Ain't That America

(blog by Stan)

"Ain't That America." Wednesday afternoon indeed gave us “something to see”, to quote Mellencamp. I felt like I was at a Nascar race watching a horrific wreck at high speed. I was glued to it. Same for Wednesday night, with the Senate debate. Speech after five-minute speech, almost all (on both sides) eloquent and passionate expressions of both outrage at the mob’s desecration and inspiring hope and belief in what “America” really is. I was awake most of the night trying to figure out how to express exactly why these speeches had the opposite effect on me than what the speakers desired; they launched me into my crankiest mode of being, and this morning when I started to find the words to express my cranky contrariness, I kept having to lower my voice (Kim doesn’t like being yelled at).

It was the confluence of several things: the unquestioned belief in American Superiority (the more fashionable phrase “American Exceptionality” was originally coined, interestingly enough, by Joseph Stalin), the way this sense of superiority is shared across the ideological board, and the way in which the presence of the “inferior” mob gives us a convenient “you” to demonize and avoid looking at “me” and my own (more civil and polite) complicity in the systemic sins of our land.

I am currently reading a book by Rafael Cepeda, a theologian who served as President of Cuba’s National Council of Churches, and in a chapter where he critiques our concept of "Manifest Destiny", he talks about his four years of living in the US, when he was in Divinity School. He likens his experience to that of Marti’s, in that they both found so much of the land beautiful and so many of the individual people wonderful, you might say “exceptional”, an experience they both found ironic given their view that the body politic of the republic was horrific, monstrous. Being back in the states at this juncture of our history, after spending the most part of the past six years living on Cuban soil, gives me an understanding of Cepeda's and Marti's experiences. I love this mountain land, it is majestic. I love my friends and family here, they are wonderful people. The individual freedoms—exceptional. And yet something in me recoils at the ongoing history of our nation’s monstrous way of engaging the rest of the world, along with our domestic disaster in trying to form community, a “more perfect union”. While I can cite more chapters and verses from the Cuban history, the same is true for other countries throughout Latin America and Africa and Asia.

But here’s the thing, no matter our history of colossal failures to live justly both on the domestic and global fronts, there’s still a sense of superiority. And it’s not just something that the Ronald Reagans and Newt Gingrich's and Marco Rubios tout. Exceptionalism and superiority come in both red and blue shades. One set of remarks exemplified it for me, that of Senator Tammy Duckworth from Illinois. In this Iraqi war hero's eloquent speech, she said, "“I earned my wounds, proudly fighting in a war I did not support on the orders of a president I did not vote for, because I believed in — and I still do believe in — the values of our nation." She has described those values in other venues as, yes, American exceptionalism, defining our superiority in terms of service and "the belief that we are all brethren, that our lives are braided together." Her words on the Senate floor reflected a level of courage and sacrifice and commitment which at the time of her speech had me on the verge of tears. But these same words comprised a large part of what kept haunting me in the middle of the night: her pride in fighting (and sacrificing her legs) in a war she did not support on the orders of a president she did not vote for, all because of her belief in American values. This provoked some of the shouts Kim heard at the breakfast table— "THAT'S NOT RIGHT! How can that be? We have Black Hawk pilots launching Hellfire missiles when they don't even believe it's a just cause!" Believing in our superior values should not be cause enough for valiant young people to lose limbs or drop bombs.

But finally, the thing that irks me the most is the way the insurrection at the Capitol, complete with all the trappings of what "we" find most appalling—the Confederate flag, the noose, replacing the American flag with a Trump flag— served to create a convenient "you" to contrast with "me", a clear "them" to contrast with us. "That (the mob) ain't America", to paraphrase speaker after speaker. So we continue our laser focus on all that is wrong with "them"— white supremacy, white privilege, sexism, homophobia, fascism— yes, all the evils "we" deplore. "They" will give us all the justification we need to continue pouring millions in foundation grant resources to continue "studying" our domestic isms. I get it. I, too, want to unravel the threads of injustice in the frayed fabric of our nation. But where are the resources to unravel the tightly woven threads of our own evils—our own complicity in American exceptionalism that has done and continues to do so much damage to many parts of the world? When will we come to terms with the terrible truth that the very lifestyles that we (the good folks, God's last best hope for the world) have come to expect and demand is contingent on the suffering of those in the rest of the world who see their children shackled to sweat shop labor, who see their natural resources looted, who see their capacity to sell their wares in the free market blocked?

I'm reminded of the prophet Amos' stock sermon: time and again he rants that "for 3 sins and for 4" God will reign down judgment on them (fill in the blank for the "other" of the day). The prophet had his Amen corner until he finished his tirade with "for 3 sins and for 4 God will reign down judgment on us." Silence. In our context, I hear Mellencamp breaking the silence: "Ain't that America, you and me." We've got our work cut out for us, and it goes way beyond raining down judgment on the folks at the fringes of our national garment. Lest any of this sounds like a self-righteous rant, let me assure you that the churning in my stomach is due to a recognition of MY need for repentance and recovery from my own formation in American exceptionalism, and my addiction to the dream. I need others who will accompany me in the acts of repentance and recovery, and help me figure out what that looks like.