In a progressive country change is constant; change is inevitable. Benjamin Disraeli.
What a country”, Yakov Smirnoff used to say. For those who don’t recall, Yakov is the comedian from the (now former) Soviet Union who made his living comparing his homeland with America. “I left Russia, and then I got to New York, I got off the plane and I see my name written, Smirnoff. America loves Smirnoff, I said to myself, what a country.”
What a country indeed. It’s the land of my birth, the only home I’ve known for nearly sixty years. During his much shorter time here I wonder if Yakov has found it to be the paradox that I’ve found it to be. It’s a country that not only hasn’t figured out what it is; it doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be or what it should be. What change I've seen in six decades. And I'm not talking about the television evolving from a big console to a pocket sized device that does everything but grind your coffee. I'm talking about the tough change; the cultural, societal change. The change that creates conflict.
When I was in grade school, we were taught that America is a “melting pot”, a place where people from different countries, backgrounds and cultures all come together to add their own ingredients to a uniquely American stew. But the key ingredient in the recipe for this melting pot has always been assimilation. Park your culture and your language at Ellis Island and you’re welcome.
As I was growing up, a notion came along that maybe the melting pot wasn’t such a good thing. That idea gained traction in 1968, when students at San Francisco State demanded and got the nation’s first Ethnic Studies program. The whole idea of Ethnic Studies was ridiculed of course; basket weaving with a sort of ethno-sociological twist. At the time I was one of the cynics posing that oft asked question; “What in the hell could anybody hope to do with an Ethnic Studies degree?” I long ago changed my opinion and since 1968 many colleges and universities have done the same, offering their own Ethnic Studies programs. But that’s not to say that the discipline isn’t free of detractors. I only need look to my neighboring state of Arizona which recently enacted a law that takes deliberate aim at Ethnic Studies. The most salient provision prohibits classes which "promote resentment toward a race or class of people, are designed for particular ethnic groups or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of treatment of pupils as individuals.” Folks clinging to that “melting pot” idea, trying to push the pendulum the other way. Anger at those who refuse assimilation.
Shortly after I graduated college I started living and working in the City of San Francisco and was horrified to board the 38 Geary to hear the babbling Chinese, Spanish, Tagalog, Russian and who knew what other foreign tongue. This is after all, America I reasoned; let’s all speak American. Thirty some years later I find that mixture as American as apple pie; or maybe I should say as American as chow fun, menudo, adobo or piroshky. From my perspective we’ve broadened our horizons, enriched our culture and even added a measure of charm. But there are plenty reading this who’ll argue that America as a culture is becoming watered down and bastardized. Could some of those folk be the tourists visiting San Francisco's Chinatown to see China in America? Isn’t it quaint to hear Chinese spoken in America and see those pagoda style buildings, buy some cheap jade or a tee shirt with Chinese characters that say who knows what? Just so long as it doesn’t go beyond the boundaries of that little ghetto. Japanese is ichiban in Japantown and Italian so old world in Little Italy but let’s just leave those languages within their enclaves. They're a sort of real life Epcot and the residents not so much people as attractions. An American conflict. Are we a “melting pot” or an international potluck? Do other nations have such a conflict? Do they worry enough about it to have a conflict?
In America depending on your god of choice you can go to the mosque that sits in proximity to the temple near the cathedral down the block from the Baptist Church which is cattycorner to the Methodist Church that sits a couple doors down from the tavern that’s next door to the bank. We pride ourselves on religious freedom except when, “Your religion stinks," as one of my wife’s co-workers once told a Jehovah’s Witness officemate. It’s in the First Amendment; that oft quoted and frequently misunderstood clause which says you can worship anyone or anything you like from Jesus to Allah to Buddha to John Barleycorn and even that other almighty, the dollar. Religious freedom is a simple concept unless you’re a pizza magnate who would be president; a president who would see nothing at all wrong with banning mosques. The pizza monger who would be king? Just another case of failing to put the theory of The Constitution into practice. There seems to be a lot of that going around these days; trampling The Constitution. Trampling The Constitution is all over the internet. If you doubt that just Google, “trampling The Constitution.” Most of it is ideological rhetoric about one president or another “trampling The Constitution.” No, trampling is the everyday stuff, like the guy who’s going to invite me to leave “his” country for writing this stuff. Or the “good neighbor” who etched a swastika in a Jewish woman’s car here in Hercules. Or the legion of folks across the nation who are willing to drag Casey Anthony to the gallows even after a jury acquitted her. We cherish The Constitution until it becomes an inconvenience. And then we're willing to do some serious trampling. Isn't it when the going gets tough, when we're ready to give in to our baser emotions that the very value of that document becomes most apparent?
In his 1831 work, Democracy in America, the French aristocrat Alexi de Tocqueville wrote that discussing politics is “the only pleasure an American knows.” Nearly two centuries later that still holds true; or maybe it doesn’t. It’s become very trendy these days to say that civility in pursuing that “pleasure” (as Tocqueville put it) of political discourse has disappeared. I’d like to take the opportunity to disagree. No, not that civility has disappeared. I disagree with the premise that civility in political discourse ever existed. Civility has been absent from politics since Caesar gasped “Et tu Brute” after being shivved by his erstwhile pal, Marcus Brutus. And was there any civility in calling Andrew Jackson’s mother a whore in the middle of a presidential election? Maybe she was a whore but it still wasn’t very civil to put it out there like that. No sir, I hold no delusions about American political discourse; it’s mean and nasty and as for myself I can be as uncivil and uncouth as a radio talk show host with friend, family or stranger and then sit down with my counterpart over a cold beer. Isn’t that really the way it should be? Unfortunately we’ve let discourse harden into ideological walls and created a nation stalled, divided and, many would say, in some real trouble. In this electronic, information age, free speech, a cornerstone of our liberty has run amok and turned us into supplicants to ideologies that seek to stifle that self-same freedom in others. And to all of this let’s add the irony that we’re all in all a politically apathetic lot. The last time that 60% of the voting age population turned out for a national election I was a junior in high school and not since I was in grade school has the voting eligible turnout even touched 40% in a mid-term election. We have an electoral system that is the envy of other countries yet we take it for granted, tune out, drop out, complain that we elect crooks to office and then blame someone else for our woes. Maybe Tocqueville had it all wrong. To be continued...
