Red, white, and blue. The first thing that comes to mind is America, right? Ever since we were born, a variety of associations have been consciously and unconsciously wired into our brains about the culture we live in. In America, it’s important to be a “patriot”. We’re supposed to take pride in the arbitrary grouping we’ve been born into on a global level. What it means to be “right” and “wrong” is already defined for us and expected of us. In America, it’s important to believe in a slippery concept like “freedom”, even to the point where you would die for it.
Fifteen years ago, I clumsily rolled out of bed to get ready for freshman college classes. As I stumbled into the living room, I found my roommate awake and watching TV. Strange because we had stayed up the previous day playing Tecmo Bowl until the dead hours of night, and he was the kind of person who wouldn’t miss sleeping in for anything…well, almost anything.
Puzzled, I watched the TV for a few seconds and saw colorful explosions and people screaming, crying, and running through clouds of dust and debris.
“What movie are you watching?” I asked.
“Look at the bottom of the screen.” He replied.
Across the bottom, there was a scrolling ticker going, showing sports scores from the previous day: SEA 5 ANA 1 WP – F. Garcia (16-5) LP – I. Valdez (9-10) / CHW 7 CLE 1 WP – D. Wright (4-2) LP – B. Colon (12-11) / BREAKING NEWS World Trade Center Disaster / Commercial airliner American Airlines Flight 11 crashes into North Tower in south Manhattan…
I recently asked the world of social media to help me answer a seemingly simple question: Name a truly great American (from any point in time) and what is it that made them so great?
I received a wide variety of responses both publicly and privately. For the private responses, I’ll leave the names anonymous. Here’s a sampling of what I got:
MIKAH: I feel like Chris Kyle was a pretty good American. I mean, anyone defending our country could be considered great. Chris Kyle seemed pretty selfless though. Which is actually a rare trait nowadays.
JOSH: Well, a common person I like to look up to was Abraham Lincoln. He was a revolutionary leader as president and in the civil war, and the way he stood up for black lives when half of the country was against it was purely inspiring.
DALTON: Pat Tillman. Safety for the Arizona Cardinals that gave up the paycheck and died while deployed after 9/11.
TYLER: John Steinbeck or Robert Frost; both used the power of literature to start cultural movements and help people change the paths of their lives for the better.
ANONYMOUS: I would say that a truly great American is Michael P. Murphy, he was a U.S. Navy SEAL, and he was one of the four main operators in the Movie Lone Survivor, sadly unlike Marcus Luttrell, Michael Murphy lost his life, he won the Medal Of Honor Posthumously, as he was the one who sent out a coms message to a nearby base in Afghanistan, Michael Murphy is the reason that his brother and fellow Frogman Marcus Lattrell survived and was able to tell the heart wrenching story that was operation Red Wings.
ISAIAH: Theodore Roosevelt, a full on American at heart, from a ripe age of 4, he struggled with asthma, but pushed himself to beat it, constantly in the gym, a boxing ring, or hunting on wild safaris, he was also a charismatic person, who knew how to talk to people, and lived by his own words, “Speak softly and carry a big stick”, meaning to be polite, but get hard if you have to. He fought for wildlife preservation, and started the international necessity for national parks, something that is still enjoyed and celebrated every day.
BRIAN: Jackie Robinson – First African American man in the major leagues. Jackie wasn’t the best Negro baseball player at the time but his character made him the perfect man to break the color barrier.
PATRICK: You always know I’m going to bring up Frederick Douglass. Born a slave, realized how important education was by the lengths people went to limit its access, constantly asked this country to live up to the ideals espoused in the Constitution, Ambassador to Haiti. Check out his “What, to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?” speech in light of the Kaepernick controversy…
There were many more responses, but in all honesty, it didn’t really matter whose name it was that people listed, the common denominator in the overwhelming majority was the reason. Whether it was eliminating terrorism, or building national parks, or breaking a color barrier, all of these “great” Americans had one thing in common: they were fighting for something. Perhaps that’s what really creates the “American DNA”; perhaps that’s exactly what we are as a culture – fighters. And it’s from this subconscious composition that we create the concept of “patriotism” by which everyone in the country is judged. It’s a belief system, really – what it means to be an “American”. It’s got its own set of expectations and attitudes. It’s egocentric (a great deal of responses I got on social media stated how they, as the poster, were a truly great American), idealistic, mostly ignorant, and obtusely stubborn. In some ways, these traits are advantageous and have the potential to bring a great deal of happiness, while in other ways, they are the very characteristics that are creating some of the world’s biggest problems.
As many of you probably know by now, one of the headlines in the news this month has to do with the idea of standing or kneeling during the national anthem. As Patrick alluded to above, quarterback Colin Kaepernick of the San Francisco 49ers has brought this to the forefront by boycotting the national anthem by kneeling due to his belief that African Americans are oppressed by law enforcement across the country and a variety of social injustices go unnoticed because of the ethnicity of the subjects involved. He has been met with the “American DNA” full-force. The majority of White citizens in this country have been quick to judge his “patriotism” and have interpreted his actions as offensive and ungrateful to anybody who has served for the military and fought or died for the “freedom” we – in theory – all enjoy. It’s the same kind of “if you don’t like America, then get the hell out” type of sentiment that makes America the oppressive, ignorant, and obtusely stubborn place that it in fact is. To the majority of African American citizens in this country, they haven’t clamored to Kaepernick’s cause not because they don’t see the value in his perspective, but because the platform and way in which he is trying to go about it is being grossly misinterpreted as somehow meaning he has no pride in America or the military or the sacrifices that many have made for this nation.
Now I’m not trying to defend Kaepernick’s boycott of the national anthem – it has its own inconsistencies and questionable motives, but I do recognize that the “conversation” which has resulted has nothing to do with the original intent of the boycott. It has nothing to do with American pride, or the military, or the people who have displayed tremendous “American DNA” in the past or present. It has to do with the fact that great social injustices do exist in this country and we – as citizens who say they care about America – should be concerned with what our country has become in comparison to the rest of the world. As much as our “American DNA” (as fortified by the propaganda the media uses) wants us to believe that we are the best nation on this planet, we are not. We aren’t even close. Educationally (way behind the curve and it’s been drastically trending downwards since 2002), economically (we are in recession and the rich-poor gap is ever-increasing), environmentally (we are the #1 contributors to global warming and it’s our beef industry that is doing this), medically (I’m not alluding to healthcare here; I’m alluding to the fact that 9.1/10 American citizens could be diagnosed with a mental disorder – yes, depression is the majority of that number, when the next highest nation on the planet is 3.6/10 citizens in England), and politically (scandals all over the place). It’s all about perspective, and unfortunately, the American people aren’t in touch globally with where we are at in comparison to the rest of the planet. Are there far worse nations out there? Of course! But are we #1 in anything besides military spending? *crickets*
Patrick also alluded to Frederick Douglass’ speech “What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July” that was published on July 5th, 1852. Of course, slavery was not yet abolished in 1852, so he was speaking about the oppression of African Americans in a much different light than what Colin Kaepernick thinks he is speaking to, but in one part of the speech, Douglass says: ‘Fellow-citizens! I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a bye-word to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it, as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. Oh! Be warned! Be warned! A horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation’s bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic.’ Thirteen years after this speech was published, slavery in the United States was officially abolished, but really…was it?
If I was to list the first “great” American that comes to my mind, I would say Franklin D. Roosevelt (“FDR”) because of his clairvoyance and ability to transcend the ignorance, stubbornness, and egotism at the heart of American society. He was elected President at what I believe will be looked back on in history books as the most pivotal point in American history – when our country was entering its first Great Depression and the rise of the corporation. To help get America back on its feet, FDR knew he had to empower big business to stimulate the economy, but he also knew that once the economy was reinvigorated, the government would need to pass regulations and anti-trust / anti-monopoly laws that took this power back and allowed for small scale competition to exist once again. If you’ve not ever read FDR’s “Message to Congress on Curbing Monopolies” that he wrote on April 29, 1938 in full, you really ought to at some point to understand why America has become the way it is now. But here are some of the highlights that set up my point related to slavery from FDR’s message: ‘The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power…among us today a concentration of private power [the corporation] without equal in history is growing…we believe in a way of living in which political democracy and free private enterprise for profit should serve and protect each other – to ensure a maximum of human liberty not for a few but for all…private enterprise is ceasing to be free enterprise and is becoming a cluster of private collectivisms: masking itself as a system of free enterprise, it is in fact becoming a concealed cartel system…industrial efficiency does not have to mean industrial empire building, and industrial empire building, unfortunately, has evolved into banker control of industry…when prices are privately managed at levels above those which would be determined by free competition, everybody pays, even the government itself is unable to obtain competitive bids…even the most monopolistic business man disapproves of all monopolies but his own. We may smile at this as being just an example of human nature, but we cannot laugh away the fact that the combined effect of the monopolistic controls which each business group imposes for its own benefit, inevitably destroys the buying power of the nation as a whole…no people, least of all a people with our traditions of personal liberty, will endure the slow erosion of opportunity for the common man, the oppressive sense of helplessness under the domination of a few, which are overshadowing our whole economic life.” The problem, however, is that FDR passed away before he could officially put anti-trust / anti-monopoly laws to ballot and take the power back from big business. Without wasting a moment, the budding corporate world took over Washington D.C., buying out politicians, congressmen, and members of the Senate with promises of long-term financial prosperity for them and their families for generations to come. In a way, slavery of African Americans might have ended, but without anybody questioning it, we all became very real slaves to the dollar, and that continues to this day. And as anybody will agree, great social injustices begin to crop up wherever slavery is involved.
But it’s not all gloom and doom. I opened this piece with a look back at where I was and what I was doing the morning of September 11th, 2001. A part of our “American DNA” is the expectation that in the face of catastrophe, we set aside our individual greed and egotism and serve our otherwise unknown brothers and sisters who suffer around us. I would argue that is what makes us “great”. The first responders to the World Trade Center disaster all those years ago exemplified this. In the end, “great” Americans fight for each other, but unfortunately, it’s usually reactionary to a situation that results from our collective ignorance as a people. From a certain perspective, Colin Kaepernick is 100% right that there are tremendous social injustices happening every single day that we all turn a blind eye towards and do nothing about (and a lot of people – definitely more than just African Americans via police brutality – are suffering because of it). But if Kaepernick is going to take a stand against social injustice in America, he probably should have had the foresight to know that Americans (defined primarily by our ignorance, egotism, and stubbornness) were going to misinterpret his intentions and meaning as something completely different than what they were. He chose the wrong platform, and it went in a grossly wild direction. By not standing for the national anthem, the masses take that to mean that he is not proud to be an American, even if it’s his truly great “American DNA” that is motivating him.
As it usually does, all of it comes down to a matter of perspective, and ever since the days where big business was empowered and the media was created as a propaganda tool, very few Americans take the time to think about the concept of perspective and what influences shape their perspective both locally and globally, and how their beliefs and actions effect those around them. To be honest, why does anybody even care who stands or kneels or sits or prays during the national anthem? Just do what Americans do best – ignore it. Just because you believe in it doesn’t give you the right to judge others by it. But I digress – I don’t want to get soap-boxy. To close this blog post, a co-worker of mine shared this clip from “South Park” with me that I thought captured this whole Colin Kaepernick, the national anthem, and perspective rather well. Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa8BNKzY0b0