.. the America on Jimmy John’s walls, while far from perfect, at least believed in the possibility of its own improvement. It accepted — if only out of lingering memories of the Great Depression — the need for a certain degree of social justice. It distrusted wealth and corporate power and believed, perhaps too much, in the ability of government to help the little guy. It actually thought democracy could work.
…
.. not loving America — or rather, what America is fast becoming — isn’t the same as believing there are no worse things than America. Bin Ladin and the fanatics who follow him aren’t evil because they’re the enemies of America, they’re evil because they’re evil — because they slaughter innocent people, promote religious hatred and would rather see the Islamic world impoverished and ignorant than freed from their medieval fantasies.Opposing that also isn’t patriotism — just common human decency, and a (probably vain) hope for a better world than this shit pile we live in.
I hear you Billmon. When I came to the US, almost 20 years ago, (despite Reagan), the place was pretty relaxed. I watched the fireworks and celebrations and didn’t think much about it, year after year. A nation celebrates its birthday, whatever!, each to their own, right?. Today, it’s otherwise. There’s something sinister about the land, and I don’t like it.
Posted by: Bollox Ref | Jul 5 2005 3:41 utc | 1
My brethren, among the legends of my people it is told how a chief, leading the remnant of his people, crossed a great river, and striking his tipi-stake upon the ground, exclaimed, “A-la-ba-ma!” This in our language means “Here we may rest!” But he saw not the future. The white man came: he and his people could not rest there; they were driven out, and in a dark swamp they were thrust down into the slime and killed. The word he so sadly spoke has given a name to one of the white man’s states. There is no spot under those stars that now smile upon us, where the Indian can plan his foot and sigh “A-la-ba-ma.” It may be that Wakanda will grant us such a place. But it seems that it will be only at His side.
– Khe-tha-a-hi
Posted by: b real | Jul 5 2005 3:58 utc | 3
Thanks as always for your fine turn of phrase and fruitful line of thought. I remember the 50s and early 60s. Photo memorabilia is all we have left.
Posted by: Wolf DeVoon | Jul 5 2005 4:11 utc | 4
Though suburban America’s smugness scares me as perhaps something new and cold and alien, the need to believe in a ideal and the chance it will pay off is as strong as ever.
It took a bit of a perfect storm to get the Iraq adventure going. A majority never approved of a unilateral action without the UN even with the full scale lying and media whoring. Now a majority clearly disapprove, in good part because good is clearly not being done and that is still the precondition for Americvan heartlessness, talk radio notwitstanding. Since 9.11, as mortal affairs go, this is a rapid learning curve.
The one third nuts will always be with us. If, if, if, if, … and this disaster could have been prevented. And all it takes to make a dramatic difference is another host of ifs, of which the lead two are, if there were a credible opposition party, and, if there were a media with integrity. Both are still possible, though surely not from the cronies in charge.
The ideal is not gone. So far those who quit America haven’t quit for something better.
Posted by: razor | Jul 5 2005 4:12 utc | 5
Well said, Billmon, but please remember that there are other options, other sides in this complex world, not just the current USA and the evil Bin Laden. The world contains many countries and people with differing values, traditions, and ideals, and even as the USA are abandoning their ideals, other people, in other places sill believe in something similar and try as best they can to shape their reality to their beliefs. For all your sophistication, I think your gloom also contains an element of typically US ethnocentrism.
Unless Bush starts a nuclear war (which unfortunately I consider him fully capable of doing), this too shall pass; who knows, twenty years from now we may all be so busy fending off the ravages of climate change that the current jingoism may seem quaint and obsolete in retrospect.
Posted by: European | Jul 5 2005 4:54 utc | 6
Billmon speaks for me too.
My wife and I went through this agonizing process in 2003 and, after Black Tuesday, we did what Fritz Lang and Marlene Dietrich did: we left our country.
We were more than lucky, privileged, that we could do so relatively easily and I thank the Lord for that.
Like Jane Fonda in America, Dietrich was vilified in her country of birth for a long time afterwards, but I will take their moral choice over the rigid diktats of narrow-minded “patriotism” anytime.
Today, I know full well that I am, in my heart and mind, a traitor, a traitor to America as it stands now — not America as it used to be, or perhaps as it will be again someday.
But I don’t think there is another moral choice.
Posted by: Lupin | Jul 5 2005 7:19 utc | 7
Well said, Billmon. I’ve felt like I’ve been in exile these past 3 and a half years. That’s why blogs like this means so much to me. I’m not alone — I’m a citizen of Billmonia!
I hope you never get over the blogging bug.
Posted by: Vin Carreo | Jul 5 2005 8:00 utc | 8
A beautifully written piece, if one, at times, that strikes me as a little too self conscious of its own textual elegance.
When I first found billmon, I was powerfully reminded of a guy who at one time was one of my favorite political bloggers, a wise, incisive fellow who always wrote deftly and often wrote wonderfully, named William Burton. WB disappeared from his self named blog a few years back, and billmon’s work reminds me a great deal of his. I’ve often wondered, since finding this blog, if billmon is William Burton… certainly the similarity between Burton’s initials, and those of ‘Whiskey Bar’ are suggestive, as are the eerie similarities in their styles.
Either way, billmon is without a doubt currently my favorite political blogger. Long ago, on my first blog, I tried hard to do the political blogging thing, and William Burton was kind enough to say a few nice things about some of my entries. I eventually gave it up, and now my blog is mostly about personal stuff, and one of the major reasons I made that Fourier transformation in my own blogging was that William Burton was doing the political stuff so much better than I ever could.
Now, the guy who reassures me that political blogging is still in far better hands than mine is billmon. And it is essays like this that I come here for… although, again, in this case, the work seemed just a tiny little bit overly smooth, and pretentiously self aware, for my tastes. But such are the dangers of 4th of July essays, and the piece was still lovely, and I enjoyed reading it.
I would, if I had to, sum up most of the problems with modern day America in one word: intolerance. If there is anything that has ever made America at least aspire towards being a better place, and a fresher, bolder, more noble vision, than any other place and time in the history of the world, it is the noble and politically heretical idea of tolerance that is woven into the very fabric of our national consciousness. We are supposed to be pluralist and progressive and permissive; we are supposed to accept many different views and opinions and behaviors; we are supposed, in fact, to embrace and even cherish every conceivable potential viewpoint and mode of thought and way of life that a civilization and culture can gather unto itself while still remaining functional.
Yet, over most of my adulthood (I was born in 1961, my adulthood, I would say, commenced somewhere in the mid 1970s), tolerance has been on the wane and hatred, and pettiness, and narrowmindededness, and bigotry, have all been on the rise. We are splintering and fragmenting and turning into a place that is less a nation and more simply a gathering place for virulently opposed factions to shake their fists and flags at each other.
There is a reason we have learned to hate so quickly and so well; it is a profoundly simple reason, and an extraordinarily evil one: a very small percentage of very powerful people make a lot of money by turning us against each other. You can sell love and tolerance, but there is a higher profit margin in bigotry and xenophobia. That is human nature, and it is that nature that the inspirational idea of America was, more than anything else, meant to rise above and evolve beyond.
If I believed in a god who honestly cares what goes on down here in the anthill, I would have to regard 9/11 as being very nearly a divinely inspired opportunity for us to step back away from the quagmire of loathing and prejudice and self absorption that has nearly swallowed us up. It should have united us, not just in anger, but in determination to re-embrace the American dream of tolerance for many visions.
If the Shrub has any legacy, it should be this: God gave him the opportunity to make America great again… great in a way that is historically unique to America alone, and truly, the hope of the world. And he has used that chance to make us fearful at home and hated abroad, so that he and his friends can become a little more powerful and a little more wealthy.
He should be turned out of office and put on trial for crimes against humanity simply for that.
Posted by: Highlander | Jul 5 2005 8:59 utc | 9
Thank you for taking the time and thought to produce this moving testimony to lost possibilities.
I am one of your many anonymous readers who find your thoughtfulness and willingness to look steadily at the terrible thing ‘we’ are becoming a source of strength in my own little efforts to persist in trying to find a way to live honestly and humanely.
Thank you.
Posted by: Aunt Deb | Jul 5 2005 9:21 utc | 10
Thanks, Bilmon, for a very beautiful piece.
All too quickly, for I am not yet that old, I am experiencing the fate of Anne Rice’s vampires: The world is changing away from what I knew, in ways that are neither anticipated nor desired. As we watch what we saw as good about America–including the most basic things–disappear, it is disheartening.
But I have also lived long enough to know that trends do not continue indefinitely: They change, unpredictably. That we are not already dead from nuclear war four decades ago is because of one trend that unaccountably reversed. Other trends will change too.
But the country I could feel patriotic about has long since disappeared forever. Now I merely live here.
Posted by: Gaianne | Jul 5 2005 9:36 utc | 11
@Billmon,
Well said. On the lighter side of darkness …
Safety, n. (1) freedom from physical danger, which can be assured by prudence and responsible policing; (2) freedom from fear of physical danger, which can be assured by an adequate supply of doughnuts.
More …
Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Jul 5 2005 10:11 utc | 12
I was very moved by Billmon’s piece this morning. Sometimes things change so much that I wonder if such days as he described really existed. I think of my parents’s generation, the hopes of my generation, and what will be left for my sons, now teens, who have already experienced being love-bombed by the National Guard Recruiters at school who quite frankly did not mention the word “Iraq.”
I’ve come to this watering hole because the national news is a dry, empty place. Here I find the occasional comrade who has lived the ideals of the 1960’s and 1970’s. people with shared memories, ideals, and disappointments. I often leave here with the same feelings I have at the funeral of an old friend.. Billmon’s post captures that. I know how blind nostalgia makes us to the injustices and trauma of the past. But like Billmon I’ve lived through America changing from the nation of E Pluribus Unum to the administration of Salve Lucrum. And I recognize and mourn the cost. Someone mentioned the poverty of Alabama. I work in the impovrished northern third of Maine as an educator (University of Maine faculty are now the lowest paid state educators in the US so I share that poverty!). We haven’t cut out Medicaid benefits (which service an even larger portion of our population than Alabama does). We still have some Blue State values, but the closure of more military operations here will boost our unemployment even higher and our state budget on a small population base is about to snap. And I think of $312,000,000,000 wasted in Iraq.
So I have this core of anger inside me that resents this administration more than any political junta I have experienced. I am not normally an angry person. But for the past year anger has built in me to the point where I occasionally try to avoid political discourse at all. It reminds me of the prophet Jeremiah, who at one point in his long, frustrating career decided to stop confronting his nation about their slide to the dark side. As he tried to resume the invisible life of the common man, the word of God was like a fire in his bones. He could not remain silent. Neither can I (maybe I’ll rate a visit from Mr. Horowitz someday in my classroom). And I am no radical. I am simply a tired moderate, sick of religious fanticism setting the agenda for national (and international) political issues, tired of serial liars in power, and very tired of those who profit from them determining what goes for patriotism these days. My holiday ends this morning. Whiskey, please. Make mine a double.
Posted by: Diogenes | Jul 5 2005 10:32 utc | 13
Moving piece, and one that helps sum up some of how I feel, too . . . .
Yesterday, July 4, I went down to the Mall in DC to watch the fireworks — or more accurately, to watch my 8-month-old daughter as she watched the fireworks. Much of what I love about America was on display there – the diversity, from Hare Krishnas to Holy Rollers, Japanese tourists, Iranian families with picnic lunches, Iowa high school marching bands – the informality, the tolerance.
But one thing that was much different was the cops. They were everywhere, and they were aggressive and stupid. When they cleared off Third Street with police horses, where families had started to sit in the street to watch the show, they were nasty and abusive to people – actually yelling at, and using their horses to drive back, families. There was no need for it. I’d seen them bully demonstrations, but never regular tourist crowds.
Worst of all, before the very end of the grand finale of fireworks, a police helicopter came swooping over the crowd, and started circling with its spotlight shining down on the crowd. There was about a minute to go in the display, but the cops couldn’t wait to take the show away. It ruined the finale, and of course contributed nothing to public safety. It wasn’t meant to. It was meant to remind us that the cops are always there and watching. As the crowd was dispersing, some jerk-ass cop in an SUV was pushing his way down a crowded street filled with sleepy kids and sun-addled parents – and coming awfully close to actually touching people with his car. There was no reason for it – no need for him to be in his car in a crowd of people rapidly heading home. When I started commenting as loudly as I could about how crazy all this was, some people around me said – “But they’re the police – they’re doing what they have to.” I replied that they’re here for public safety, supposedly – and is driving this car through a crowd of people increasing or decreasing our safety?
The Fourth on the Mall, like the trip to Jimmy John’s, is a mirror of our national moment-in-time. What I see is Americans being Americans, in all their diversity, while the “needs” of “public safety” are starting to take over the show.
Posted by: NickM | Jul 5 2005 10:46 utc | 14
Salut, Billmon, salut.
We are not alone Diogenes, far from it. Though there is a dearth of public leaders to identify with … I still manage to lecture part-time, and when the topic comes up re Iraq in conversation I’m amazed and surprised by the views expressed against it … all of ‘IT’ … yet my self-control is tested to the limit to not express the ‘fire in my bones’, lest I shock or appear ‘radical’ … it is the almost total uniformity of major media and a complete disconnect with societies leaders that makes us think, wrongly I believe, we are a few, a minority … they seek to maintain such a belief to retain acquiescance, submission …
If anyone’s got the time, GI Special‘s articles are uniformly moving today … no pun intended … *faint smile*.
Diogenes, may I join you at the bar ? Barman, I’ll have a Guinness.
A toast to ‘America lost’, may she one day return.
Posted by: Outraged | Jul 5 2005 11:46 utc | 15
Beautiful piece, Billmon. I, too, remember that America. It had its ugly side, but that pales next to what we are seeing now.
Posted by: Coral | Jul 5 2005 11:53 utc | 16
i have felt like i don’t know my country anymore for the last couple years. not a good feeling. this article is right on target.
Posted by: moi | Jul 5 2005 12:05 utc | 17
a really great essay that expresses my sentiments better than i ever could. thanks. the unfortunate part is that only those of us old enough to remember when things were not quite so bleak can ponder the errant course this country now pursues. the younger generation does not have that same base from which to ponder. all they have is the selfish and nasty environment that grew during the reagan years. this is their “good old days”. and when your base for nostalgia starts with the reagan years, it is depressing to think about.
Posted by: melonhead | Jul 5 2005 12:23 utc | 18
Goading for War
As moonbats know, the Bush Administration is accusing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s new President elect, of taking American hostages in 1979 when radical students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. They now also allege that he was involved in the 1989 slaying of a Kurdish leader and two associates in Vienna. However,the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi responded to these charges:
“The charges are so evidently false that they don’t deserve an answer. It’s clear that it’s mere lies. Europeans should show their political maturity and not intertwine their interests with those of the Americans. They are advised to seriously avoid interference in this issue. We advise the Europeans not to fall into the trap of the Zionist media.”
Mr. Blair, I believe these remarks was intended specifically for you.
I’m sure the administration is actively fixing the facts and digging up piles of proof-cake from obscure african sources who have been freed from brief stints incarcerated just recently. Oh yeah, and why have’nt they mentioned his affiliation with the CIA under previous administrations yet?
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 5 2005 12:30 utc | 19
Billmon,
Thanks for so eloquently expressing my thoughts. I would never want to return to “those good old days of yesteryear.” The Lone Ranger & Hoppy taught us values by which to conduct our lives.
But “yesteryear” was a white only world, where Mom stayed home. We have made some social progress, but I de-cry the decline in organized labor.
I can’t leave, yet am disgusted to see Kerry & Biden insisting we must stay in Iraq and finish the job. Is there no opposition to the insanity coming out of the White House???????
Posted by: Chief | Jul 5 2005 12:31 utc | 20
That’s a terrific piece.
One small nit: Lincoln talked about the mystic chords of memory, not “cords”–he was building a metaphor about musical harmony, not roping and binding.
Posted by: Patrick Nielsen Hayden | Jul 5 2005 12:34 utc | 21
Many above have said it much better – let me just add: I am sure I am not alone in saying that Billmon and the Whiskey Bar offer solace to people like me – those of us who came looking for Jimmy John’s America and are now without any mooring in W’s. All we can hope
for is a glass of the best at Whiskey Bar.
Posted by: gnb | Jul 5 2005 12:38 utc | 22
Although I read your posts daily, I tend to never comment. But I can’t help myself on this one. Very moving and expresses many of my own feelings. Thank you.
Posted by: mer | Jul 5 2005 12:54 utc | 23
I read the essay with tears in my eyes. I grew up in the 1940s and 1950s in a place like the one it describes, a small working-class community full of people who had come from all over the United States (mainly the midwest) to work in a naval shipyard, which was the sole employer. There was no ‘bourgeois’ class, apart from a few shop-owners and the necessary complement of lawyers, doctors, teachers and pastors. I still receive a monthly newsletter from a history of club made up of the survivors of that golden age — most are now in their late 80s and early 90s. It describes how their grand-parents came to this terribly isolated place. I am amazed at how many of my schoolmates’great-grandfathers fought in the Civil War. The letter than came in yesterday speaks of one of them from Michgan who fought at Bull Run and took a wound at Gettysburg. I recall my father taking me to see one of the last survivorsm at the Veterans Home across the Bay around 1944 or 1945. Many of the people of my parents generations had grown up on farms, and still kept gardens, chickens, rabbits and the occasional cow. Many were poor. It was a liberal community, and generally tolerant. The couple who lived across the street from us on the beach were lesbians who were fully accepted in the community; our next door neighbor one home removed were a mixed black and white couple who were simply left alone. There were few blacks, most of them having been recruited from the South during the war to work in the yard, and so despite a sprinkling of racism, much of it carried by other southern immigrants, there was little overt discrimination. It was only when I had moved back East that I began to understand how much inner stress they suffered. My best friend was Black. He subsequently went on to be a correspondent in Vietnam and then anchor man for a major news network.
People read. There was real curiosity about the outside world. A foreign exchange student warranted a piece in the local newspaper.
I left at the end of the 1950s never to return, except for family occasions and the odd class reunion. My part of town hasn’t changed since the early 1950s, the houses are still small, the yards unkempt for the most part. People still working class, except for those on the beach, which has gradually been taken over by outsiders with yachts. Only a small strip of four or five properties still remain in the hands of the original owners who get together with the other survivors once a year for a ‘beach party’.
But the rest of the town has become what much of poor America has become. Gun shops, check cashing agencies, strips of fast-food stores. There is no good food to be bought. One has to drive 15 miles to an upper-class town to get good produce. The school system that sent me and several others to Ivy League colleges and produced three musicians who still play in major American symphonies has been destroyed. My niece and my nephew got no real education there. The place has no core, no centre,just people trying to survive. They seem to come from all over the country, drifters. Old cars and boats litter the driveways. Despite the breath-taking beauty of the scenery, it is ugly, and poor, and desperate.
Posted by: Knut Wicksell | Jul 5 2005 13:03 utc | 24
I just wanted to add to all the wonderfully literate and moving comments of those with American experience.
As a young foreigner, plenty about the modern world, and in this case the US, scares me but reading essays like this and viewing responses like these gives me hope.
A wonderful piece, and if we can only hold onto that glimpse of a fond memory, perhaps we can draw the strength we need to create a place like that. I hope you all had a good national holiday, and thankyou for taking the time to write.
Posted by: a Boy From Oz | Jul 5 2005 14:04 utc | 25
Thank you Billmon,
While I read your thoughts, I had the strange feeling that I must have sat down at my keyboard last night & penned them myself. This morning, the words of “It’s a Wonderful World” were running thru my head. Yes, the world is wonderful.. Yes, those who hate are making life difficult or even impossible for many.. But, there still are good people in the world. I, like you, find myself wondering what to support..My country, who I had hoped for and believed in, is gone.. replaced by ‘consumers’ (read, destroyers), mindless followers of a propaganda machine gone wild. Sunday eve, I took a small sailboat out into the bay & sailed around, watching the stars & the imprompt displays of fireworks. And I wondered. 30 years ago, I joined the U.S. military, proud to be able to support my country.. Now, I wonder where that country has gone, replaced by a mass of me, me, my, my humanity. Todays youth will grow & learn too, just as I/we did. Will it be too late?? In my sisters town, a new ‘gated community’ is being built. A private golf course, $55,000 ‘membership fees’, building lots (large, true, but still ‘lots’) selling for >$250,000 with house prices in the million$, guards at the gates.. They justified the high prices by building a group of ‘affordable’ housing nearby, ‘affordable’ meaning ‘only’ $300,000 for a condo.. where does the working class go in a world like this? What bothers me most is the ‘gated’ part.. In a free country, a classless society, we have walls? I know (thru work) one of the builders of the gated community (it is sponsered by two rather wealthy people) & he is a nice guy.. So is his partner.. But even ‘nice’ people add to the sense & reality of ‘separatedness’ this country is going thru/in.
For the 4th, I hope.. I also know some nice folks who, altho fairly well off, some would say, rich, made the fourth a family day. The wife/mother, made, by hand (finished the night before!), a costume for her husband to wear in the local parade, where they, with their two youngest girls riding on miniature horses, brought up the rear of the parade. Happy just to be part of a group of nice people in a nice small town, in America. Kids, everywhere, adults too, were celebrating.. setting off fireworks in joyous, impromptu displays. But, as a telling example, a bank I cash checks at has, on its t.v. daily, FOX media. People I talk with have no concept of what is going on in the world they live in, or what their country is doing in that world. Perhaps that is why they celebrate.. not what is being done, but what they imagine is being done.
Increasingly, tho, too many are unaware of the statement, “Live simply, that others may simply live”.
There is no way to peace. Peace is the way. – A. J.Muste
Billmon-
I read often and comment rarely. Your essay is elegant and on target.
I’m a younger american- 35 this year- and I wept reading your essay. Not because of the nostalgia- but because Melonhead is right. Those of us who came aware during Reagan and then Bush Sr- and seeing what is happening now- we have no hope. I see what is happening to this country and I am filled with fear and anger. Fear is the largest emotion because I can not see how the current situation can ever be resolved within the framework of the ideals that founded this nation. Anger because this is NOT how it is supposed to be.
It’s a deep, overwhelming hopelessness and sadness that colors everyday for me.
Posted by: Becks | Jul 5 2005 14:55 utc | 27
Thanks for another well-written essay describing thoughts and feelings that many Americans have today, but have not summarized and described as elegantly as you have. I, too, feel like I’ve lost my country but at the same time I haven’t quite resigned myself to view it as unretrievable. Gutshot but hopeful. Thanks for your thoughts.
Posted by: TroutGrrrl | Jul 5 2005 15:15 utc | 28
Last night I happened to watch a short documentary on the Sundance Channel called Hamburger America that featured burger joints from New Haven, CT to Chicago,IL, and states including NM, MO, WI, all of which were versions of Jimmy John’s, all of which were owned and run by characters who had spent their entire adult lives working in their establishments and who held to family values and work ethics that seemed antedeluvian by today’s standards. The piece revealed a great deal about the character of the people who are the deep roots of this country. I can’t say that I easily related to any of these individuals per se, but I certainly recognized them from my childhood and early youth.
Your view of patriotism, as another form of nationalism, is almost word for word one that I adopted in high school. Despite having learned, I hope, a great deal since then, I still adhere to the idea that there is a delicate balance between those two words. And, I concur with your definition of patiotism as one that is an idea, loyal to ideals, attempting to maintain those ideals, and absolutely not related to material wealth, military might, and political power. The extremely difficult task of being a writer in today’s America, a problem of which I saw as implicit in your piece, is one that I share and tried to write about here, along with some thoughts about Iran.
As a kid, growing up in a small Connecticut town, my father would pack the family into the car and drive two towns over to New Britain to get hot dogs at a place called Capitol Lunch that was (and still is) run by a Greek family, and that had the most incredible meat sauce on these, as Ralph Nader used to say, “the most dangerous missles in America.” That these places still exist is some kind of small comfort in a rapidly disappearing America.
Posted by: stefan michael ziewacz | Jul 5 2005 15:20 utc | 29
Was it an age of innocence that had to come to an end – insouciance leading to depleted resources?
Was it ever thus, simply most people did not notice, cover-ups were simpler?
Does capitalism -as a neat idea in a stable world- appeal, but have long term effects that kick in at some point?
Have North-South relations (or core – periphery exchanges) finally become untenable?
Is it the case that the destruction of on-the-ground social groups, and the thrashing of social solidarity, creates an atomised, non-territorial state of affairs which humans cannot handle, resulting in collective madness?
Have we in the ‘West’ been dulled by greed, sloth and hubris, letting the warmakers, who will be the war winners, play out their end-game?
Is what ‘we’ experience now really new or different?
I’m not happy with my own vague answer: ‘maybe not’ to the last question, and ‘a bit of all of that’ to the others.
Billmon’s cinematic nostalgia (I first went to the US 20 years ago, and then it was to New York, so no first-hand experience) strikes a strong chord – and yet…do we not need to wrap ourselves in confortable illusions?
Here in Switzerland, we are going through exactly the same process, much slower and softer to be sure.
But there is No Bush. To Blame.
Posted by: Noisette | Jul 5 2005 15:38 utc | 30
Thanks to Highlander- I’ve been trying to figure who WB is for a year, er so! Thanks to Billmon for Billmon-
Posted by: soanso | Jul 5 2005 15:54 utc | 31
Thank you, Billmon, for writing such a thoughtful and eloquent piece. I had a similar experience recently, driving across Iowa and Nebraska on blue highways parallel to Interstate 80.
In the heartland, techno-feudalism has already arrived. All the towns along the road were commercially dead, the life sucked out of them by the Dennys, KFCs, and Targets strung along the Interstate 100 miles to the south. In 800 miles of highway, there wasn’t a single small town store where you could buy mens shoes or a woman’s skirt. The windows of the old shoe stores and dime stores are now occupied by hand lettered signs that offer to sell painted ceramic trinkets and decoupage some lady makes in her basement. In Nebraska, the white rancers — formerly yeoman farmers and most likely all Republicans — are fast becoming serfs — tractor drivers and managers for ConAgra, IBP and Tyson. The giant slaughterhouse factory grounds sprout acres of single-wide trailers where Mexican immigrant workers — who have no right to vote, organize a union or participate in local political activities — live.
I can only add that, since we don’t yet live in a complete police state, many of us continue to struggle to stop what seems inevitable. But it feels more and more like we’re living in something Albert Camus would write — The Myth of Sysiphus or The Plague.
With hope on the wane, these days we struggle more because of what not to struggle would mean for us as moral human beings rather than because we think we can actually save anything.
Posted by: kaleidescope | Jul 5 2005 15:55 utc | 32
Noisette said, “Was it ever thus…?”
I like your perspective Noisette. That 50s culture was certainly no better than what it has evolved to. War was good; we had recently done WWII and Korea, and were about to get into Vietnam. Cold war was our mission, McCarthy was running rampant.
Most or all of that was manufactured, then as now, by a force that is still not acknowleged or understood by the people who are dragged along by it. This is why you have only a vague answer.
It has become much more evident in the last few years that this force is now taking the upper hand, consolidating its long history of interference with human nature (the humane kind) in a final allout effort to win. I don’t pretend to know what this force intends to win (a vague answer here) but it can’t be good for the human race.
Anyway, this is just to make the point that Billmon’s nostalgic glance back fifty years is to a bit of the process before it became so uncomfortable and threatening to us Westerners. The process was working then, it was on track, the final goal was in view as it is now. We the people had very little influence on how it was carried out.
I remember very well that as a child in the 50s, and later, I observed hypocricy on a large scale and wondered how it could be justified. At the time I blamed my own relative ignorance of these issues, but since then I have become much less ignorant while the hypocricy balloons ever larger. Go figure.
Posted by: rapt | Jul 5 2005 16:59 utc | 33
Maybe it’s just my perspective as a 70s kid, but my goodness gracious you people have short memories… I can’t get nostalgic for the America that was when I think about the Vietnam war, Nixon, Watergate, the Kennedys being shot, Martin Luther King’s death, etc. etc…
It’s the same as it ever was, folks – lots of good people trying to fight the corrupt and those who would take advantage of us. Now stop this darn nostalgia trip and get back in the fight, already – we NEED you!!!!!
Behind the Mask?
William Burton’s last comments at his blog are dated 2004
Commentary by William Burton on politics, international relations, economics, and society in general.
williamburton.blogspot.com
My guess would be that he and Billmon are not only two different personae, but two different people
God Bless America…
Stand beside her
and guide her
through the Night
with the Light
from Above
I too am nostalgic for the America I thought I lived in – who knows if it ever really existed?
Posted by: mistah charley | Jul 5 2005 17:11 utc | 35
So sad, but so true.
Not only do I feel like a stranger in a strange land, but I continually run into others who feel the same sense of disenchantment. I can’t love a country that does so many horrible things in my name and I can’t relate to citizens who let it all happen.
I didn’t display a flag this year… that’s a first for me… a sad one.
Posted by: Rhondalynn Brown | Jul 5 2005 17:40 utc | 36
Thanks Billmon for a moving essay. For me, rather younger, the ideal of small-town America lives somewhere in the memories of my parents, not in what I see around me. But here in NYC, I see the possibility of a different ideal; these hopeful moments usually happen for me on the subway. If there is any good in our future, it will have a different form from Jimmy John’s.
(From what I know of Billmon’s real name, it is not Burton.)
Posted by: Jackmormon | Jul 5 2005 17:48 utc | 37
“The empire of the future is the empire of the mind”
Winston Churchill
Move over, von Rumsfeld. Here come the masters of
PsyOps
Posted by: John | Jul 5 2005 18:09 utc | 38
(From what I know of Billmon’s real name, it is not Burton.)
A helpful hint … peruse JuanCole for a hyperlink with a full name … 😉
Posted by: Outraged | Jul 5 2005 18:09 utc | 39
Thank you Billmon.
How our country has changed isn’t in the things we do, it is our feelings of shame about it. Reagan gave middle class America the permission to hate. Before that time, our ideals were the Gary Coopers and the Gregory Pecks. Soft spoken reluctant heros who were guided by a live and let let live attitude until some bully pushed them too far. Reagan redirected America’s discontent to the lower classes. They were the welfare queens and lazy no-goods. By going after minorities and the poor we changed into bullies. To attack the powerful is heroic, to attack those who have less than you is just mean. I believe that was the beginning of the end of our national character. Our country did a lot of evil but we hid from it. Now we seem to relish in it.
How we get our ability to feel shame back is beyond me.
Posted by: sgiff | Jul 5 2005 18:20 utc | 40
As a long-time Jimmy Johns customer, I want to thank billmon for preserving in print a little piece of old-timey America. His description of Jimmy Johns Pipin Hot was perfect. 🙂
Posted by: semper fubar | Jul 5 2005 18:47 utc | 41
As a long-time Jimmy Johns customer, I want to thank billmon for preserving in print a little piece of old-timey America. His description of Jimmy Johns Pipin Hot was perfect. 🙂
Posted by: semper fubar | Jul 5 2005 18:48 utc | 42
As a long-time Jimmy Johns customer, I want to thank billmon for preserving in print a little piece of old-timey America. His description of Jimmy Johns Pipin Hot was perfect. 🙂
Posted by: semper fubar | Jul 5 2005 18:49 utc | 43
When I was a kid growing up in South Carolina in the 1960s and 70s, the Fourth of July was, with Christmas, the year’s biggest religious holiday. Even though I was living in a society that was still grappling with racism in particular, there was a feeling that, being Americans, we were committed to something bigger than ourselves. We were Americans, not because of where we lived, but what we believed. That meant anybody could become an American.
I don’t feel religious on the Fourth of July now. It’s like sitting in church, trying to recapture the old feeling, and realizing that you really just don’t believe anymore. As I’ve said before, while I grew up in the heart of the Bible Belt, I never felt anything like the hostility towards reason, the glorification of violence and Americanness, and the enthronement of religion that we’re seeing in the United States now. As a child of the Enlightenment, I always believed that progress only ran one way. I was wrong. We are seeing the rise of the Age of Unreason, and it scares hell out of me.
Billmon, like Conrad, expresses thoughts more eloquently than I am capable of. I think, though, that he has mixed two related but different phenomena. One is the Wal-Martization of American life, the enserfment of the old Middle Class, and the rise of the Plutocrats. At the risk of sounding like a pseudo-Marxist, this may be an inevitable stage in capitalism; I don’t know. I know that it emerged long before the current cabal seized power. It is dangerous to long-term social and economic stability, but it is, I think, essentially a secular trend.
The growth of fundamentalism, and its not-so-bastard offspring, hyper-patriosm, is something else completely. It’s not inevitable. I can speculate on its causes and sources, but why so many people would turn their back on Reason and embrace what Jefferson called “monkish superstition” is something that at base makes no sense to me whatsoever. Perhaps it’s a long-delayed sort of Counter-Enlightenment. Whatever it is, it threatens the very underpinnings of not just American society, but the core concepts that I always thought were what the United States was really about: freedom of thought and religion, the role of reason in public life, the ability of people to govern themselves without fear of others usurping their basic rights.
Ultimately, the world the Fundamentalists and their allies of convenience, the Plutocrats,is unsustainable. The question is how long will it take to collapse, and how heavy will the cost be?
Wovoka wasn’t wrong; he was just too early. Put on your ghost shirts.
Posted by: Aigin | Jul 5 2005 19:15 utc | 44
I’m glad everyone is still posting their thoughts. I caught the mention of Hamburger joints in New Haven: had to be Louis’ Lunch on George St. My dad ate there in the 1930’s and when I made my first visit in the early 1990’s the old owner not only remembered my father but his two brothers and some of their friends from Commercial High School as well. Too bad the old Yankee Doodle Resturante on Elm St. is gone now. I’ll join you with a Black and Tan now! Makes me wonder if Bush ever visited these places instead of buying up some Cocaine and women at Chapel and Howe once in a while.
For the record, I’m curious if any of you ever read a book called Occidentalism. I used it in a class last year and the students found it fascinating.
Posted by: Diogenes | Jul 5 2005 20:00 utc | 45
I’m still planning, sort of, on writing something about this kind of thing, what Billmon discusses here; I found his essay moving but also strangely sterile. I think it’s me, not him. I get that he’s talking about essence.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s and even then – even then! – there was hope; there was talk of The Future that wasn’t always apocalyptic. What do I tell my 13 YO son now? He cares, but civically doesn’t have the necessary tools and his peers? UGH. They could give a shit, really. They want to consume as much as their parents and older sibs. They did not have “Schoolhouse Rock” and the Native American man with the tear rolling down his cheek upon viewing of litter throughout the countryside, which is an amazing cultural touchstone for many of us in our thirties – I was telling my daughter about it in a grocery store and a couple eavesdroppers mentioned they wouldn’t have remembered it until I mentioned it, and wow, how cool, and why don’t they show that stuff on the teeve now to our kids?
Well, we had it until 1984! Deregulation!
Coincidentally, 1984-85 were the years crack was introduced into urban areas. The new issue of Arthur has photo excerpts from a book called A Time Before Crack. You can just tell it’s before the real evil starts, just from looking at the pictures. It all began in earnest when Reagan ascended.
History, such as it will be, will judge us harshly.
[The whole issue of Arthur is good – the Pinchbeck piece is a good read, and I found the interview with Brian Eno to be fluffy and thought-provoking at the same time.]
I live to the north of the Great Republic and as such I have never had much of a mystic vision of the USA; especially since the first president I remember was Reagan (the enabler of hate personified – eat that Peggy Noonan). But I am not deluded enough to think that the World will be an easier place to live in if the United States becomes a hollow shell, a phoney democracy. In fact it could really slow down the march of human progress.
You can see the idea that the United States is a place of “unfreedom” creeping into international discussions. At the end the Live8 concert in Toronto, Niel Young led the days line up in a boisterous rendition of Rocking in the Free World followed by O Canada. There was this subtle message that Freedom is no longer in America and is in exile in Canada. Very powerful.
My second most favorite commentator picks up the theme (Tony Judt)
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18113
Posted by: Scott McArthur | Jul 5 2005 20:30 utc | 47
Fascinating to read all of the above as it resonates with all of the feelings arising from this weekends’ visit with the American side of my family. I guess every family gathering has it’s share “how things have changed since last…” But it was depressing, sad and small and things no longer there.
I’m not nostalgic. As a youngster, my parents knew people who were ruined by McCarthy. My father was in the Service and we had a number of postings in the deep south when cross burnings and lynchings still happened too commonly. I’ve always thought that we as a species were meant to evolve to a greater stature, that that was the purpose of life itself. Maybe the last twenty years have simply been backwards steps, diversions from the goal, we’ll get back on track. Think positive.
But in this week’s Midwest I saw mostly aimlessness and mean goals. I saw tarnished spirits and fear of the unknown that didn’t use to be there. I saw few people out on the streets; as kids we were outdoors all summer. Has air conditioning replaced both fun and public discourse in your country?
It was a disturbing flight back this morning, filled with the questioning of impressions that were perhaps too hurriedly gathered. A great relief to step off the plane and walk under the sign. Welcome to Canada Bienveue au Canada.
Posted by: Anonymous | Jul 5 2005 20:35 utc | 48
Just a note from a 28-year old reader and deep admirer of this blog. First of all, thanks to Billmon for the wonderful post. And thanks to all the commenters for enhancing that post even more. I was born in 1976, but somehow or another I too feel the deep sadness of losing America as an idea. I’ll never understand how an elected member of Congress can give a speech that explains how we should all quit worrying about Gitmo because Lemon Chicken is better than due process. I’ll never understand how a president could possibly publicly taunt the people killing our soldiers while he sits in a climate-controlled room wearing a perfectly tailored suit, having done all that privilege allowed him to do in order to avoid serving his own country when he was called to. And I’ll never understand how a bunch of Republicans could wear little band-aids to their party’s convention, openly mocking the wounds of a guy who volunteered to go to war and was lucky that his wounds were not fatal (they could have easily been) just because he was the candidate from the other party. Every time I see one of those W04 stickers, I get angry and sad and just hope that the driver feels that way out of a misplaced sense of nationalism-as-patriotism and will come to his or her senses soon.
Anyway, thanks for blogging again. It’s important to a lot of us. Seriously.
Posted by: park | Jul 5 2005 21:29 utc | 50
Billmon:
On a personal level I find your riffs are sometimes, overlong and overblown, boring or esoteric to the point of donnish jibberish. Ahh . . . . but sometimes. Sometimes they soar. Then, they are like a surprising arrival into a window of the mind I long thought to be closed. An entry evolking the nasutalgic smells of Pop’s Original Homemade Apple Pie. Delightful, causing me to savor the associated memories.
Thank you for the riff you called “Goodbye Columbus.”
Posted by: Woodie | Jul 5 2005 21:48 utc | 51
My minor FoJ story.
I happened to be cycling by the local harbour on Monday. just east of the harbor is a beach. all city beaches are public, and it’s customary to see large crowds at the beach in sunny weekends and holidays. but this year was different.
the beach was cordoned off, like one of those landscape-wrapping art projects, by about a quarter mile of orange plastic “safety fencing,” except for a narrow opening guarded by an ambulance, a parks truck, and a police car. the hordes of Americans arriving at the beach had to pass through a checkpoint where uniformed officers questioned them and appeared to be inspecting their belongings.
I could not believe my eyes. I rode past gawking. on the Fourth of July, that “freedom-loving” holiday, US citizens had to pass a police checkpoint single-file to go sit on the beach and picnic. I asked a neighbour later WTF was going on there, and she said they were “probably checking for illegal fireworks.”
my suburban n’hood was whizzing and banging with illegal fireworks all four nights — Fri/Sat/Sun/Mon — of the holiday weekend. somehow this wasn’t a problem, but people going to the beach — surely a less combustible environment — had to be stopped, questioned and searched. I heard that in Monterey (some 30 mi south) major roads were blockaded by the police in the name of “heightened security”. what kind of culture are they trying to get us accustomed to? is there a plan behind these stupidities or is it just the natural idiocy of any large security apparatus running amok, drunk on its own self-importance and the fun of bullying?
no, don’t answer that. I am not sure I can bear to know.
Posted by: DeAnander | Jul 5 2005 23:57 utc | 52
Thank you for your exquisitely written, beautiful piece.
The sense of mourning was palpable.
I wonder what it will be like to read it in 10 years? 20 Years?
Posted by: Tony | Jul 6 2005 15:40 utc | 53
Thank you for your exquisitely written, beautiful piece.
The sense of mourning was palpable.
I wonder what it will be like to read it in 10 years? 20 Years?
Posted by: Tony | Jul 6 2005 15:41 utc | 54
Beginning in the mid-60s and continuing for however long he was able to care about his writing, Hunter S. Thompson tried to express what it means for the American Dream to be dead or dying. I think Billmon has accomplished what HST, sadly, never could.
Posted by: Thom Bassett | Jul 6 2005 16:47 utc | 55
“I think Billmon has accomplished what HST, sadly, never could.”
Thanks for the compliment — but not a fucking chance. Not in a million years.
Posted by: Anonymous | Jul 6 2005 19:08 utc | 56
Billmon,
Thanks for sharing such consistent, quality writing. Democracy is lucky to have you in its corner. Your thoughts in this post brought to mind a passage from For the Time Being, by Annie Dillard:
There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: a people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death. It is a weakening and discoloring idea that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time—or even knew selflessness or courage or literature—but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.
There is no less holiness at this time—as you are reading this—than there was the day the Red Sea parted, or that day in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as Ezekiel was a captive by the river Chebar, when the heavens opened and he saw visions of God. There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree by your street than there was under the Buddha’s bo tree. There is no whit less might in heaven or on earth than there was the day Jesus said “Maid, arise” to the centurion’s daughter, or the day Peter walked on water, or the night Mohammed flew to heaven on a horse. In any instant the sacred may wipe you with its finger. In any instant the bush may flare, your feet may rise, or you may see a bunch of souls in a tree. In any instant you may avail yourself of the power to love your enemies; to accept failure, slander, or the grief of loss; or to endure torture.
Purity’s time is always now. Purity is no social phenomenon, a cultural thing whose time we have missed, whose generations are dead, so we can only buy Shaker furniture. “Each and every day the Divine Voice issues from Sinai,” says the Talmud. Of eternal fulfillment, Tillich said, “If it is not seen in the present, it cannot be seen at all.”
When reality is pressing down hard on the back of your neck, try Aikido. Allow the pressure, release your resistance, and send reality flying across the room. Then construct a new reality before the old one has a chance to put itself back together again, and put a mirror on the back of your neck.
Posted by: Mrs. Columbo | Jul 6 2005 21:20 utc | 57
Thank you for this moving, beautifully written essay. This may sound strange but it really does give me hope somehow. I think there are far more of us out there that share your feelings about this, that are sick and tired of the direction this country has taken, than some might think; and I have to believe that the tide is finally going to turn on the corrupt administration and this jaded American way of life we’ve been drowning in is in its death throes. We’ve sunk so low that the only way out is up. That’s what I’ve got to believe anyway.
Posted by: etherealfire | Jul 7 2005 6:27 utc | 58
When I was in 2nd grade I refused to participate in the pledge of allegiance. I had two qualms. One, that he line about “one nation, under God” was something that I could not pledge myself to with any honesty, being an atheist at the time. Two, I felt I was too young and lacked the understanding to pledge myself to something as large and complicated as the U.S. government. Without satisfying either of these, my pledge would be false and not a pledge at all.
My teacher took me aside and after I explained my situation, she called my parents. They conferred and it was decided that I could stand at the back of the class and not participate, but that I had to at least stand during the pledge and face the U.S. flag. I felt it was forced patriotism through mindless conditioning, but I obeyed at my parents’ pleading/insistence and the next day I stood, obedient, at the back of the class, silent and fuming.
As word got around I became known as the “Commie” within my school and was targeted for verbal and physical abuse. I got my ass kicked during recess. Before and after school. In the halls. Repeatedly.
Eventually I went to the principal and after another phone conference with the ‘rents a concession of sorts was reached whereupon I’d stay by my desk, stand and place my hand over my heart, but not have to actually recite the pledge. This quieted the other students and the harassment — at least for this particular youthful antisocial insurrection of mine over the years — eventually stopped. I had to make up stories to the other students so they’d leave me alone; tell them that I was just fucking with them to see how far I could take a joke.
But that stigma always followed. That I was some sort of weirdo. Someone who didn’t follow along with the program. Someone not to be trusted.
Ironic that I won the state bicentennial art contest for public high school students in ’76 with a poster of my design that read “Let Freedom Ring.” I had learnt, quite the hard way, that freedom was a myth; the America of sanitized history lessons and Jimmy Johns resturaunts not only doesn’t exist — it likely never did. And so I say thanks, Billmon, for finally coming ’round to where I’ve been standing for a while, in agreeing that we’re in, now, really, the country that never was.
Thanks Pyrrho, for seconding my July 5 comments about seeing thru the bullshit as a child.
Occasionally I am jerked back to the resolution that I made many years ago as a youth: That as one gets older and loses his innocence he becomes inured to inconvenient facts. The resolution was to remember this youthful clarity no matter how old I got. It is not always easy.
I’m sure many children have this insight and it is a crime to try and brainwash it out of them.
Posted by: rapt | Jul 7 2005 15:08 utc | 60
I very much enjoy reading Billmon, and almost NEVER comment on this site. However, something in the sheer sadness of this post compelled me to comment — especially in looking at the overwhelming degree of sadness and agreement in the rest of the comments.
As dark as times are today, as wrong and has hapless and as power hungry as we see the GOP today, I am still proud to call myself a patriot. Not out of nationalism — but out of a commitment to the ideals that made America great. What that means for each of us is a little different. For me, the promise of America remains freedom, equality and endeavor (among other things).
We have been through hard times in this country (Slavery, Civil War, Jim Crow, The Great Depression, Jim Crow, Vietnam) and yet we always manage to progress – albeit in fits, starts and lurches. I realize things are dark today. But keep the faith! Everything has its time, the pendulum doesn’t remain on one side forever.
I will never give up hope of the America that can be. Those of us who look to the light of progressivism to lead us out of darkness can never give up hope – if we give up hope, we’ve lost our country, our commitment to change, our promise to our children to build a better future. It is during times of darkness that we must be called up to our finest hour. To maintain this hope, this ideal, is our duty to our fellow citizens, both in America and other nations that want a beacon of leadership in the world.
I will always be a patriot, commited to the cause of an America fulfulling its promise to its own citizens and to the world.
Posted by: Jonathan | Jul 8 2005 5:56 utc | 61