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America as She Is Spoke
Posted by KTK

I’ve been thinking a bit about the upcoming 4th of July. Strangely, after dreary years of heartbreak and hatefulness, as America thrashes ever more savagely through the crisis phase of its rabid infection of war, fascism, and triumphalist corporatism, after witnessing a reactionary backlash so bitter and so vile it is impossible not to wonder whether America exists anymore, I feel within myself a tiny sense of reconnection, a dazed but no longer naive second wind of progressivism, a small and tentative, but real, retreat of hopelessness and a sense that my country still breathes, if fitfully. There are signs.

I’ve been thinking of writing something about that. It’s hard to justify a sense of “what America means to me”, though, in the face of the manifest and ugly ways it has ceased to be what it could be and was. But if hope for America is possible at all, we should find it and treasure it. I’ll see what I can do.

In the meantime, Andrew Sullivan already has a good take on the same theme, with his July 4 Contest: ”In the next two days, please send me any favorite quote, YouTube video or photograph that sums up for you the best of America.”

My entry:

Tom Joad: [M]aybe I can do somethin’… maybe I can just find out somethin’, just scrounge around and maybe find out what it is that’s wrong and see if they ain’t somethin’ that can be done about it. I ain’t thought it out all clear, Ma. I can’t. I don’t know enough.

Ma Joad: How am I gonna know about ya, Tommy? Why they could kill ya and I’d never know. They could hurt ya. How am I gonna know?

Tom Joad: Well, maybe it’s like Casy says. A fellow ain’t got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then…

Ma Joad: Then what, Tom?

Tom Joad: Then it don’t matter. I’ll be all around in the dark - I’ll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build - I’ll be there, too.

What’s yours?

July 2nd, 2007 General, Culture, Holiday | 2 comments