Box

I realized more than decided that I would vote for Obama probably a week or two before the election. I always liked him, but was never a big supporter or a fan. And with DC’s political demographics what they are, I thought I might vote for a third party candidate rather than slathering more icing onto DC’s Democratic cake. But after waiting in line for about an hour, going through security and then waiting in a row of chairs for them to call my name and give me my paper ballot, I got to the booth and completed the arrow next to Barack Obama’s name. Once the time came I realized I could not have done anything else. I completed the arrows next to the locals I was voting for, made sure I hadn’t screwed anything up, stood and stared at his name awhile through tear-filled eyes, and dropped my ballot in the box.

I walked slowly towards my office in an other-worldly daze. Absently, I got a cup of coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts and then crossed over 7th Street to sit on the steps of the Portrait Gallery, lean on my elbows and sob into my hands. The vote overwhelmed me. I have never felt such humility and pride. Not because I got to vote for Barack Obama the man. But because I got to take part in the truest manifestation of America’s dreams and ideals I have ever known and maybe that anyone has ever known.

We have always been, in principle and in spirit, a nation of equals. We began with “all men are created equal,” and have had equal protection under the laws for a generation now. But America’s liberties are negative liberties, not entitlements. We must take them. The governments, the universities, the employers may not discriminate based on race, and so a black man has the opportunity to go to school and get a job and become President. This is no small thing. A great many difficult times brought us here.

But for this inauguration to take place there was no war and there was no line of soldiers protecting young school-children from the other children’s clawing, spitting mothers. For this inauguration to take place something more astounding happened. Millions of people got up one day and took their liberties. With no law to force their hands they each personally activated the dream of Martin Luther King and the promise of Sam Cooke.  In two days a black man will be the President of the United States – the most powerful person in the world.  We will do much more than this one day, and we should.  But on this score at least, we have overcome.

 

 

C.R.E.A.M.

I have a friend that grew up with a good amount of money.  As a young man, though, he rebelled against his upbringing, his family, and the lifestyle generally.  For about five years, he did a whole lot of nothing; hung out, wandered around, smoked, thought about life.  I suppose he was the recipient of much condescending talk and unsolicited advice from his family and from his peers still treading closer to the straight and narrow.  

But now he’s got a good job, and has been back on the wagon the last couple of years.  He’s ready to settle down, he says, and he’s ready to strike it rich.  And to all the nay-sayers along the way, he’s anxious to show it off.  He wants *BLING*, he says (with a bit of irony, yes, but only a little).  “It’s the American Way,” he tells me.  A quintessentially American inclination: to show it off.

Cash Rules Everything Around Me - C.R.E.A.M. - get the money, dolla, dolla bill, y'all.

Of course “showing it off” is not exclusive to America.  The rich have been laden-down with heavy metals and shiny stones ever since humanity could conceive of its utter dominion over this pretty planet.  But I think it could be that showing off *BLING*-style is quintessentially American, because it has grown out of another quintessentially American exercise: social mobility.  *BLING* means you made it.  You did something, probably took some risks, and you want some recognition.  From your friends, from your neighbors, from strangers and from passersby.  

Money and status are very personal, individualistic things here.  “Making it” is, after all, the stuff American Dreams are made of.  It is by definition not something you’re born with.  Which is why my friend with the rich family would also want to wield his own bit of *BLING*.  Because you can also “f*#% it up.”  Our second favorite story to see on the big screen.

Everybody Wants to Rule the World

Along with much of the rest of the world, I spent my Friday night watching the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. And I loved it. I should start by saying that I know the point of these very elaborate performances was to reintroduce China to the world; to provide an alternative to the Party’s suppressive, human rights abusing, climate change accelerating image; to give China a softer face. But, with that as full disclosure, I freely admit to feeling the very warm and hopeful feelings about China the Party intended me to feel.

The source of these feelings is the same as their object: the PEOPLE. In one of the more technical presentations of the night, a huge square comprised of a hundred or more oversize individual printing blocks moved up and down to simulate the effects of wind and water. My jaw dropped a lot watching the ceremonies, but during this bit it really fell. The movements were perfect, seamless and surprisingly beautiful for a bunch of blocks. And then, after a short pause to invite the applause, the blocks suddenly burst open and out popped a hundred or more smiling faces, waving proudly at the crowd. So proudly, in fact, that I caught my breath and shed a heartfelt tear for their efforts, proud myself of these faraway strangers I know nothing about and will never see again.

The careful discipline required for such a feat is awe-inspiring. And the potential of such a disciplined people, dedicating most of their billion lives to the larger interests of Community and Country, is arresting. According to the headlines (and maybe also to Nostradamus?), it is the century of China. China will almost certainly become a superpower in all of our lifetimes. Maybe, it will surpass us all and begin a new era of Asian hegemony, if not outright rule.

Without speaking to whether or not a world ruled by China would be a good thing, I will say that the prospect of its happening at all strangely excites and reassures me. Having grown up in mainstream white America, I realize that I always assumed that White Europeans, having assumed control of the world, would retain control of it. It seemed to my young, inexperienced mind that this was presumably the natural order of things, since this was the… present order of things. Until recently, the world permitted me to entertain this shockingly undemocratic assumption, and to take for granted our place – my place – in the grand scheme of things. But the possibility of China or any other country usurping our position in the top slot buttresses my most basic of American beliefs: that all men are created equal. That we are not special. Everybody wants to rule the world.

Captains America

A friend and I went to see a movie about Patti Smith recently at the Lincoln Theatre. It was playing as part of the DC Film Festival, and Patti and the director, Stephen Sebring, were both there. The movie was mostly images of Patti: singing, walking around, visiting the gravesites of poets she liked. Patti voiced-over nearly all of it, reading her poetry and sharing with us what I can only call “deep thoughts.”

Towards the end of the film, you see her wandering the crowds of a protest in Washington, D.C. as she calls for the indictment of war criminal, George W. Bush. Justifying it with the words of the Declaration of Independence itself, she calls for his removal. And in the words of a very bad song she then sang with her son, she reminds us: “the people have the power.” She’s right, I agree with her. So why do these protests feel so empty? Why, with our enviably protected freedoms of speech, press and association- freedoms that furnish us with protests short of riots, and marches short of coups- does our current practice of them seem so… pointless?

Some of the answer may be found in an essay I’ve just read by H. L. Mencken called “On Being an American.” While written in 1922, it is an apt mirror for our own times. Commenting on the fact that some Americans talk of leaving the country in protest, Mencken responds, with ridicule but also praise:

God forbid! I’d as lief have some poor working girl (mistaking the street number) leave twins on my doorstep. No one would weep saltier tears than I when the huge fleet of Mayflowers sailed away, bound for some land of liberty. For what makes America charming is precisely the Americans. … They are, by long odds, the most charming people that I have ever encountered in this world. They have the same charm that one so often notes in a young girl, say of seventeen or eighteen, and perhaps it is grounded upon the same qualities; artlessness, great seriousness, extreme self-consciousness, a fresh innocent point of view, a disarming and ingratiating ignorance…

Where, indeed, is there a better show in the world? Where has there been a better show since the Reformation? ... Consider, for example, the current campaign for Presidency. Would it be possible to imagine anything more stupendously grotesque – a deafening, nerve-wracking battle to the death between Tweedledum and Tweedledee – the impossible, with fearful snorts, gradually swallowing the inconceivable? I defy anyone to match it elsewhere on this earth. In other lands, at worst, there are at least issues, ideas, personalities. Somebody says something intelligible, and somebody replies. It is important to somebody that the thing go this way or that way. But here, having perfected democracy, we lift the whole combat to a gaudy symbolism, to a disembodied transcendentalism, to metaphysics, that sweet nirvana…

And so it goes today: the candidates fill the airwaves with pomp and circumstance, promises of a new day. But does anyone take these tenth generation revolutionaries at their word? I hope not. It doesn’t even seem the point. In every campaign cycle the math adds up perfectly, and our massive slate is feigned clean. But on January 20th - and not before – we continue pretty much exactly where we left off. For this is the point. To shove on in our slow-moving, old reliable U.S.S. Democracy; our zenith of a status quo. Our own personal North Star perpetually shining directly overhead, leading us, happily, nowhere at all. Have a seat, she tells us, for you have arrived.

Gross National Happiness, Pt. 1

The annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival in DC is featuring Texas, NASA, and Bhutan this year. Even more intriguing to me than the fact that NASA has been included as a folklife specimen, was the focus on Bhutan. I’ve read a couple of articles on the country recently that really peaked my interest. Isolated from the rest of the world for decades, Bhutan has recently begun to open its blinds to the lights of Bollywood, the world wide web, and you guessed it- the It Girl of the new millennium- popular democracy. (Natural light they have in fact had in abundance all along, as they are, in the Himalayas, quite close to the sun and pretty free as of yet from shadow-mongering high rises.)

Besides its recent elections, which have continued the reign of the popular 29-year-old King and added to his ranks a new and apparently very loyal Parliament, Bhutan’s growth indicators have also been in the news. Officially, the government is dedicated to, among other things, the growth of Gross National Happiness. The country is famed, to the extent a relatively unknown country can be, for the happiness of its people. This seems fitting for a Buddhist kingdom with a pseudonym that sounds like a theme park attraction- Land of the Thunder Dragon!- but it probably would not be corroborated by the country’s thousands of Hindu refugees in neighboring India. (Oh, if only we were still simple beasts, allowed to wallow in our own homogeny!)

Most thought-prompting, though, was an interview I heard with a Bhutanese man I think was a kind of Buddhist radio talk show host. He described the recent exposure of Bhutan to capitalism and the like, but also the accompanying decrease in individual happiness it brought with it. Now, cursed with the fruit of knowledge and faced with increasingly more choices, the Bhutanese have joined the modern throngs of dissatisfied more-wanters. Happiness, he explained, was very simple. It is to be satisfied with one’s life.

 

Having been unhappy in my life, and more importantly having been happy, I immediately agreed with this sentiment. But just as immediately, the phrasing of it disappointed my American pursuit of happiness instincts. I’ve always appreciated the drive that comes from a sort of perpetual dissatisfaction, of never being done. But was the active pursuit of more and better at odds with happiness itself? Well, it would depend on what your more and better refer to. If you’re only trying to keep up with the Joneses, then yes, it probably is at odds with finding some real piece of happiness. But if we’re talking about pursuing true goals of self-actualization and hopes&dreams-realization, then the answer must be no, No, NO!

So how do we reconcile our now twin aims of quiet, daily satisfaction and avid, undying, do-on’t stop be-lie-evin’ pursuit of happiness? As I find is usually the case, you can have it both ways. You take your means and you make them your ends. You draw up your list, but you count your blessings. Because like all good life axioms, they are both true; seemingly irreconcilable, but mysteriously, wonderfully… not.